i’m actually rather amazed at the backward, reactionary political views that people will still entertain. wasn’t all this settled hundreds of years ago after, as the declartion of independence put it, “a long train of abuses and usurpations”? aristocracy? monarchy? noble priest-kings? jeebus krist! what do you think this is, a tolkien novel? what a bunch of vain, superstitious garbage. enjoy your slavery, slaves. your slavemasters will appreciate your hope and faith in them.

yes, this is basically a Tolkien novel. more so than it is what the history books say….

2 of the last three presidents are bushes and you think this ISNT a monarchy, lololol

the Declaration of Independence also mentions the Indian “savages”, who by the way, had real democracy in the Americas for a long long time before any white men got here….. in fact, many of the Native Americans concepts of government were stolen along with their land… so that document is basically invalid from the get go…

another blatent misconception is that we actually even have a democracy (or are supposed to). what we have is called a constitutional republic…. far far different than democracy.. although it does involve a democratic process, Communism is more of a democracy than what we have….

the most absurd concept is that what we have is the best and cant be better… its definitely time for something new.

one
human?

really, tho’, ‘democracy’ isn’t a method of governance, it’s a decision making process. and sometimes it fails to recognize that the minority can be right! s’why i’m so frightened of a direct democracy in this country. people! do you really want a direct democracy in a country where more people vote on the latest American Idol than in the presidential election? i am not a proponent of direct democracy for that reason . . . .

i have some more thots on it in this old post:

http://www.snant.com/fp/2004_06_27_archive.html#108870856653839944

If this were a true “Democracy,” every registered voter would have to read the entire Congressional Record for each day that Congress is in session. Granted, the information is out there, but who has time to read about one hundred pages of legalese every single day? And for that, one would need a plethora of referential info as well; every participant would have to read the Congressional Record for his/her city, state and country, and react on it, with something approaching the abilities of the congresspeople who legislate.

That’s why I don’t think politics is a very useful endeavor. Real change starts in the culture, especially in the spiritual/psychological realm.

Personally, I think Chomsky’s libetarian socialism makes the most sense as the future direction of human governance. Indeed, ask most people and that is the form of government they support. However, the current level of human development does not yet support the overthrow of the democratic capitalist regime.

Any revolution begins in the hearts and minds of the people - not in their immediate political choices.

with a simple dissection, analysis and a quick taste, they could accurately predict what size tribes that species of creature formed.

Most monkeys operate in troupes of 50 or so. But somebody slipped them a slightly larger monkey brain — but a monkey brain nonetheless — and they estimated the ideal group or society for this particular animal was about 150.

That brain, of course, was human. Probably from a homeless man they snatched off the streets.

I’m not quite sure how they can estimate on size of brain, to come up with a number that is likely to work out. Then again, I’m no scientist. I’ve been reading up on some anthropology and archaeology for a short while, and the numbers consistently run across for community size are around 25-50 (almost worldwide), going beyond this they are likely to split up into seperate tribes, and if getting much larger, will divide.

I will say that, if it were possible, I would (I feel) prefer the primitive lifestyle and community over the one which I now reside in. Knowing 25-50 people quite intimately, as opposed to dozens not as well, I’ll take the former. It may be a part of my lifestyle and upbringing that makes it so, but I don’t think I’m the only one who has difficulty with deeper connections between myself and others. Not to say I’d have a problem with 150 peoples, but I haven’t seen anthropological data supporting that size, so I wonder about it (and the reasoning behind the number).

This article about the “monkeysphere” I think raises a lot of questions that could be applied to the concepts of government and human interaction. It suggests that the optimal size of community groups based on characteristics of the brain is around 150.

give me good old fashioned anarchism any day . . . .

Yeah, but at the same time, I’d like to see this work on as grand a scale as Our Capitalist Democracy(tm) does.
Chomsky seems to have anarchism as his ideal form of government, and he’s somebody who knows politics and political history decently well.

give me good old fashioned anarchism any day . . . .

Kinda makes you wonder if this wasn’t just a big set-up… make our government so corrupt and so ineffectual and so out of touch with the people that we welcome a purge

well it does worry me that from a wholly justified critique of the problems of what’s become of representative (and direct) democracy, people are so easily willing to leap to a total rejection the very concept of democracy, straight into the arms of older, (imo) inherently corrupting systems. but yeah, i do understand the question as: where do we go from here?

airing our frustration

yeah, me too…

enjoy your slavery, slaves. your slavemasters will appreciate your hope and faith in them.

Well I don’t think anybody’s advocating slavery or aristocracy. I think what we’re saying is that we’re collectively pretty frustrated. What started out as a solid idea of government has been twisted and distorted into a point where everyone feels powerless in the face of some kind of evil onslaught. I think all we’re doing is airing our frustration and in that looking for alternatives and new ideas.

It’s definitely wild that some people are so fed up with the representative democracy that they might actually welcome a return to an autocratic regime. Kinda makes you wonder if this wasn’t just a big set-up… make our government so corrupt and so ineffectual and so out of touch with the people that we welcome a purge

“absolute power corrupts absolutely”

truer words were never spoken.

The reason that Plato wrote The Republic was because he saw in his day the same thing we have seen in ours, how democracy, to whatever extent it exists, inevitably ends up being manipulated and controlled by corrupt elites, like the ones who executed Socrates “for the good of the people”. He argued that a commonwealth ruled by philosophers trained in the arts of wisdom was the only realistic way to prevent domination by self-serving oligarchs. We, of course, have been taught the maxim “absolute power corrupts absolutely”, that even the most virtuous won’t be able to handle it if given too much control… but is this true, or is it just propaganda? I confess, this is what I’ve pretty much always believed, which is why I’ve been drawn to anarchism, but I might be wrong. Maybe rule by an aristocracy of really nice, smart guys and gals, with the masses having some ability to occasionally throw one out if they seem to be going over to the dark side, maybe this would be the best way to get a society organized around the principles of justice and sanity.

I’m remembering something someone told me once about american democracy: it was never intended to be one man/one vote system. if that were true there would still be seperate drinking fountains in some states and it would be legal to bash gays and lynch african americans in some places. the way the system was intended to work was that the people would elect representatives of the highest expectable level of moral and ethical development, and they would institute laws designed to bring everyone else up to that level. in practice most americans don’t live up to the standards set in the constitution, but the laws pull everyone that way.

that’s what’s dangerous about the current climate. It’s taken out the implicit moral center of gravity and replaced it with a extremely litteral form of democracy were red states rule the day.

It wasn’t until 1964 that our country actually achieved universal suffrage.

and for those who believe that in November 1963 our elected government was overthrown by fascists, 1964 was a year too late.