On 17 Dec 2014, at 17:36, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
That depend on what you call self interest. Understood in the narrow
sense as sort term egoistic interest without a notion of common
good, a democratic regime would not last a single year. It is
evident, even a child can understand that if a Judge, or a
politician only attend his own interest, they will sell themselves
to the one that pays more for their prevarications. That absurd
despise of morality as irrelevan for politics, as if politics works
like a mechanism of rational rules enforced externally without the
need of internal self control is what is the cause of the
unbelievable corruption that we can see everywhere. specially in
Europe.
And this is precisely the interest that is favoured by the mechanics
of democracy and his aritmetical calculation of majorities by
politicians oriented toward short term, four year mandates. The
inevitable consequence is self disolving.
It is like a familly ruled by democracy. It is a question of time
that the short time interest of the kids will destroy the familly.
From time to time democracy is questioned and for very good reasons.
The only difference are the cycles of questioning of democracy. Some
countries arrive at the logical consequence of democracy: anarchy or
gobernment of the mob (as Plato called it) in less that forty
years. Other, like EEUU or UK has lasted for hundred years. Probably
by the strong sense of comunity and common good let´s say patriotism
that exist in these countries.
Concerning religion, It makes me laugh when people like you say that
separation of chuch and state is so so important when the oldest
democratic countries have nationl churches, and in most of them the
parliament can determine the precepts of these national churches.
You did not answer my question. What would be better than (modern)
democracy? OK, they failed, so they needs to be corrected, but only a
democracy can do that, in a non violent manner, but abandoning injust
laws, or creating new one.
Bruno
2014-12-17 17:11 GMT+01:00 Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>:
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.
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. 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
2014-12-16 15:44 GMT+01:00 Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>:
On 15 Dec 2014, at 19:51, LizR wrote:
What is funny - as well as sad and frightening - is the number of
people here who apparently don't believe in democracy, even in
principle. Democracy is the idea that we can elect people to do
things for everyone else (the NHS, conservation, social security,
infrastructure, regulations, police, army science etc etc). Yet all
I can see here is people saying that it doesn't work. I think the
truth is that it can be hijacked and THEN it doesn't work. The NHS
(despite everything) was one of the greatest achievements of the
20th century, after all. And it was introduced by a government
because of its beliefs and principles.
I agree completely with you. Like academies, democracies are the
worst except for anything else.
Many people criticize the system, and this *benefits* those who
pervert the system. Our democracies are sick (and partially
hijacked by corporatist interests), but this needs we must heal
them, not condemn it.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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