Good Morning, Democrates

Roy Daine created a site (http://www.myverdict.net/HTML/home.php) that provides unique community-based participation by anyone. It may not have all the bells and whistles you suggest, but it's a start.

Although you make many excellent points, I'm not in complete agreement with you. I agree we need more democratic political institutions, but the idea of having literally everyone in the world participate directly in government is flawed. You need go no further than any political discussion site on the internet to find that rational discourse is rare. Bombast predominates. Instead of producing sound ideas, such sites produce a cacophony of ego and ignorance. In fact, the weakness of "absolute" democracy is clearly shown by the propaganda-induced public support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I tried, at the time, to call attention to the fact that my country was being brainwashed by a flood of propaganda (http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/readmsg.asp?messageid=456582) but I did not find a receptive audience. Now, the tragedy of "public support" is all too clear.

Imagining that good government will magically arise from a mish-mash of public opinion is unrealistic. Since the majority of humans are more concerned with their daily lives than they are with government, we need to seek out and select those of our number who are best equipped to represent our interests. In other words, the greatest boon to democracy is representative government ... but ...

You properly express dissatisfaction with our current crop of "leaders". I agree with you. The problem is in the way we "select" or "elect" those leaders. The mechanism that controls our political infrastructure is corrupt, so it produces corrupt "leaders" (I will be happy to discuss WHY a party structure guarantees corruption, if you wish.) If we are to achieve more democratic governments, the first step must be to change the way we seek out those who will represent us and raise them to positions of power. PVR has suggested one method of accomplishing this, and I've outlined another. We would do well to investigate these ... and any other proposals that are forthcoming ... in painstaking detail. We need a workable concept before we can start working on its implementation.

Fred



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2008 06:12AM by koikaze.