Comment below: **
--- In [email protected], "jim_flanegin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > **snip** > What happened to striving for ideals? Again I call this criticism of > the Indian caste system racist. Why? Because those who criticize it > are doing so because it is Indian. If not, they would find greater > fault with our US democracy, a system that allows the most > incompetent, mean spirited dick-heads to run the most powerful > country in the world. You see no problem with that? No, let's knock > the caste system instead, something we barely understand, have never > lived within, and are judging based on its worst excesses. **end** The U.S. democratic republic only truly functions as a democracy at the level of local elections and becomes less and less a democracy as the scope of the elective office expands. As far as presidential contests are concerned there is a strong tendency to "elect" (or at least, promote) legacy candidates. The Adams, the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, the Clintons, and the Bushes all represent an expression of the public's trust in the value of a ruling class. That seems to be a natural inclination in people -- to invest in the perceived (or believed) "dharma" of a family, essentially a caste designation. And there may be some value to it, too, I don't know and couldn't say. Certainly you see it in India with the Gandhis and virtually every dictator or despot in whatever society or culture appoints, or attempts to, a son or family member as his successor. Maharishi has apparently done so with Girish and by extension the rest of the Srivastava clan even though Tony Nader and John Hagelin and the other non-Indians have some honorary status.
