The ever quotable Winston Churchill once remarked: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else.” Possibly without consciously realizing it, Mr. Churchill was commenting on the fundamental Achilles Heel of American style democracy: the inability of American democracy to permit an aggressive, proactive, activist approach to addressing major issues of global concern. Mr. Churchill had first witnessed America’s latent entry into the First World War, three years after many tens of thousands of Englishmen died defending the Western Front in those putrid trench deathtraps. Then he saw America’s hesitance as Hitler expanded his empire into Poland in 1939, France in 1940, and the nightly bombings of London by the Luftwaffe in late 1940, only to reluctantly join the fray once it got bitch slapped by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941. A distinct pattern of reluctance by America to participate in the face of global threats was obvious to Churchill.

What Churchill failed to understand was that America’s hesitancy was by design. Unlike the great parliamentary democracies of the world, American democracy with it’s checks and balances and separation of powers, all serve to prevent hasty actions and interventions. Most of the time these checks and balances serve as guardrails to prevent the rise of demagogues and demagogic actions. American democracy is entirely a reactive system as a result, unable to appropriately address an issue in advance of it becoming a grave crisis. An emergent galvanized resolve welling up organically from the masses is an essential precondition for constructively addressing any issue. In essence, the passions of the people drive the agenda, experts be damned. By contrast, elected leaders in parliamentary democracies can heed the advice of experts in a variety of disciplines, and implement policy accordingly.

This reality is ominous and insidious, especially in light of the expectation that America should take a leadership role in addressing global issues. I am thinking here of the greatest existential threat facing the world: anthropogenic global warming (AGW). One simply cannot effectively address this issue from the reactive posture, after the crisis is unambiguous, after much of the damage is done. Yet the prospect of engendering the needed resolve among Americans to address AGW is remote. Too many issues of greater immediacy confront most Americans. This is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in action. When the fundamental needs of people are unmet or insecure, how can they be concerned with something as remote and impersonal as AGW? If one worries about paying the rent or mortgage; providing food and shelter for a family; paying off credit cards and student loans; receiving a good evaluation at one’s place of employment, how can they be concerned at all about any distant, though grave future threat? Therefore, any form of government that requires a great upwelling of concern among the electorate about an issue, will find itself paralyzed into inaction. Hence, American intransigence on AGW.

Churchill’s astute observation about American democracy will also apply to any other issue where taking bold, preemptive action could prevent the most dire consequences. Habitat loss along with AGW are the two primary causes of the incipient sixth mass extinction event that will play out around the world over the next few centuries, absent aggressive action in advance. Our capitalist economic model with it’s imperative of infinite growth, though we occupy a finite planet, must acknowledge resource constraints, particularly energy, BEFORE growth capitalism is finished. How else to deploy an alternative model in advance of apocalypse?

Regardless of the issue, if it fails to engender the requisite, vocalized passion, no substantive action by American government should be expected. As a result, the greatest challenge facing our democracy is how to make it effectively proactive. This means making it more like the parliamentary democracies of Europe and Asia in this one respect. This challenge will be daunting because the American system is entrenched, and entrenched systems have mammoth inertia. Can I propose a solution? Not really. Perhaps the centralizing tendency of America’s federal government to amass greater and greater power could be reversed. If greater power could be restored to local governments, this might be a start. Great minds should make haste and resolve this American political dilemma. Churchill’s lament should not remain a permanent feature of the American political landscape.