> Ed,
>
> Yes, a good article ("There's no going back" by Thomas Homer-Dixon, Globe
&
> Mail, 11 September) and worth reading.
>
> There's an important sentence in his penultimate paragraph which is at the
> root of modern developed society. However, he fluffs answering his own
> question in the last paragraph.
>
> The important sentence referred to:
> <<<<
> How can societies make responsible and democratic decisions about climate
> change, for example, when nearly half their citizens -- as a recent
> National Science Foundation poll found in the United States -- are so
> ignorant of basic science that they don't know it takes a year for Earth
to
> go round the sun?
> >>>>
>
> It isn't just basic science, it's also basic economics -- in fact, it's
> also basic all sorts of things such as history, geography, and goodness
> knows what else. The average modern citizen is bewildered by most of the
> policies that parties list on their manifestos.
>
> The complexity of modern life has two main effects:
>
> (a) the vote will continue declining;
>
> (b) most developed countries (whether those with proportional
> representation systems or first-past-the-post) will continue to drift
> towards a two-party system with similar middle-of-the-road policies
because
> neither can afford to go out on a limb.
>
> I suggest that we're drifting steadily away from anything that can be
> called "democracy" and towards special-interest representation (involving
> maybe 20% of the population at the very most).
>
> KeithWhat appears to be happening in Canada is politics increasingly based on regional interests. Ideology or principles really don't seem to matter very much anymore. The dominant Liberal Party has moved leftward and rightward and stolen much of the thunder of both the socialists and the conservatives. However, the west and the east are very suspicious of central Canada and Quebec remains deeply suspicious of everybody. Ed
