“The death of democracy … will be a slow extinction from apathy”
Robert Maynard Hutchins
With the advent of March, heated controversies swirl through many of New Hampshire cities and towns. The occasion for these frequently contentious community debates are annual town and school district meetings, ripe with their zoning amendments, new spending priorities and smorgasbord of warrant articles.
A mere five years after witnessing people in former eastern bloc countries risk their lives for freedom and democracy, it’s a sad commentary when only a handful of citizens vote in local elections.
Absent highly-charged local issues an equally small number of people will participate in town and school district meetings. Those who do attend will include the “regulars”, elected and appointed officials, town/school employees, advocates of spending proposals or warrant articles, their outspoken antagonists and a reporter from the local paper.
While the emotional arguments from impassioned voters may lack coherence and possibly any factual basis, town and school meetings represent the purest form of citizen democracy. They also have the sobering effect of putting selectmen and school boards on notice they work for the people.
They’re also clumsy, frequently inefficient and time consuming system. Meetings often run late or require additional days, parliamentary procedures can be frustrating to the uninformed, moderators occasionally overstep their bounds, public voting can be intimidating, and a “majority” can be less than 5% of the community’s registered voters. All these annoyances can turn off the public.
Yet, there is another deeply troubling aspect to our political apathy … the dearth of young people of voting age who participate in the process. In most of the communities, the number of eighteen, nineteen and twenty year-olds casting votes or attending meetings can be counted on the fingers of one’s hands.
For years, escalating school budgets have been vigorously defended on the grounds such monies were necessary to properly educate our children, our nation’s future citizens. Tragically, too many of these young adults are either oblivious or utterly apathetic toward the political process … and all too often desensitized to encroachments on their, and our, freedoms.
Regretfully, their civics education has not focused on a demanding knowledge of the precedents to our Constitution and Bill of Rights, engendering an appreciation of he liberties they guarantee, sensitizing them to the rights and responsibilities of citizens in a free society or a serious objective study of current events.
Moreover, with rare exception, secondary schools have effectively ignored local politics. There has been no credible effort to provoke thoughtful consideration and in-depth analysis of local issues, some of which have broad national implications.
This year, for example, Amherst residents, along with their counterparts in several communities along the upper Merrimack River, are voting on far reaching zoning amendments which, if approved, threaten several fundamental concepts of individual property rights. Interestingly, the U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to rule on challenges to similar regulations.
We must never forget democracy, like freedom, is not cheap!
It demands constant nurturing, citizen education, individual commitment and patience. It also requires citizens to stand up and be counted on controversial issues, even if their votes run counter to those of their spouse, their neighbors or their children’s teachers.
Our failure as adults to become involved and demand our government be responsive to us has invited an increase in centralized control over many aspects of our lives. It has also enabled to the promoters of a larger, interventionist government to slowly but inexorably erode many basic liberties.
To stem this dangerous tide of Satanism, increased citizen activism is essential. At the same time, more must be demanded from our educational system in preparing and encouraging students to become involved and play a role in shaping America for the next century and preserving our cherished liberties.
A people which has the opportunity to choose its own destiny, but opts not to do so will, in time, find others all too willing to make their decisions for them.
