The biggest questions our representative democracy must answer are: Who should we choose to legislate for us? Who should be our leaders? Political parties should empower our democracy to effectively answer these big questions, but empowering democracy is simply not the focus of political parties.

The July 27 edition of the Dayton Daily News, gives a telling example of how political parties often operate. The newspaper reported that the Montgomery County Republican Party met to anoint Republican primary candidates for the Ohio House, particularly primary candidates in the three Montgomery County House Districts that, because of gerrymandering, regularly vote Republican. The paper reported that, for the 38th Ohio House District, Terry Blair was chosen as the Republican primary candidate by a vote of 25 to 21.

The Dayton Daily News stated confidently that the choice of these 25 voters would be final and that Blair, in fact, ultimately would be the new State Representative for the 38th District. The newspaper cited the following reasons why Blair would be elected: 1) Republican voters will follow the Party’s dictates 2) The Republican Party will successfully suppress any primary competition , and 3) In the 38th District, because of gerrymandering, Republicans always win. So, according to the newspaper, if you are one of the 110,000 voters in the 38th District, your next Ohio House Representative has already been selected, not by a majority of the voters in the District, but, by 25 District Republicans.

The newspaper in the article decried the actions of the Montgomery County Republican Party as undemocratic, but the newspaper took the opportunity to criticize the Montgomery County Democratic Party also, saying that The Montgomery County Democratic Party, when given the opportunity, does the same thing.

The force driving political parties, first of all, is a passion to win.  The newspaper said that in Montgomery County both political parties, historically, have adhered to a strategy of suppressing primary battles as a means of conserving resources, and as a way of uniting the party, and, that both parties feel that this anti-democratic strategy increases their chances of winning more elections.   However, this year, so far, the Montgomery County Democratic Party has not yet endorsed any Ohio House Democratic Primary candidates, and, hopefully, Montgomery County Democrats, under the leadership of the new chairperson, Mark Owens, will carefully examine its endorsement practices before making any endorsements at all.

It is all about winning. Political parties are focused on winning, and I hear ordinary people rooting for political parties as if they were rooting for a sports team — expressing the same kind of happy mindlessness. It’s like, Wow! My team (the Democrats) have been down for some time, but now it looks like now team will come roaring back.  But regardless of the Rah-Rah-Rah focused on winning and hard work of either “team,” many potential voters are unimpressed with the whole political process, and simply have stopped voting. It is easy to understand why. Many nonvoters feel that the system is so broken that their vote is worthless. Many resent the hype and the lies. Many individuals who do vote do so grudgingly, convinced they are cheated by a system that, in their view, regularly fails to provide good candidates / good ideas.

What must be acknowledged is that our democracy is in trouble. The Catholic Church operates on the doctrine of divine revelation and ecclesiastical authority. For these reasons, according to church law, only a small handful are empowered to select the Pope. Members of the Church do not pretend that the Church operates democratically. But citizens in the 38th District, I imagine, are generally of the opinion that they are part of a democracy.  But they are simply pretending, fooling themselves, about the state of their democracy, if they acquiesce to the dictate of 25 partisans telling them who their representative will be.

The hope of an effective democracy is that wise and good leadership will bubble up, that the cream will rise. The point of a democracy is that citizens, if given the chance, have wisdom to make good choices. But, the truth is, our closed media and our closed political processes make it difficult for ordinary citizens to meaningfully participate in their own democracy. At a time when our society badly needs wise leadership and badly needs an infusion of good ideas for improvement, our system is failing us.

Increasingly, I believe, voters are coming to the conclusion that the big questions facing our democracy are too important to allow political parties to decide, and, because of this conclusion, increasingly, voters will choose to align themselves with the political party that through its actions best advances democratic ideals.

The sermon I recently heard in a church in an upscale community asked a profound question: “Why are we rich?” The scripture reading preceding the sermon retold Jesus’ story of a rich man who in this life had fared “sumptuously.” The preacher didn’t attempt an explanation of why the man in this story was rich — the point of his sermon was that with wealth comes a moral responsibility — but, the question of why, throughout history, some people are rich and some are not is a great question.

