I think the world of your intellect, but I think you’re flatly wrong here. In fact, democracies, especially young ones, can in fact be one of the most violent forms of nation-states…
I think the US involvement in the Iraq War looms large here, in fact the “war of liberation” mythology was very popular. Democracies only need a “Pearl Harbor/9/11” to “wake them from their slumber” as Adm. Yamamoto said (very parenthetically)…
It is in fact the dictatorships -forcing their military arms to conform to every decision no matter how ludicrous- to be unquestionably beholden, such as Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, that each magnified the horrific decisions of their fearless leaders into defeat (or near defeat) that result in vulnerable societies…
Rome had a far larger population and empire than that of Athens its campaings spanned many centuries. If making comparisons of slave numbers, at which point in the history of Rome would one choose to make such a comparison? There was a reluctance for ‘Greeks’ to enslave Greeks. That is not to say that the Athenians didn’t, nothing like the scale of the helots of Sparta.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s my understanding that there was a public referendum held in the U.S. in the early months of 1941 to decide whether or not the teh U.S. should enter the war?
I should have said liberal. (A slip of the beer fuelled pen. :D)
Although if the Facebook generation is anything to go by, we’re well on the way to a libertines’ democracy rivalling Rome in its declining days. :evil:
I think we’re singing from the same page here, but it seems I failed to hit recognisable notes.
Rather than contrasting the aggressiveness of democracies versus authoritarian regimes, what I was getting at in the first paragraph you quoted was not internal vulnerability of a democracy or authoritarian regime but vulnerability of the democracy in a conflict between a democracy and an authoritarian regime. Using the US and Japan / Nazi Germany in WWII as examples, the US President had to get Congressional approval to declare war on those nations but the reverse wasn’t true. So a democracy could be dithering in its parliament or even a national referendum while the authoritarian state was readying to attack without going through any of those processes, leaving the democracy vulnerable to external attack because it followed democratic processes. It was the democratic processes which prevented Roosevelt getting into the war with Germany until Pearl Harbor, which would not have been the case if America had been run under an authoritarian regime which allowed the President to commit America to a long war (such as Dubya’s glorious achievement in Iraq, which without consulting references has probably involved America in armed conflict about as long as its involvement in WWI and WWII combined). Meanwhile Germany under a single dictator and Japan under a more diffuse military dictatorship had no such restrictions.
In my second quoted paragraph I was referring to what I’ve just outlined so far as threats from outside the nation and adverting to a separate, and probably greater, threat to survival of a democracy, especially a liberal democracy, from within the nation. The latter point is essentially that a democracy which allows freedoms to those who want to destroy it risks being destroyed by them. The risks range from allowing organisations like Mosley’s British Union of Fascists to operate pre-WWII to America allowing pilot training and freedom of movement for the 9/11 bastards LATE EDIT INSERTING NEXT FIVE WORDS FOR CLARIFICATION most of whom were Saudis. Contrast that with Hitler crushing his opponents and the rigid controls exercised by the authoritarian semi-medieval Saudis in their own country while busily exporting a form of radical Islam which offends the principles in democracies which still allow people to preach the Saudi poison. It’s also worth noting as an illustration of my point that Hitler was spawned in, but not by, a democracy. There was no risk that a democracy was going to be spawned in Nazi Germany; Soviet Russia and the USSR; Peoples’ Republic of China; North Korea; and so on.
Another aspect of authoritarian regimes is that usually they have considerably less regard for human rights, legal process, individual liberty and so on than do democracies. Their inhumane outlook allows them to oppress, imprison, torture, and execute opponents while democracies assure the human rights, right to legal process, and individual liberties of those who seek to destroy the democratic state. So, many of us are appalled and outraged by things such as the US rendition program; the US Attorney General’s facile arguments authorising torture; and Abu Ghraib, yet authoritarian regimes, such as Saddam Hussein’s, utilise far worse things to preserve themselves. And usually it works very well in keeping the dictator and his cabal in power. Contrast that with what happened to Dubya, Blair (admittedly a resignation) and Howard in the democratic process
Taking this back to Sparta and Athens, it’s not surprising that the less democratic, more militaristic, and less humane Spartans triumphed over Athens which was based on opposing principles.
It’s both, but there is a much more highly developed symbiotic relationship between the government and the pro-government press, and especially with conservative governments (here, at least) than there was over a quarter of a century ago during the Falklands War.
But the tabloid press can always be relied upon to take a simplistic hero or villain approach to everything, and to extol what it sees as traditional virtues while observing none of them in its crass scrabble for circulation by pandering to the lowest common denominator (here, at least).
True, as they’re a pack of hyenas which always responds to the smell of blood and loves to tear at the carcass of a downed political animal, just because they can.
But they also play their part in bringing the animal down.
