On 17 Dec 2014, at 21:07, meekerdb wrote:
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 it contradicts the constitution and the human rights. It
contradicts the base of the modern democracies.
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.
I agree, that is what I called "modern democracy". But today,
financial special interest erode them a lot.
Bruno
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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