Why democracy is bad?

Well. Then in some point I would agree with you, with the difference that if you and me work the same land we should share it, and if there is more people then we should share it between all us.

And personal property are that properties that are personal and can't belong to anyone else than you, for example a mobile, a PC, clothes, your own food,...

Private property I understand as that that can be public or collective but is privately owned.

 

And if the majority wish to send Jews to the ovens? Kilgram is sure he'll be a sender and not a sendee.

 

I will be one of the ones that will say that is a madness, and I will refuse that, and I will vote against, and I will fight to convince the people that is madness and anti-democratic.

And I am sure, that people won't do it. So I won't be neither a sender neither a sendee(and thanks for the new word, I didn't know it).

AH, and democracy must respect common sense, humanity and the human rights.

 

You are very mistaken, kilgram.

Real Democracy is not the best system. Real democracy, where the majority always rules, allows the "majority” to always run ruff shod over the “minority" . Our founding fathers establish a constitutional republic with representative government to protect the rights of the ”minority” constituents in our society.

Kilgram, you really need to develop a beter understanding of American history and the basis of our U.S. Constitution.



"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. ... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion; what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms." -- Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787

 

It gives reason to my point. Thanks to reinforce it with the quote of Jefferson.

 

Oh, I think liberals could frighten people into doing it. Not a lot of complaining when Hitler did it. Democracy has no need to respect common sense. Democracy will include liberals so common sense is excluded by definition. Democracy does not have to respect human rights, whatever you consider those. And, respect humanity? How many millions have liberals killed with bullets and malaria.

I know it's hard, Kilgram, but you might consider admitting that pure democracy is a horrible idea.

 

People make the mistake of conflating 'pure' Athenian democracy (which, by the way, did NOT destroy itself like various liars like to claim) with the American form of democracy. Democracy in this country is essentially interchangeable with 'republic' with very minute differences. Anyone who tries to blow this up into some spectacular issue is just a distraction to actual problems.

 

I have never seen so much fail in three sentences before on this forum.

Strawman #1: Most conservatives dont fear "democracy". They fear direct-vote democracy. Not all democracy is direct vote democracy.

Strawman #2: The Rich choose nothing without the consent of the masses. Especially in the US. The Rich have no legal way of denying the masses whatever they want.

 

Democracy is the real way to freedom, so long as you are always in the majority.

I don't think you have fully thought this through, and upon reading several of your posts, I am not confident that you can. A pure democracy is mob rule.

 

That is incorrect. The fact that the majority disagrees with me about a traffic law (for example) does not make me less free.

 

If the majority agrees to the ovens, then it is absolutely democratic.

What makes you so sure? A look at history makes it seem overwhelmingly probable for some sort of atrocity to occur to the minority.

Why are you personifying "democracy"? It doesn't pay any attention to anything other than the tally of votes.

 

Is this before or after the guns of the majority are turned on you for breaking the traffic law that you disagree with?

 

So now you want to place conditions on what the majority is allowed to vote for? Doesnt that make you a dictator?

 

If their guns were trained on me I would not break the law. The choice would be mine.

The majority gets the final say in any form of democracy. If they didnt it would not be democracy.

If you have an alternative to democracy that is more fair, feel free to present it. The fact that I cant my way 100% of the time does not mean democracy is unfair or that it is oppressive.

 

What are the actual problems you are referencing? I bet I can route some of their causes back to lack of democratic protection or lack of democratic protection enforcement and recognition.

 

This is making the assumption that the law does not restrict liberty, ex alien and sedition acts of 1798.

If democracy is not restrained, individual freedom is not protected.

 

Who should get to define "liberty" if not the majority? Who should get the final say? You tell me.

No matter how little or how much it is restrained, if the majority get the final say it is democracy by definition.

 

Heroclitus, I haven't come across your posts in a while. Good to see you.

I have to disagree, sort of. In the USA, Democracy, as a term, can include no rule of law or an assumption of such. Let the majority decide is meant to mean just that. Majority rule and Democracy can go hand in hand, especially coming from the left because they tend to think in collective terms. The right looks at things from the individual and from that perspective rights are protected by law. It isn't a simple assumption at all. It is the whole point.

You, being as smart as you are, know the difference. That is obvious. But just look around PF, this isn't always the norm.

 

The majority always gets the final say, regardless of what people want. You can have a document restraining democracy, (The constitution) but who decides on that document? The majority.

The only way to avoid it would be to have everybody treat their property as their own private country.

 

I think Kilgram is at least on the right track. Reading the notes of James Madison and others on the Constitutional Convention, it is clear that the government form was created out of fear of what the general population would do. Fer that they justified by using derogatory terms like "mob rule". Fear that, if you look at history, is shown to simply be not true. In every case I have examined, whither it is treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany, or the enslavement and later lynching of blacks here in the US, it is done by a small minority in power, not by the majority.