That’s something that was absent from the direct participation in Athenian democracy. It was absent to a fair degree (here at least) until even the 1950s when politicians addressed the electorate primarily through direct contact in the streets, by doorknocking, and largely through personal appearances in town halls etc. Now they are mediated through the press’s interpretation of what they say and judged on how well they perform on television, which can be misleading. We had a state opposition leader here in the early 1980s who was widely regarded as a buffoon because of his appearances on television. He spoke to a senior management group of the corporation I was working for at the time and it took about a minute to see why he had been elected as leader of the party, because he had a presence and power in person which never came across through the television camera. He became premier of the state about a decade later, but was still widely regarded as a buffoon by those who had not seen him in person. They soon found out that he was an unusually determined and effective leader who got things done, whether or not one agreed with what he did (which I didn’t).
We have what is commonly called compulsory voting here, but strictly the legal requirement is only to attend the polling station and have one’s name marked off the electoral roll. Still, once you’re there, you might as well vote. I don’t think that ensuring that every idiot in the country attends to vote produces any better results in electing governments in what is essentially a two party system than in the US or Britain, which is a little surprising as the tabloids favoured by the idiots are universally pro-conservative parties. It does, however, relieve us of the energy wasted in non-compulsory systems by parties trying to get people out to vote.
As a footnote, after a disgraceful piece of political chicanery got our national government dismissed in 1975 by our Governor General, the Queen’s representative who holds ultimate legislative power in a country Liz has little interest in, I was so disgusted with the farcical system which let the unelected representative of a foreign power dismiss my popularly elected government that I refused to participate in the shitty system for five years. Wait as I did for the court summons for failing to vote so I could exercise (quite pointlessly as I was bound to be convicted) my right to justify my refusal to participate in a supposedly democratic system in an ultimately non-existent democracy run by the unelected representative of a hereditary monarch, nothing happened.
My modesty is such that I carefully refrained from responding to Nick’s comment, which happens to conflict with my wife’s assessment of my intellect. And she is always right!
My Excalibur is the traditional model. Its end is stuck in stone, so I don’t know how long it is, but the length of shaft outside the stone is most impressive. This also comes from my wife, and she is always right!
No matter how much I pull my shaft, it stays attached to its base. Although it has always fired reliably on one cylinder.
How Australia’s representative democracy doesn’t work in deciding when we go to war.
Australia should never repeat Iraq folly
Tuesday 16th June 2009, 12:00am
Australian Greens Senator Scott Ludlam says the Prime Minister must prevent repeating the mistakes of the illegal invasion of Iraq, by supporting his Private Senator’s Bill to ensure parliamentary approval for taking the country to war. The push comes as Britain’s Gordon Brown announced an Inquiry into his Government’s involvement in the Iraq war.
In 2003, in the absence of any checks or balances that many other democracies have, Australian Prime Minister John Howard requested that the Governor-General deploy troops to Iraq, without Parliamentary approval.
“Mr Rudd can take some real action to safeguard against this ever happening again,” said the Greens’ Attorneys General Spokesperson, Senator Scott Ludlam.
“My Private Senator’s Bill will subject a decision to go to war to the scrutiny of Parliament as is the case in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey. In these countries troop deployment is set down in constitutional or legislative provisions. This is a subject of intense debate in the UK - where the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives are both pressuring the Prime Minister to take this step.”
“Deciding whether or not to take the country to war - the responsibility of sending Australian men and women into danger and quite possibly to their deaths, is the most serious decision a Government can make. Had the representatives of Australians been given the opportunity to consider Bush’s War on Iraq, then Australia most certainly would not have become involved in what is now widely understood to be an illegal war.”
Our supposedly ‘representative’ government got us into a war when, depending upon the poll, somewhere between 60% and close to 90% of the population did not support that action. http://www.eriposte.com/war_peace/iraq/world_support/gallup_intl_2003_by_country.gif Hardly a great example of the popular will being implemented by its elected representatives.
I’m not conviced that this is a good thing…look what happened to Leonidas.
I agree that no one person in government ought to be able to commit the country to war, but to try to legislate for what would be acceptable conditions for going to war is a bit of a nonsense. Checks and controls, by all means. If we’re speaking of democratic decisons, then perhaps it is the electoral system which should be looked at i.e. P.R.
It would be good to get the majority of the electorate involved in decisions as important as going to war but the realities of such policy given population sizes etc. Well…‘Jaw, jaw…better than war, war!’ But will the opposition hang around while we take a vote? Not all circumstance sof going to war will or would be the same as invading Iraq.
Of course, military operations could become war by any other name.
As an aside, an otherwise reasonably intelligent woman I work with said yesterday that she had to make an appointment with her clairvoyant. I said that this should be unnecessary, because if the clairvoyant was any good she’d know the sheila was coming. My comment was not well received. If I was clairvoyant I would have seen that coming.
