Show me these monarchies that have left people to live their lives in happiness and freedom? Monarchies finance themselves and their opulent courts through taxation of the labor of the commoners, without their consent.
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Alberto G. Corona Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2014 9:01 AM To: everything-list Subject: Re: Democracy A democracy that legislate oppressive laws based on an ideology that is against economical, social or anthropological reality is an oppressive regime, no matter if it includes "democratic" in his name, while a monarchy that leave people to live their life is a regime of freedom. Democracy is a word and is also a myth, a method or a idea, but is nothing from which one can derive freedom or lack of it. Most of the time is a overused term, a magical term that is used to hide the real causes of the wealt of many countries. 2014-12-18 13:29 GMT+01:00 Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>: 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/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected] <mailto:everything-list%[email protected]> . To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
