On 12/17/2014 8:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 17 Dec 2014, at 13:03, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
Starting from the fact that The NHS was introduced by Bismark in the German Empire. for
the same reasons that it is sustained today by "democracies": populism.
Since the introduction of NHS in England no new hospital was constructed until
recently.
Democracy, an element of the liberal state, lives on premises that it can not itself
guarantee. (Bockenforde). It is based on the idea that people will not act or vote for
their inmediate interests but will vote for anything that maintain the common good
forever. That is absolutely false. The only thing that maintain democracy is not
democracy, but the morality of the people. That morality is contunuously underminded by
democracy itself by means of the logic of populism and the formation of majorities that
produce false and impossible and incompatible political promises for different groups
of people. That divides and confront ones with others.
It is based on the idea that a million idiot votes within an urn produces wise
decissions. On the idea that consensus produce truth.
Democracy is destined to be hyaked by false democrats that do not believe in democracy
but want to abuse it from inside . They are the worst antidemocrats. And the
responsibles of that hyaking are te dumb people that believe acritically in democracy.
I disagree. Democracy is based on the fact that people will vote for their immediate
interest, and that it will be implemented reasonably well by opportunist politicians,
and if they don't succeed people will stop voting against them. (so it is not just vote,
but a promise that you can vote again if dissatisfied).
Democracy is not perfect, and indeed it can regress easily to tyranny. Like a living
being can die, or a cell become cancerous, democracy can easily be perverted and misused
by bandits or ideologues. There is nothing we can do about that, except investing in
means (like education, logic, reasoning, ...) helping people to not fall in the trap of
the demagogs.
It is not the system which makes bad people. It is bad people which makes the
system bad.
How americans have ever accepted prohibition remains a bit of a mystery to me. In this
context, I am not so much for legalization of drugs than for penalization of
prohibitionists, and education explaining how prohibition illustrates well a technic to
kill democracy and its most important key features like the separation and independence
of the different powers, including the press.
They accepted it out of Puritan theology: that this life is just a test and indulgence in
any pleasure is suspect and possibly a sin. It's the same strain of thought that wants to
ban any recreational drugs, pornography, prostitution, homosexuality,...
But the institutionalization of religion, especially when the state and the religion are
not well separated is a deeper cause of the problem for democracies. It is that
mentality which has made possible prohibition: the very idea that other people can
decide for you between the good and the wrong.
But people who live in a community do need to decide on some rules of behavior in order to
live without conflict. The important thing is distinguish between a sphere of personal
morals and a sphere of public ethics. This is the thing missing in Islam (and was missing
in the West before the Enlightenment). The great advancement of the U.S. was not
democracy, the Greeks and Scandanavians had invented democracy long before; it was the
invention of constitutionally limited government and inalienable human rights.
Brent
That would not have happened if the spiritual domain remained what is really: an
investigation domain like any others, calling for experiments, experiences and dialog,
and no normative rules ever. Those are object of laws, voted by the people or
representative delegates of the people.
What would you suggest in place of democracy? If a democracy can be hijacked, don't you
think that anything else couldn't even more easily be hijacked?
Bruno
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