At 9:27 AM -0400 28/10/2000, John D. Giorgis wrote:
>I'm sorry, but Ralph Nader is an extremist nut,
Ha. Hahahahahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHA! John, you don't see the irony in those two
lines being put together?
I'm not sure if pointing it out to you might be altogether rude. :)
>and the major poitns of his
>campaign platform, according to his own website, nationalized healthcare,
>publicly financed elections, and an end to free trade have all been soundly
>rejected by the American people.
Well, I'm cynical of any claim that anything has been "soundly rejected by
the American people" since voting participation is very quite bloody poor
and has been for a long time. Shouldn't we perhaps tender "apathetically
unaddressed by the American people" as a more descriptive phrasing?
> Even worse, many of his supporters come
>from The Greens/Green Party USA, and those people are flat out lunatics,
>with almost no understanding of economics, or good governance.
Unlike say Republican party members who are flat out lunatics with a good
understanding of certain theories of ecnomics with questionable underlying
assertions (such as that economics is somehow magically disconnected from
ecology or any other form of realsitic assessment of the material world and
its inherent limitations) or good governance (like denying gays equality or
making everyone pray your prayers).
>The last
>thing I want is a system that would enfranchise all of these people on the
>fringes, from Ralph Nader to Pat Buchanan to Harry Browne.
That's right, because your politics is a politics of disenfranchisement.
Whereas a sane politics would be one in which all voices are heard, and all
issues are discussed, in a manner befitting a nation where the government
is actually of, for, and by the people. Of course, democracy -- as opposed
to an electoral presidency, which requires only minimal participation -- is
a difficult thing to maintain. It's not something we see very often now,
and there's a number of reasons why.
I don't really want to get into that stuff, because I'm still exploring
issues of civil society right now, but I will make the argument that
whatever you consider extremist (noting that I consider mainstream
political opinions extremist, and noting that as Kant -- problematic as he
is -- argued, a thousand years of any given state of affairs do not
necessarily make that given state right . . . and thus that somer political
opinion being popular fails to make it "right" or "good" or "fair" or
"non-extreme" or whatever) . . . aside from all that, I do think there are
some positions which are more dangerous than others -- such as advocating
violence, or oppressive elites such as in fascism, or what have you.
However, I think that this sort of political tendency proceeds directly
FROM the kind of disenfranchisement that I think lies at the core of the
politics that you support. Yes, I would agree that poverty, unemployment,
and other problems also lead to extremist politics like what was seen in
Germany before WWII (and more recently Eastern Europe and the ex-USSR), but
I think that political disenfranchisement -- the lack of a real venue for
political life and participation in the democracy -- leads in two
directions: 1. to apathy, which destabilizes democracy and replaces
citizenship with consumerism and bitterness, and 2. to "extremism", where
people backlash against their own disenfranchisement and the system's
complete inattentiveness to issues they think need to be addressed.
This is not to say that a simplistic version of civil society, with such
poorly educated, uncritical, partisan, and consumerist-identified masses,
would do any better -- maybe it would be worse, who knows -- but I do
think that disenfranchisement as an aim is counter to any form of real,
valid, and worthwhile democracy.
