Individual and Collective Responsibility

"I am a gay American..." These were the words of New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey as he admitted to an extra-marital affair that exposed his government to scandal. With those words, he contextualized his individual sins within America's over-arching sin of homophobia. Many have blamed the governor for trying to use the typical liberal excuse, blaming society for one's own mistakes. In our culture there has been a moral argument between those who tend to blame society for the wrongdoings of individuals and those who tend to blame individuals for their own sins without taking into account the ills of society that promote the need to commit the sins in the first place. However, there is a third perspective: perhaps Governor McGreevey is guilty of what he has done, and society is guilty for what it has done.

Few people, whatever their stance on this argument, deny the concept of individual responsibility. However, few on the side promoting the primacy of individual responsibility acknowledge that indeed there is a valid concept of collective responsibility. Society does commit sins. Society does have responsbility for what it does wrong.

Governor McGreevey certainly has responsibility for his own actions. But America has responsibility for fostering a society in which he has felt necessary to hide his nature from everyone close to him, from his colleagues, and from his constituents.
To use another example, if a society fosters an environment where there is widespread hunger, the individual still has the responsibility to refrain from stealing food, and must suffer the consequences if they do not adhere to that restriction. However, the sympathy that should be shown to the person who steals food in that context is much greater than that which should be shown to an individual who steals food out of laziness in a world of plenty.

Both McGreevey and society at large are both responsible for their own specific wrongs in this situation and both should be held accountable.

Electoral Reform for Stronger Democracy

The debacle in Florida in the Fall of 2000 seems to have disappeared from the radar screens of most Democrats. After that shameful episode, most Democrats were talking about abolishing the Electoral College since, by all reckonings, Vice-President Gore had garnered the majority of the votes cast while losing the Electoral College vote. On another front, it seems that the recent re-districting efforts in most U.S. states have resulted in Federal Congressional districts that are more gerrymandered than ever before, with very few Congressional races being at all competitive.

Bearing this in mind, I think that it is time for a Constitutional amendment that accomplishes two electoral reforms: the abolition of the electoral college and the replacement of single-member districts with all candidates running on a statewide slate similar to Senators.

With the abolition of the Electoral College, the President and Vice-President would simply be whoever received the majority of votes for each office. If no one received a majority, instead of the current system where the choice would go to the House of Representatives, there would be a runoff election including only the top two vote recipients.

For the election of candidates to the U.S. House of Representatives, all candidates would be voted on state-wide, with the top vote recipients being elected to Congress. For example, if a state had eight seats in the House of Representatives, the top eight vote recipients would become the eight members of Congress from that state. Additionally, each voter would get eight votes to cast, which they could put on a single candidate, on eight different candidates, or in any distribution the voter wanted.

I believe that both of these reforms will provide for a stronger expression of democracy in our nation.