On the other hand, who is it that makes the biggest sacrifices for the country, especially in times of war? It is the ordinary folk. They are the ones who go out and die for their country while the rich and powerful minority buy or manipulate their way out of putting their, or their children's, lives on the line.

In fact, those in power have very little to fear from the majority. Both experience and psychological studies show that the average person tends to defer to those in positions of power when in doubt. Which partly explains why those in power tend to get away with what they do.

So the problem is not that the majority have too much power, it is that it has too little. The vast majority of our "elected" politicians are actually in completely safe districts where they cannot be voted out of office except by some extraordinary circumstance, like being caught red-handed doing something illegal or if the opposition puts an immense effort into getting them voted out. So it is no wonder that the government acts more for the benefit of those in power rather than the public at large.

 

Exactly. But those who do this - it is very clear - are determined to resist the will of the people when it goes against their own. They are actually the bitterest foes of "American democracy" and want to see the USA governed like a Latin American dictatorship. For them a Centre Right president is ipso facto a threat to liberty. They are beyond the pale.

 

Hi Lowden. Hope you are well.

I don't agree. Setting aside the early days when Jefferson and like explained democracy in these terms in order to explain it and the role of the Constitution to the people, it is only on the right of the USA that this obsession with "pure democracy" continues. And I would say only recently that democracy is defined as "Athenian" democracy. I don't know anyone who argues that the country should be run by referenda for example, or that the Constitution or common law system should be abandoned. Like other democracies "the rule of law" is understood to be an essential characteristsic of a democracy, outside those "democracies" that were in the Soviet or Chinese blocs. This debate is invented by the Right to effectively nullify the will of the majority. The FF were against the tyranny of the majority, not the will of the majority. In democracies the will of the majority always trumps individual rights, eventually. Even in the USA the Constitution can be amended. Law prevents this happening quickly, or precipitously. But ultimately the will of the people always must prevail and the law must accommodate that. It's a question of checks and balances on democracy, not nullifying it.

They also ignore the concept of the social contract which is about the essential benefits of society that come from cooperation of citizens.

Thomas Paine argued very strongly against government and in favour of society.

And he goes further:

Almost the perfect libertarian but looking deeper Paine's hostility to government is interesting. He talks explicitly about the benefits of society - acting as a group for the common interest - and the evil of governnent. On the surface it looks a clear case of modern libertarianism. When you look at it though, it is based upon a long English tradition of struggle against government. Government is the same as Monarchy. And this struggle goes back to the Norman invasion:

And though Paine offers a mighty argument against an overbearing state, his main focus is against governments who for him are merely war-makers, and instruments of brutal military oppression:

In fact Paine sees the problem of government as one of an institution amassing wealth and power to itself. He sees governments as instruments to further the power of the wealthy and sees the natural organization of society very differently to that of conservatives today who will abandon the poor to the workhouse and charity as unworthy failures and idlers.

For Paine the villains of the piece were the rich and his hostility to taxation was a hostility to consumption taxes that failed to tax the rich proprotionately. He saw the system of taxation as one that was fixed to rob the poor to pay the rich. When you read Paine it is clear that he sees the rich very much in the robber baron tradition - as thieves - and the vast mass of the population as their victims.

It is important to understand the FF and their philosophy in context, to understand how you apply it principles today. The apparently libertarian Paine had a curious attitude towards welfare:

For Paine this was a legitimate form of government, if an unfamiliar one in the eighteenth century. It took taxes that were paid by the majority and distributed them to the poor. This, to Paine was radical, because at that time the taxes were used to benefit the rich. Curiously Paine, who was an exciseman himself, did not propose the abolition of taxation, merely its use to provide for the underclass in soceity. Under the principles of the social contract - which limited the role of government to the functions determined by the people - this was perfectly acceptable and quite the opposite of tyranny. Paine now looks like a curious libertarian. It is clear that looking at the ideologues of the American Revolution and what they wrote through the persepctive of today's debate is not sufficient.

This is not the view of some on the Right who are implacable opponents of the will of the people. This is not an American tradition, outside the Tory one.

 

Exactly that is. Usually all the problems that people that we have, and say that it is cause to the excess of democracy that is false, it is all the contrary, to the lack of democracy.

When you have more democracy, more understanding on how work the things you have, so more informed you are, then you have more freedom to decide for your ownself.

For example, in Spain we have a terrible lack of democracy, and our governors don't know almost anything about the reality. For example, they even don't know how much is the minimium wage in Spain. That is pathetic. Even they don't read the laws that they pass. It is totally pathetic.

Well, and it is for the lack of democracy, people don't have any kind of control or power on it. So the politicians can do whatever they want, even doing absolutely the contrary to what society demands. That is democracy? Or is imposing what minority wants.

 

Democracy equals the mob trumping the individual. Nothing more.

 

False. Wrong supposition. Democracy is the only way to have real individual freedom.