Engines of Political Egoism
Prof. Paul Eidelberg
"Democracy consists as often as not in the free use of the people’s
name against the vast majority of the people." —Walter Bagehot
"He can never be more than a second-rate statesman into whose conduct
of affairs philosophy and imagination do not in some degree enter.
Without imagination, indeed, there can be no just and comprehensive
philosophy; and without this there can be no true wisdom in dealing
with practical affairs of a wide and complex nature." —Henry Taylor
According to a Smith Research poll taken by the Jerusalem Post and the
economic newspaper Globes, a new socioeconomic party led by the
current leaders of the housing protest could win as many as 20 seats
if elections were held now. The Likud, Kadima, Labor, and Meretz
parties would lose seats.
This is not a surprising development. Back in the "revolutionary" May
1977 election, which terminated the Labor Party’s uninterrupted
29-year control of the government, Dash, a new social reform party led
by retired general Yigael Yadin, won 15 Knesset seats and thus became
the third largest party in that assembly.
As the present writer has pointed out ad nauseum, Israel’s system of
Proportional Representation with a low electoral threshold spawns new
parties, usually focused on a single issue. Such parties are also
encouraged by the large floating vote in this country. This is one of
the democratic aspects of Israel which is by no means conducive to a
sound democracy, since it fragments the nation and leads to inept and
unstable multi-party cabinet governments.
Israeli governments have never been led by a party that won anything
close to a majority of the votes in an election. The Likud Party,
which now heads the government, won only 21.6 percent of the votes
cast in the February 2009 election. Hence, Likud leader Netanyahu
cannot honestly say his party represents the nation—or should I say
the "people? Before continuing, the terms "nation" and "people" need
to be clarified.
As various Jewish commentators have noted, whereas a people (ahm)
signifies a collectivity united by a religious heritage, a nation a
(goy) signifies a collectivity united only on the basis of a common
territory or homeland.
Now, it so happens that the goal of the secular Zionists who founded
the modern state of Israel was to make the Jews "normal," which in
effect required their metamorphosis into non-Jews—Jews no longer
united, primarily, by their God-given laws, the Torah. (Think of
Barack Obama’s efforts to de-Americanize the United States, which
means to jettison its Declaration of Independence and Constitution,
both based on the "Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.)
Moreover, without fully understanding the significance of election
rules and their long-term consequences, the founding Zionists of
Israel made the entire country a single electoral district in which
parties would compete for seats in the Knesset on the basis of
Proportional Representation and a one percent electoral threshold.
I know some or many of you may be tired of my harping on this
issue—now for three decades. But you need to know that the entire
political system created by the founders was not the product of
far-seeing wisdom, to put it kindly. But heaven forbid that Israel
should change its decrepit system of governance! To do so would
desecrate the holy of holies—Democracy!
Across Israel’s entire political spectrum there is not a single MK who
does not know that his political career and especially his opportunity
to become a power-wielding cabinet minister depend on maintaining the
institutional status quo despite its demonstrable tendency to
emasculate the country vis-à-vis its enemies, as I have elsewhere
documented.
So, although there are no institutional substitutes for virtue,
Israel’s existing institutions are engines of that universal vice
called political egoism. Polls indicate that 80 to 90 percent of the
public knows this. Hence I have repeatedly urged empowerment of the
people by direct personal election of MKs.
One last word from the Alter of Kelm: "Ask not if a thing is possible;
ask only if it is necessary."
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