“…Any defenders of 'democracy' here?...” – archytas
As always, Neil comes up with the big and core issues. And, appropriating his style of using snippets from elsewhere, I will respond. “. . . Let me begin by counter-posing two different conceptions of democracy. One conception of democracy has it that a democratic society is one in which the public has the means to participate in some meaningful way in the management of their own affairs and the means of information are open and free. . . . An alternative conception of democracy is that the public must be barred from managing of their own affairs and the means of information must be kept narrowly and rigidly controlled. That may sound like an odd conception of democracy, but it’s important to understand that it is the prevailing conception. . . .” [1] “…“No working man or ordinary farmer or shopkeeper,” Wolin points out, “helped to write the Constitution.” He argues, “The American political system was not born a democracy, but born with a bias against democracy. It was constructed by those who were either skeptical about democracy or hostile to it. Democratic advance proved to be slow, uphill, forever incomplete. The republic existed for three-quarters of a century before formal slavery was ended; another hundred years before black Americans were assured of their voting rights. Only in the twentieth century were women guaranteed the vote and trade unions the right to bargain collectively. In none of these instances has victory been complete: women still lack full equality, racism persists, and the destruction of the remnants of trade unions remains a goal of corporate strategies. Far from being innate, democracy in America has gone against the grain, against the very forms by which the political and economic power of the country has been and continues to be ordered.” Wolin can easily control his enthusiasm for James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution, and he sees the New Deal as perhaps the only period of American history in which rule by a true demos prevailed…” [2] “It has been thought,” he wrote in The Rights of Man in 1791, “…that government is a compact between those who govern and those who are governed; but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist, and consequently there could originally exist no governors to form such a compact with. The fact therefore must be, that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.” [3] “…I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom…” [4] “…By awarding to corporations the rights of citizens when it comes to electioneering, the Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission goes against the intent and understanding of founders like Chief Justice John Marshall, who referred to the corporation as an "artificial being, invisible, intangible"; and Thomas Jefferson, who warned almost two centuries ago that America must "crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." Dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke as a strict constructionist when she declared during oral hearings on the case that "a corporation, after all, is not endowed by its creator with inalienable rights." Unfortunately, the majority dismissed Ginsburg's wise counsel and issued what Senator Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat who chairs the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, correctly characterized as a "lawless" decision. President Obama was right on point when he said, "I can't think of anything more devastating to the public interest. The last thing we need to do is hand more influence to the lobbyists in Washington, or more power to the special interests to tip the outcome of elections." The High Court's rejection of the ban on direct political spending by businesses, industry associations and their surrogates, and of limits on the amount of money they may spend on campaigning, sets up a dystopia in which our elections--including this year's critical Congressional and state contests--could become little more than Super Bowl games, with corporations spending whatever it takes to sell their products, er, candidates.…” [5] “…On December 20th, 1787, Jefferson wrote to James Madison about his concerns regarding the Constitution. He said, bluntly, that it was deficient in several areas. “I will now tell you what I do not like,” he wrote. “First, the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the aid of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land, and not by the laws of nations.”… But on the issues of banning a standing army and blocking corporations from gaining monopolistic control over industries, Jefferson was getting resistance. The nation had just fought a bloody war against England, and there was little sentiment for completely dismantling the army. And the Federalists who were in power - a party largely made up of what Jefferson called “the rich and the well born” - were opposed to government constraints on business activities. Thus only ten of his twelve visions for a Bill of Rights - all except “freedom from monopolies in commerce” and his concern about a permanent army - were incorporated into the actual Bill of Rights, which James Madison shepherded through Congress and was ratified as the first ten amendments to the constitution on December 15, 1791…” [6] “…The corporate form is, after all, just a legal structure to facilitate the conversion of products or services into cash for stockholders. As Buckminster Fuller wrote in his brilliant essay The Grunch of Giants, “Corporations are neither physical nor metaphysical phenomena. They are socioeconomic ploys-legally enacted game-playing- agreed upon only between overwhelmingly powerful socioeconomic individuals and by them imposed upon human society and its all unwitting members.”…” [7] “…The Supreme Court ruled on an obscure taxation issue in the Santa Clara County vs. The Union Pacific Railroad case, but the Recorder of the court - a man named J. C. Bancroft Davis, himself formerly the president of a small railroad - wrote into his personal commentary of the case (known as a headnote) that the Chief Justice had said that all the Justices agreed that corporations are persons. And in so doing, he - not the Supreme Court, but its clerical recorder - inserted a statement that would change history and give corporations enormous powers that were not granted by Congress, not granted by the voters, and not even granted by the Supreme Court. Davis’s headnote, which had no legal standing, was taken as precedent by generations of jurists (including the Supreme Court) who followed and apparently read the headnote but not the decision. What is especially ironic about this is that Davis knew the Court had not ruled on this issue. We found a handwritten note in the J.C. Bancroft Davis collection in the Library of Congress, from Chief Justice Waite to reporter Davis, explicitly saying, “we did not meet the constitutional issues in the case.” (In other words, the Court had decided the case on lesser grounds, which it always prefers to do when possible.)…” [8] [1] Noam Chomsky - https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/noam-chomsky-two-kinds-of-democracy-1991-media-control-transcript/ [2] http://fanonite.org/2008/05/25/democracy-inc/ [3] Thomas Paine - http://www.thomhartmann.com/articles/2001/12/restore-democracy-first-abolish-corporate-personhood [4] Noam Chomsky - http://struggle.ws/rbr/noamrbr2.html [5] http://www.thenation.com/article/democracy-inc [6] http://www.thomhartmann.com/articles/2001/12/restore-democracy-first-abolish-corporate-personhood [7] ibid [8] ibid On Jul 2, 8:34 pm, archytas <[email protected]> wrote: > Modern science has been regarded as both a model of democratic self- > governance and an activity requiring and facilitating democratic > practices in its supporting social context (Popper 1950, Bronowski > 1956). The only non-arbitrary way to defend judgments concerning > research agendas in the absence of absolute standards is through > democratic means of establishing collective preferences. Kitcher > (1993: 2001), thus, attempts to spell out procedures by which > decisions concerning what research directions to pursue can be made in > a democratic manner. The result, which he calls well-ordered science, > is a system in which the decisions actually made track the decisions > that would be a made by a suitably constituted representative body > collectively deliberating with the assistance of relevant information > (concerning, e.g., cost and feasibility) supplied by experts. > > I have never seen science as anything to do with democracy - democracy > is a form of government I despise and which I see as totally corrupt. > Democracy is based on presentation ahead of content and gives votes to > ignorance (originally race) and the means to glean votes to points of > control based on money. Any defenders of 'democracy' here? Other > than it just being better than worse forms of authoritarian control? > > Bronowski, Jacob. 1956. Science and Human Values. New York: Harper and > Bros. > Kitcher, Phillip. 1993. The Advancement of Science: Science Without > Legend, Objectivity Without Illusions.Oxford: Oxford University Press. > –––. 2001. Science, Truth, and Democracy. New York, NY: Oxford > University Press. > Popper, Karl. 1950. The Open Society and its enemies. Princeton, NJ: > Princeton University Press.
