> I wish things were actually as rational as you suggest. Al Gore > (whether you like his movie or not) has a new commentary on the > "control" side of things. Here's a link to an excerpt: > > http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1622015,00.html
Maybe Al Gore is romanticising the past a bit too much. The whole point of representative democracy was that direct democracy was not only technically impossible, but people weren't sufficiently informed to make decisions for themselves. Not unreasonable, particularly at the time with 90% of Americans subsistence farmers and analphabets. That's why their democratic input was and still is in fact reduced to selecting representatives rather than voting in frequent referenda on major issues. And I don't buy the idea that television is responsible for a recent reduction in the public's grasp of reality and reason. The evidence that there has been any such decline is awfully anecdotal and does not square with a number of trends, eg: http://politicalarithmetik.blogspot.com/2007/02/would-you-vote-for-fill-in-blank-for.html In 1960, only 40% of the public were willing to vote for a black President. There's been a pretty steady rise, and now it's over 95%. Was that percentage in 1960 due to the public being so open to reason and so well informed by the independent print media? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