Usually those who fare “sumptuously” believe that their wealth is well deserved. The idea that wealth is entitled in an old idea. Within the history of European culture, when the divine right of royalty was embedded, those with wealth convinced themselves that they were entitled to their wealth because of their connection with royalty. Certainly, 500 years ago, if you were a distant cousin to the king, you would have had a huge sense that you were entitled to wealth, based upon your status of birth. And your sense of entitlement would have been widely validated by your peers.

In our culture, where the idea of democracy is embedded, those of us who are financially secure also want to convince ourselves that we are entitled to wealth. Of course, we do not use our blood line as justification, but, rather, we justify our wealth by citing the merit of our work, the merit of our contribution to our society, and by citing the notion that in our society everyone has equal opportunity. It’s appealing to think in terms of justification, but we are fooling ourselves if we really believe that it is the merit of our work that makes us rich. I could point to well paid, lawyers, doctors or hedge fund managers, as examples of why justification based on merit is not valid, but since my own livelihood came from teaching, I will focus there.

It is not unusual to hear teachers expressing the idea that they deserve higher pay. I, myself, joined in that chorus at various times. But the question of what pay any job “deserves” is an interesting question. Teachers may convince themselves that they are entitled to their income — plus much more — because they have college degrees, because they work hard, because they perform a vital service to society. The rationale teachers give for entitlement may help them disregard the plight of hard working fellow citizens toiling as Walmart clerks, fast food workers or factory workers — the working poor — who have little claim to present day prosperity and who have little hope for any future security. But, it seems to me, the smugness of those of us who feel entitled is undeserved — even as the smugness of the second cousin to the king 500 years ago was undeserved. However we may think it to be so, our prosperity simply is not because of our merit.

The accumulation of money, throughout history, usually has been associated with power. If you are rich, you have power; but, more significantly, if you have power you have the opportunity to gain riches. Our representative democracy today certainly seems based on the power of money and seems ever more successful in delivering money to those who exercise that power.

Our own efforts and merit is not sufficient to make us rich. Ultimately, the necessary condition for our being rich rests not in what we do, but rests in the character of the system and rests in the structure of the society in which we live. A teacher in Darfur, regardless of her level of education or the quality of her work will not fare “sumptuously,” because, the country itself is poor, and is in disarray. Teachers, lawyers, doctors in the old Soviet Union had no personal prosperity, not because they lacked in education or hard work, but, because they had no personal connection to the power contained within the system. To be wealthy in the old Soviet Union, you needed either to be a member of the political elite or you needed to be specifically blessed by the political elite.

Teachers in our society have prosperity not because of their college degrees or their hard work; teachers have prosperity because of the system they helped produce, a system that limits the number of potential teachers. They have prosperity because they support a political / economic system that relies on educational credentialling; they have prosperity because they empower a strong teachers’ union experienced in influencing public opinion and public policy. Teachers in our system, in other words, unlike teachers in the old Soviet Union, are well connected to the power contained within our system. Why doctors are rich or why lawyers are rich or why hedge fund managers are rich can all be explained not in terms of their educational accomplishments or their hard work, but in terms of how they are connected to the power contained within the system.

The question is: How can a wealthy nation conduct itself so that all of its citizens enjoy prosperity? The idea that is widely promulgated is that our system is the best possible — because everyone in our system has opportunity. The idea that is advanced is that if there was a huge increase in the number of individuals with improved educational credentials, more and more people would enjoy prosperity. But that idea really does not make sense. If 100% of the work force had college degrees, low paying jobs would simply be filled by college graduates. In every bell curve, 50% of everyone will always be below average.

What comes with riches is often a sense of rightness and smugness. In 1500, a distant cousin to the king would have thought it quite right and quite deserved that he was rich. He would have felt justified because the system of the time justified him, and because his peers justified him. In the Republican debate last night, there seemed a sense of rightness and smugness coming through, the sense that this system is OK.

But the system is not OK. And, I see very little attempt to discuss in realistic terms how the present system can or should be changed so that more individuals will have the chance for prosperity. Our democratic process should bring ideas into the public arena for discussion and debate, but that simply doesn’t seem to be happening. A great question: “Why are we rich?” We need to discard simplistic answers to this question and seek to understand a profound answer to this question, because understanding the present system is a prerequisite for making wise and needed changes to the system.