Big Think Interview with Mike Gravel | Big Think

Big Think Interview with Mike Gravel

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A conversation with the former Alaskan senator.

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Mike Gravel:

Mike Gravel is a former Democratic United States Senator from Alaska, who served two terms from 1969 to 1981, and a former candidate in the 2008 presidential election. He is chiefly known for his efforts in ending the draft following the Vietnam War and for putting the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971.

Born in 1930 to immigrant parents in Massachusetts, Gravel enlisted in the Army in 1951 and served in West Germany. A self-stated dyslexic, Gravel was educated at Columbia University%u2019s School of General Studies in New York, where he drove a taxi to support himself. Gravel's first steps into politics were in the Alaska House of Representatives, before he won his party's nomination to the U.S. Senate in 1968. During the 1980s, after Gravel lost his senate seat, he worked as a real estate developer, consultant and stockbroker.

Gravel is a strong supporter of direct democracy, and specifically, the National Initiative, which refers to proposals to allow for ballot initiatives at the federal level.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: What sets the American political system apart from that of other countries?

Mike Gravel:U.S. politics is no different than the politics of any other Representative Government in the world. You have to appreciate that all of what we call democracies in the world are all representative governments. They’re not democracies in the true sense of the world. There is only one that approximates what we call democracy, and that’s of course Switzerland, where they have a partnership between their people, who have the power to make laws, and their elected officials. That’s the only one.

Now, we have other areas of the world where people not at the national level, but at a state and local level, where the people can make laws by initiative, but with very imperfect procedures: in 24 states in the United States, in Germany, in Uruguay, and various other areas. This is a normal confusion about lawmaking. You hear it very often, initiative and referendum. Now bear in mind that any legislative body can refer a legislative decision to the people, and that’s called a referendum, or, in Europe, it’s very much plebiscite. However, the people, when something is referred to them, all they could do is vote yes or no. They don’t make the decision on the content of what is being referred to them. It’s a little bit like a school bond issue—all you can do is vote for yes or no.

With respect to an initiative, the people can initiate the content of the legislative proposal and thereby present it to the balance of the constituency for an affirmative or a negative vote. So it’s a very important distinction to make between the initiative process and the referendum process, but it’s very much of a confusion.

People always think in terms of referendum, when really what they are probably meaning to say is initiative process, and that confusion is perpetuated by, of course, the people in the government, because they want to keep people ignorant about the potential power of the initiative process.

People realize that, if they had the initiative process, they’ve got real serious power, because they could initiate legislation—which is a far cry from just waiting for the powers to be to place before the people a yes or no vote on legislation—which is rarely done. In fact, in the United States, we have never been offered the opportunity to vote on a constitutional change, and we’ve had 27 amendments to our constitution—not once have the people voted on a change in our constitution.

Question: How can citizens push for change within the confines of America’s political system?

Mike Gravel: All I can do is just throw my hands up in the air and say, “There is an answer, but it’s not going to come about, because the powers that be in this country won’t let the American people, and the American people had been dragged into accepting the authority of the elite.”

The answer lies with the people. The people are smarter than their leaders, and the people don’t even know this, most of the people don’t accept this. But then, when you go to a place like South Korea—that’s the reason I’m over there—and their constitution, and I’ll tell you this is as a patriotic American, is very much better than ours.

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