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01247: Re: Charter and other thoughts

From: lpc1998 <lpc1998(at)lpc1998.com>
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 04:32:24 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Charter and other thoughts

Hi Mark,

Yes, the act of banning political party is a bad precedent for the violation of an individual's freedom of association. If there is a ban of one form of peaceful, no-violent association of an individual, it would be so much more easier to ban another form, and yet another form, ....

Even successful prohibition on political parties as it is is unlikely to eradicate political parties. It would instead transform visible political parties into invisible ones. We already have so much troubles from visible political parties which can be seen and identified. Invisible ones would most probably make these troubles intractable. This point deserves more careful thoughts.

Moreover, although party politics is undoubtably evil, what we are really against is Rule by Representatives, whether such representatives are partyless or not. There is no basis for us to believe that partyless representatives would necessarily serve the people when in office, and not to rule them. Most probably, partyless representatives would have to form partless gangs to control the elected Legislature in order to have their agendas fulfilled. Then we would go back to square one: the Rule by Representatives.

It is better to see the political parties wither away one by one before our eyes when they become a serious liability to the election candidates in the new political system.

Yes, the present document you refer to as the WDDM Charter is an achievement for the community. Congratulations! to you and all who have worked for it. It is undoubtedly a progress.

However, these are some of my reservations:

1  It has yet to obtain true majority endorsement from WDDM members;

2  It does not encourage members to be active in WDDM affairs. Here, encouragement actually means encouragement, not coercion in one form or another. Basically, democracy means persuading people to agree with you, and not to obtain complaince by legislation through the control of the legislature.

3  Because it is so easily modified without a true majority, it could be easily hyjacked by a small motivated minority with an private agenda in the name of all.

Eric Lim (lpc1998)




"Mark Antell, editor CitizenPowerMagazine.net" <citizenp(at)citizenpowermagazine.net> wrote:
Hi Eric,

I surely did like your thoughts in response to PVR's concept of
'partyless democracy.' It strikes me that freedom of association
precludes partyless politics. Prohibition on parties has been tried in
Africa (Kenya I think). The results were terrible.

As to the charter..... well, I think it's pretty good. Plus it has a
very clear mechanism for modification, or even dissolution. If members
really don't like it, it wouldn't take much to throw it out.

Mark


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