Some years ago I wrote a paper setting forth the view that there was much to be said for the notion that representation in a parliament should be based not only on the notion of one man, one vote in a given geographic area, but by labor group -- or profession -- which in the modern world reflects much of greater importance to individuals than the accident of where they might live. The paper is lost, and, regrettably, this notion remains in bad odor because Benito Mussolini allied himself with Hitler, besmirching his earlier success in bringing Italy out of the Great Depression with all of the excesses of The Third Reich. This reconstruction of the main thoughts of the missing paper is based on a letter written to my children commenting on some current events in mid-1998which broght the original arguments and logic to mind..
The American Supreme Court recently overturned the creation by several states of special voting districts contrived to assure Blacks of a half dozen seats in Congress, bringing to mind both this earlier paper as well as the not unrelated British system which allows second votes for Oxford and Cambridge grads, as well as for businessmen to vote where they have business property. Following the Supreme Court decision, I sent off a note to Jack Kemp suggesting that with all the Constitutional amendments being proposed for such ephemeral issues as flag burning, a remedial American solution might be an Amendment setting aside a specified number of seats in Congress for Blacks and Hispanics (based on the most recent census figures), allowing them to be filled on a nation-wide basis. I sent this notion to Bob Dole, who, during his Presidential campaign, was looking for a hot topic to demonstrate his imagination -- and to appeal to minority voters. It got not even the courtesy of a reply. Maybe it desrved no more.
Now British Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair is (late 1998) in process of abolishing the hereditary principle in the House of Lords. I must say that even crypto-Tory that I am in many respects, I am a solid small "r" republican and support the Blair proposals in principle. I've spent a good part of my life in Britain but never understood our British cousins'deference to title and acceptance of privilege by birth (other than inheritance of property).
But apparently the Labor Party has apparently as yet no idea how to institutionalize appointment to its Upper House.
My missing paper examines how Italy (and Spain) reserved a proportionate number of seats in their legislatures for Labor, the Professions, Industry, and Academe, to make sure that the varied interests of society were reflected in government.
The US system seems to assume that majority vote will cast up a sufficient number of successful candidates to reflect the special interests of society. Ain't so. We get a heavy over-representation of lawyers, with a handful of educators and businessmen. If I could find the paper I'd send it to 10 Downing Street in hopes it'd be read and its ideas applied to devising a new formula for appointments (or elections) to a reformed British Upper House based on the most rent census.. My wife Lola doesn't think the letter would even be read. But I think the paper I sent Mexican President Salinas de Gortari about a North American Free Trade Area may have positively affected his thinking some. And I was ssured that when it was puboished in the Foreign Serviced Journal -- with copies sent to every member of the US Congress -- it swung several marginal votes in favor of the legislation -- though regrettably NAFTA as enacted differed appreciably from the more nuanced version I envisioned. And the paper I sent South African President Botha was suspiciously close to his deciding to revoke the Apartheid approach to government (I'd suggested the British system of multiple votes: for where one lives, an extra vote for business owners where their business is located; and a third vote for graduates of the great universities, which have their own representation in Parliament. I thought this would ease the shock of transition from exclusive white voters in S.A., while introducing an incentive for new black voters to strive for education and property, providing another element of moderation in the black voter takeover. But things came unglued too fast for any of that. They should have started the transition twenty years earlier.
Which brings to mind the thought of British Historian Arnold Toynbee who saw human history as a constant tension between Challenge and Response . If a civilization isn't challenged, it stagnates and doesn't develop its potential. If it is over-challenged before it has developed sufficient strnegth to resist, it disappears down the maw of history, whatever surviving of it becoming a part of the overrunning civilization. If, however, it can stretch its human and physical resources enough to conquer the challenge it survives and becomes stronger in the process (while the other is absorbed and disappears). I once wrote a speech for Assistant Secretary of State Philip Tresize (eventually published in the Journal of the Department of State) using this as a topic during, The talk was occasioned by the monetary and oil crises of the early seventies.
It appears to me that Western Civilization, with the overthrow of the Soviet State, the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the reformist troubles in China and Russia, the financial dissarry in Indonesia, and the outbreak of violence in Kosova and Monetnegro, is again being challenged almost to its maximum today despite our success in the Cold War- Toynbee saw our civilization being in a state of current challenge (he thought by the Soviets). Russia is being assimilated into Western culture (term loosely applied). Regrettably, both Russia and the world seem to be adopting all our worst features from violence to drugs, to pornography, to casual sex and mafia business practices. Whether a potential WW III, or internal decay (as German philosopher Oswald Spengler thought when he wrote The Decline of the West some seventy years ago, predicting much of what is happening today from another perspective), will prove the greater challenge, is for history to decide. And whether reform of the American and British style of government to reflect in more nuanced fashion the underlying social and economic realities of their electorate would render survival more probable is a matter demanding discussion. Certainly the startling outcome of the 1998 Congressional elections after the damning circumstances surrounding President Bill Clinton -- and his entire Administration -- as we approached polling day, have something important to say in this regard.
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