As I sat at a small table on the patio of a café drinking hot tea, I happened to overhear a conversation between two stately gentlemen. As the conversation progressed, I found my attention focused more on what they had to say than on my own problems and tasks that occupied a majority of my thoughts. After some time, I could not help myself, but to turn and interrupt the gentlemen. What would follow is one of most disturbing prognoses for a country that claims to the Utopian ideal of democracy.
The focus of the conversation centered on the issues of provision of the essential necessities of life for the common person. The gentlemen seemed to be in disagreement as to whether basic necessities such as food, shelter, and health care are a right of every member of a democratic society or whether this ideal violates the natural order of a capitalist democratic society. My interjection that if all members of society were afforded the same privileges as the wealthy, then we no longer had a free capitalist society, but rather that socialism was now the new governmental mode of operation caused both to drop their forks in shock.
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In keeping with the rules of polite conversation, the topic was then changed abruptly to the responsibilities and duties of the leadership of the country. This too ensued to be a topic with which no agreement could be found. People at other tables got up and moved as the heated conversation grew louder and more boisterous. I held my position that corruption in the government started at the top and the current leadership no longer represented a democracy, but wanted to rule by absolute authority. The older of the two gentlemen put up a lively argument that we still had voting privileges and that we had the right to defend ourselves against such.
The younger of the two gentlemen softened and was forced to concede that the old paradigms of democracy were changing. As the three of us thanked each other for an entertaining afternoon of debate, and left our dishes for the busboy, we all had the feeling that the Utopian Democracy that we had been promised had gone amiss. As the afternoon drew on, the sunny day had turned to clouds and the cold wind had begun to stir gently. A mist began to fall. Changes were in the air and everyone could feel it.
