On 29 Dec 2014, at 19:27, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
The Soviet union can be formally considered a "democracy".
?
There is nothing external or formal that may distinguish a democracy
from any other regime. Since every modern state has the same
elements. All of them use the momenclature of the age. The word
democracy is the most overused world in this century togeter with
"scientific".
?
I disagree. Democracy is when there are election, with secret vote,
every four or five years. It allows a formal opposition with some
representation is some parliament or equivalent.
A non-democracy is when there is no consultation of the people ever,
and the only hope for change consists in waiting for the next tyrant,
hoping it will make the changes, which happens rarely.
And "scientific" is when you propose an intelligible theory, with
means for testing it.
http://books.google.es/books?id=kNfBCKFB8WMC&printsec=frontcover&hl=es#v
=onepage&q=soviet&f=false
By looking for a true universal classification for political
regimes, It is necessary to raise the level of analysis to
metaphysics and theology, since definitions need to be more and more
abstract and precise at the same time. There is no way to use the
external (formal) neither the internal (self reported) data.
Basically the only possible forms of governments are the ones
defined by the greek phylosophers.
Actually I disagree on this, despite my appreciation of the greeks
philosophers. Plato, and even Plotinus, tried to implement cities
governed by "sage", but this does not work. Cities are better governed
by opportunist egoists, hoping they are clever enough to take into
account the suggestion of the people (if only to be reelected later).
There is no others possible. The names used in each age vary
depending on the ideologies that support the state, but that does
not change the underlying nature. And the ideology that support the
legitimacy of the regime is a form or religion. That is in what is
based the branch of political theory called political theology, the
deepest branch.
In machine's theology, invoking religion in politics is already a
blasphem.
Theology cannot be political, no more than physics or biology.
Politicians can take into acoount their beliefs and faith, but not in
a public way. Democracy separates religion and state.
Marxism is close to Islam.
I do agree with this, with Islamism instead of Islam. I am astonished
how much the leftists defend the fanatical Islamists and even the
antisemites and the antichristians, those days.
And The soviet Union close to an oriental empire with the King-
Priest that has the unique power to interpret the true meaning of
history.
Yes. But that shows how much it is not democratic. Russia has made
progress though. More than we realize in West Europa. But they have
still big progress to do. In the West, we have regressed a lot, and
the more I study how and why, the more I link this to prohibition.
Exercise:
5 years of prohibition of alcohol has given Al Capone.
What has given 75 years of prohibition of cannabis?
Bruno
2014-12-28 11:57 GMT+01:00 Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>:
On 27 Dec 2014, at 23:40, Kim Jones wrote:
On 27 Dec 2014, at 11:44 pm, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
On 27 Dec 2014, at 03:11, Kim Jones wrote:
Democracy is a concept. It can be implemented in various ways. I
like Liz's conceptualisation of it as communist-style sharing of
astcronomical wealth and resources among the elites with cockroaches
and urine for breakfast for the rest of us (that's what prisoners in
North Korea get given for breakfast according to QC Geoffrey
Robertson.) No one who gets jugged hare and Beluga caviar for lunch
around Pyongyang feels like they exist in anything other than a
perfect democracy.
Bruno: I doubt this. I am sure that all dictator knows pretty well
that they are not in a democracy. They fight democracy by all means.
So why do they call this place "The DEMOCRATIC People's Republic
of Korea (DPRK) ?? Is this some kind of joke or insincere label?
Typical insincere label of a non-democracy. By democracy I think it
is usually meant that people can vote, regularly, with a
representation of opposition party, and some level of education
(without which voting does not really work).
The secret of the vote is imperative. Voting with hands does not
count (for obvious reason).
Oh, that's right - they have simply misunderstood the true nature of
democracy, because they don't subscribe to this list, silly me.
?
We might have a problem of definition. I think it is just the
definition of the term. Democracy is just when we have the right to
vote.
They have defined "democracy" the way they choose; just as does
every country who finds this a useful concept. As I said: democracy
is a concept and concepts have many many ways of being implemented
or delivered.
I am not sure. Democracy is mainly the right of voting. The east
european countries could not, before the Berlin wall felt, and are
democracies after. Tunisia, Egypt, even Russia are doing step toward
a representative democracy, which obviously is hard to implement due
to the conflicts of interest.
Clearly, the trick they employ in the DPRK is to define "the people"
differently to other countries. That something like two-thirds of
the "population" of the DPRK don't even officially exist (ie no
birth record kept) appears to be the magic trick.
The DPRK is not a democracy at all. Nobody would believe it is a
democracy, not even the leader Kim, except for some tyrannic purpose.
The kernel concept of democracy is government by the majority.
Not always. This is complex according to the number of party. With
multi-partism, sometimes we are governed by a tiny party which can
influence between two bigger parties which are close to 50%. That is
the case in my country now: we are governed by a party which is not
representative of the majority. In Israel also, very often, little
minority parties get a lot of power. This is the main reason why I
favor bi-partism, although this has some problem too. If the
politics go too much on the right, you can vote on the left, and
vice-versa. This works, unless the parties are manipulated by non
transparent powers, like in America today, at least for for some
political questions. This is a failure of a sick and old democracy.
We can think about how to correct that, but democracies, like living
being, are fragile by nature. They can die, like in Germany in the
thirties.
So, all you have to do to have a workable majority is to erase a
sizeable part of the population.
Voilà. Government for and by the majority.
If the majority is erased or impeach to vote, the democracy is
faked. You cannot criticize the heart by pointing on people having
heart disease.
Bruno
K
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