Questioning Authority;
Promoting Process
By Hank Edson
The old bumper sticker, “Question Authority!” was good advice we seem to have abandoned about the time George Orwellian Bush took his oath of office. Or perhaps, we let go of it before that, say, when we accepted the Supreme Court’s authority to dispense with the need to count votes in Florida in 2000.
In truth, this bumper sticker was worn away bit by bit over the last three decades by a Republican Party hard at work furthering goals that were ultimately authoritarian: Big Business’s economic monopolism, the Religious Right’s infallible religious orthodoxy, and the Neo-Conservative’s military unilateralism.
Little by little, our reminder to question these things got stripped from the car we were following, and for some reason it’s message didn’t stick where it mattered most: our consciousness.
It didn’t stick because, as good as its advice is, “Question Authority” is only halfway down the road to wisdom.
What after all is the result of questioning authority? When we have questioned and exposed authority as the fraud it is, what happens then? Does a new authority rise up to take its place? Do we renounce the very idea of authority? Do we embrace anarchy?
The question authority slogan unburdened us of negative oppression, but it did not provide the real liberty that comes from positive wisdom. It told us how not to follow, but did not tell us how to proceed.
If we are to arrive at an understanding of what should replace the authority we have taken down from its throne—if we are to avoid simply replacing it with another authority, angry anarchy, wounded atheism, or dead apathy—then we must find authority’s opposite, not its negative. We need a positive idea that is the opposite of authority. This positive opposite idea is “process.”
If the imposition of authority over the people makes government illegitimate, it is process that legitimizes government. In fact, like all opposites, like yin and yang, authority and process are negative and opposite poles inseparable from each other. We can only legitimately “question authority” (which means, essentially, to attack it), if we employ a valid process that ensures our questioning is consistent, principled, and pursued with logical and moral integrity. From such process then arises legitimate authority, so long as it remains true and open to process. Thus the bumper sticker should really read: “Question Authority; Promote Process!”
When placed together this way, “questioning authority” and “promoting process” turn out to be not just good advice, but the two sides of the same coin—a gold coin we call Democracy. The Sons of Liberty, the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, the colonists who won the American Revolution did not just question authority, they invented a process to replace it. They slapped the full bumper sticker, “Question Authority; Promote Process” over the door of the public meeting hall and the people understood what would be found therein, and what would not be. False authority was out; valid process was in.
This new coin—Heads, promote process; Tails, question authority—is the only currency we should accept in America, which for the last six years has been circulating a forgery—Heads, expand the “unitary executive”; Tails, undermine the people’s rights.
Illegitimate “Authority” is why right wing conservatives are arrogant, belligerent, and ignorant—it comes concentrated among a wealthy, white, male population that disdains and thus does not know the work, genius, and beauty involved in advancing humanity. These emperors have no clothes at all, and yet they laugh at the great American populace clothed in our proud humanity.
By contrast, “Process” is why left wing liberals who question authority are rigorous, responsible, and active proponents of not just common sense, but also uncommon wisdom. Process imposes challenges, standards, rules, and procedures that follow a universal and thus equitable logic. All human beings are created equal. All human beings shall be allowed to participate in the process of governance and the development of ever more sophisticated, ever more accurate worldviews. The process that invites us all in is what keeps the false authorities out, but more importantly, it is also what raises the quality of our humanity.
But here we are, having abandoned good advice, with a forged authority sitting in the Oval Office despite the fact that we have a process for ensuring a worthy and legitimate person holds that office and a process for removing an incompetent and corrupt person from that office if they ever get in—as is currently the case. I am, of course talking about election and impeachment.
Sadly, in 2000 and 2004, the American people left the task of standing up for “process” to the one person that the process would have placed in the presidency. Thus, any arguments Al Gore or John Kerry might have raised could not have helped appearing self-serving. In defending the integrity of the political process, these men would have appeared the opposite—to be more concerned with obtaining the power and authority that come with the presidency than in defending the integrity of the process. And this is, of course, how the Bush-Cheney team portrayed them.
Because we left up to the candidate actually chosen to be president a task that we the people should have performed for ourselves, the attempt to effectively question authority and to promote process was a failure. As a result, we got a puppet president operating as a front for the authoritarian interests of Big Business, the Religious Right, and the Neo-Conservative intelligentsia.
Today, as the number and scope of the outrages committed by the Bush presidency have finally begun to raise the people from our apathetic and disillusioned state, sadly, we our repeating the mistake we made in 2000—leaving the task of standing up for “process” to the one person that the process would place in the presidency. This time, however, I’m not talking about an election, but an impeachment.
If Bush and Cheney are impeached, as clearly they deserve to be based on the mountain of documented abuses committed under their direction, it is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who would be next in line for the President’s seat in the Oval Office. Of course, Pelosi has taken “impeachment” off the table! How can she insist on the integrity of the political process when she has such a blatant conflict of interest?
Because we have left the job of demanding impeachment to our newly elected House of Representatives, led by Pelosi, we are still stuck with a puppet president who is every day placing our democracy in ever greater peril.
It’s time to print some new bumper stickers: “Question Authority; Promote Process.” It’s time we, the people, promote Democratic “process” by demanding en masse that the House of Representatives impeach Bush and Cheney. Then we may question them and evaluate for ourselves, according to process, whether or not they should be convicted and cast from their positions of power.
Impeachment and election are the people’s two controls over executive branch abuse. One doesn’t work well without the other. It is not about the time left in the president’s term or about the chances of conviction; it is about questioning authority and promoting process.
It is about getting the gold coin of democracy back in circulation. Send this coin, instead of a campaign contribution, to your elected representative. Tell them responsibility for impeachment should not be left to Nancy Pelosi. Tell your congressman to represent you by calling for impeachment on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Copyright (c) 2007 by Hank Edson