At age 72, most of my pleasures are small and getting smaller.
One of them is to sit down in a comfortable chair on Thursday afternoon and read The Graham Star.
The news stories so capably written by Robbi Pounds, the columns written by Marshall McClung and others, the sports stories and even the Ingles ad – since my wife and I are BOGO hunters – all make for an enjoyable hour or so.
This quiet time is supplanted with an occasional imported beer or glass of wine. In this case, imported means it was sold in Murphy or Bryson City and imported to Graham County.
As to the Ingles ad, it devotes a half-page to beer and wine sales. I intend to suggest that the ad be overprinted with “Banned in Graham County” to ensure that our terrific local Ingles is not accused of false advertising.
One of the guest columns in last week’s Graham Star had the amazing headline “It’s a republic, not a democracy.” That headline grabbed my attention since I already knew we were a republic. Matter of fact, we all pledge allegiance to the republic quite often.
I wanted to give the guest columnist a chance. Sometimes, headlines do not capture the essence of the article or column. After all, the headline writer has time deadlines and wants to get your attention. So I read the column twice and there it was in the body:
* “Our national government is not a democracy.”
* “Our Founders created a government of laws and not of men (that includes women today).”
* The columnist is “Glad that our Founding Fathers gave us a constitutional republic and not a democracy.” So is it reasonable to conclude that the Graham County head of the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Reagan isn’t a believer in democracy?
Let’s be fair. Democracy means that we elect our leaders by majority vote at least in Congressional, state and local elections. Once elected, these democratically-chosen people make their decisions by majority vote. We have public hearings to listen to what the voters have to say. We have courts to redress grievances with the decisions that were made by majority rule. We have appeals if the lower courts don’t rule in our favor and – by the way – judges are elected by majority rule.
Case in point is the 2011 Graham County Board of Elections v. Graham County Board of Commissioners No. COA 10-653. This case was about the Board of County Commissioners attempt to control the independent Board of Elections by withholding the salary of one of the Election Board’s employees. So much for the notion of a county board acting as an independent branch of government, like the Founders would have wanted it to act. You might want to check out who was a member of the Board of County Commissioners back then and how the Court of Appeals upheld the Founder’s notion of independence.
Let’s call this debate on republic versus democracy a draw. We are really both a republic by design and a democracy by practice.
I invite the guest columnist to sit down for a respectful discussion.
Roger Carlton is a columnist for The Graham Star.