Note: This article was originally published in the Spirit of Jefferson on July 30, 2020. It’s a promotional piece for the 2002 Congressional campaign of Democrat Kathy Kunkel.
The birth of formal democracy in Ancient Greece is associated with the phrase “not for the few, but for the many.” In fact, this phrase is often thought to be essential to the definition of democracy itself. The person who first coined this phrase, the ancient Greek general and political leader Pericles, argued that the rich elites of his home state, Athens, made up the “few,” while the “many” made up the rest of the citizenry. Pericles actually lived the phrase and put into play legislative programs that led to the so-called Golden Age of Greek culture and prosperity.
It’s not entirely coincidental that Cathy Kunkel, who is running for Congress in West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, has adapted the original wording of the phrase to put the emphasis on the “many.” “For the many, not the few” is her slogan for the campaign. She is grounded enough in our state’s history to know that our citizens have been largely used by a few outside economic interests with no deep commitment to the many people of our state. It’s also true that our politicians have largely abetted this historical pattern, in the interest of creating jobs. What’s significant, though, is that those jobs come and then invariably go away. Because they are attached to the extraction of our resources, once the resources peter out, so do the jobs. When the jobs go, what’s left behind is a mess of damaged environment and unsustainable, impoverished, unhealthy communities.
Kunkel’s slogan is a declaration of her resolve to change this cycle of grab-and-go, not by taking a whip to industry, but by instilling in corporations a sense of belonging to their communities and making them exercise the kind of corporate responsibility that comes with belonging. Achieving that goal will best come from efforts to grow business within our communities by individuals who are already members of those communities and who are committed to keeping them vital. This long term goal works, though, only when education, health care, broadband internet service, and transportation improvements pave the way for it. She knows this.
The Greek Golden Age took a major hit after several plague years wiped out some 25% of the local population. The disease itself was democratic in its sweep and did not spare any one class, though those in poorer circumstances likely experienced the brunt of the epidemic. The local historian who wrote about the plague years, someone who survived it himself, mentions that the plague put democratic institutions under stress, although they did largely survive.
It’s interesting, even though coincidental, that we’re in the middle of a pandemic of our own made worse by the positions of the “few” at the top of our government that dismissed and minimized the threat. Disease on the scale of the COVID pandemic is an event that changes people’s perceptions about what’s helpful and what’s hurtful and can be useful in framing our political deliberations. Cathy Kunkel understands that her opponent in the race has simply followed his misconceived president [that would be Trump] down a path that’s led to thousands upon thousands of avoidable deaths and hospitalizations. She understands that we increase our risk of sickness when health care for so many West Virginians is an unaffordable luxury. She knows what needs to be done to make the system work for the many. We owe it to ourselves to let her get to work.