IN an ABS-CBN station ID, I said, “I don’t want a leader. I want a president, a president who will get the job of a president done.”
I don’t do leaders. Leaders are for followers or for people with no notion of self-worth. I have too much self-respect to follow anybody, too much pride to obey even the law. If you don’t catch me breaking the law, that is not because I obey the law. That is because what I freely choose to do just happens not to break the law.
Businessmen break or obey the law all the time—by evading or paying the right taxes. Wage earners do not obey the law. The withholding tax on fixed wages takes that choice away from them. They can’t cheat if they wanted to. This is why I wanted to abolish the withholding tax and equalize the opportunity to be honest among the rich and the poor.
The idea of leadership is abhorrent to free men. Leadership is for nobodies and there are quite a few of those in our race. But leadership is really just for tribes; you know, the guys who don’t wear trousers. Wolves attack in packs, lions in prides, but only out of convenience. No one leads the pack or the pride. Wolves and lions attack each other all the time, not for leadership, but for the biggest slice of the pie—be the pie called Dolores or Mabel. So should it be in a democracy.
There is an ignorant notion that after the election, we must accept the winner, even if we did not vote for him, even if we hate what he stands for. Nowhere in democratic theory (see Dahl, among others), at least not at Harvard (but perhaps in one of our native state universities) will you find the notion of a mandate.
If your candidate does not win, you continue the fight for the things he stood for in your eyes.
This is how it is in America, France and in all advanced countries. That is how François Mitterand became president of France after 6 elections—each time getting 10 percent more of the vote than the last time; until he woke up to discover he had totaled up a victory. His followers never deserted him after every defeat; they stuck to him and went on hating the guys who kept beating him. Indeed, the fight goes on; the dream never dies.
Victory never confers a mandate; all it does is give the job. And, as far as we are concerned, the job went to the wrong guy. So we must continue the fight. The ignorant says: Unity is essential to progress. No, isn’t. That is a baduy notion— the sort of thing that poor provincial people say when they get a bit of education. Diversity is the spark of creativity, and competition the lifeblood of the economy. Unity is for slaves so they pull in the same direction under the lash.
In a free country and a free economy, unity leads to collective catastrophe and to cartels. The one in the lead will always take us in the wrong direction—which is to say into his pocket.
So in the coming elections, vote for the one who stands for the things you want for your country. Vote for him or her whatever their chances of winning, because if you do—sure, your candidate may lose—but it will be with so big a vote that the winner will ignore your concerns only at grave risk to his political life. That is how it is in America.
The candidate who wins by the skin of his teeth—or even by a large majority but in the teeth of really deep animosity because he is perceived to be a bleeding-heart Negro liberal—that candidate veers totally to the right and the white and becomes all but a member of the Ku Klux Klan so he can govern. Or else, he will be assassinated. Democracy needs hate.
So keep up the attacks after the election. There is no such thing as a honeymoon in a democracy. In a honeymoon, someone opens her legs and always gets screwed. This is the public; and the one who opens her legs is the media. There can be no rest for the wicked as we see them, like none for the weary who lost a good fight.
1 comment
You should have more readers and more comments, Teddy. you have always been one of the most brilliant (and entertaining) of all editorialists and thinkers. I miss Max Soliven and Teddy Benigo. they were nearly as passionate as you regarding the country and the need for garbage-collection. … stay well and stay strong.