Volume 25, Number 9 · June 1, 1978
Carter and the New Constitution
By Sheldon S. Wolin
One sign that our society is undergoing a transformation of its identity is the way that programs and policies produce the opposite of their original intentions. Democracy is gradually undercut by programs designed to strengthen it. Social legislation is introduced with the avowed aim of improving the health and well-being of citizens; it brings instead a system of dependence and powerlessness which enables the bureaucracy to discipline and control the poor. The same effects could not be accomplished if the rulers of our society had decided to institute dictatorial control. The same phenomenon, of democratic intentions recoiling to produce antidemocratic results, has occurred in education. It is now making itself felt in the Carter presidency: the democratic relationship between presidential power and the popular will is best suppressed by a president who describes himself as a 'populist' and who, without intending it, becomes a public caricature of plain, democratic virtues.
Feature, 3981 words
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