I agree with that as it impossible to provide for all contingencies (who would have had the foresight before 9/11 to propose a 9/11 attack in a war conditions bill?), but it’s a different matter to take the American approach that the power to declare war resides in the legislature rather than the executive. News reports (I haven’t read the bill) indicate that all that Ludlum wants is that the legislature rather than the executive decides when we will deploy troops. Which overcomes the American problem (and ours by a different route) that the President can deploy troops for up to 60? days without Congressional approval, which means that in the absence of a Congressional veto the President can commit the country to a war (as in Korea and Vietnam). When the President is of the same party which controls Congress there seems little likelihood of Congress going against the President’s decision, so the President (or any other leader in similar position in a parliamentary democracy) has de facto if not de jure power to take the country to war.
On the other hand a requirement for parliamentary approval brings us back to my earlier comments about the risk of the parliament dithering when decisive action is needed.
While fully participatory democracy is a nice ideal, the realities and practicalites of governing dictate that a government has to have a pretty much free hand to respond to immediate and grave threats to the nation. As happened in Australia after Japan attacked in WWII. But I don’t think it should go so far as ‘responding’ to vague and unsatisfactorily demonstrated ‘threats’ like Iraq in 2003.
Do you mean proportional representation?
If so, I think it has more to commend it than the gerrymandered and disproportionate single seat electorates which elect many of our politicians. We have a mixture of both systems here, but generally not PR where it has real political clout. http://www.eca.gov.au/systems/proportional/proportion_rep.htm
It was because the laws of Sparta wouldn’t permit him to take the army to war during the festival… of something or other?..but I like the joke. :lol:
As an aside, an otherwise reasonably intelligent woman I work with said yesterday that she had to make an appointment with her clairvoyant. I said that this should be unnecessary, because if the clairvoyant was any good she’d know the sheila was coming. My comment was not well received. If I was clairvoyant I would have seen that coming.
Don’t you just like surprises. :lol:
I agree with that as it impossible to provide for all contingencies (who would have had the foresight before 9/11 to propose a 9/11 attack in a war conditions bill?), but it’s a different matter to take the American approach that the power to declare war resides in the legislature rather than the executive. News reports (I haven’t read the bill) indicate that all that Ludlum wants is that the legislature rather than the executive decides when we will deploy troops. Which overcomes the American problem (and ours by a different route) that the President can deploy troops for up to 60? days without Congressional approval, which means that in the absence of a Congressional veto the President can commit the country to a war (as in Korea and Vietnam). When the President is of the same party which controls Congress there seems little likelihood of Congress going against the President’s decision, so the President (or any other leader in similar position in a parliamentary democracy) has de facto if not de jure power to take the country to war.
I tend to be more focussed on what is happening in the UK rather than the States, although I do try to keep an eye on what is happening with our cousins across the ocean.
generally speaking: if we are to put our trust in our elected representatives to make decisions for us instead of holding a referendum for every potentially unpopular decision - be it war or not - then surely the way forward has to be to have a system of electing our representatives which represents the majority of the electorate. Since 1979, in the UK we have witnessed two parties taking over control of the country with landslide victories in the polls even thought this is not representative of the electorate as a whole. The two major parties have, up until now, been against PR as it would dilute their power. It would also make it difficult for said parties to take us to war and, perhaps, in those circumstances the UK would not have been embroiled in Iraq. But, even it had been, at least it would have been reflecting a more representative commitment of the nation.
Do you mean proportional representation?
If so, I think it has more to commend it than the gerrymandered and disproportionate single seat electorates which elect many of our politicians. We have a mixture of both systems here, but generally not PR where it has real political clout. http://www.eca.gov.au/systems/proportional/proportion_rep.htm
Sorry, I’m in a hurry to go for my train and thought this was above my previous. Yes, I was speaking of proportional representation when I spoke of PR.
There’s always arguments about the sytem of PR to adopt - well, get on with it and select the fairest - who gives a fish’s-tit if the italians never agree on anything?
p.s. Don’t you have a home to go to - it’s Friday…probably Saturday where you are.
Just look at the way your lot have been fraudulently abusing their allowances etc, across all parties.
Almost all politicians are cunts. Some are just bigger cunts than others. They mightn’t start out that way, but by the time they get into office they’ve compromised themselves so much that they’re bendy men and bendy women, beholden to various interests while obsessed with their own ambitions. A few don’t fit that bill, but they’re invariably independents or major party renegades who foolishly stand for principle, which is something all politicians pretend to do and which almost none do, not least because most of the bendy ambitious cunts have no idea what ‘principle’ means beyond being something they parrot for the TV news along with ‘responsible’ and ‘decisive’ and everything else they aren’t to persuade the electorate that they are. Cunts, the lot of them! :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:
The problem comes back to the fact that the size of our populations requires us to have representative rather than Athenian participatory democracies.
While PR seems fairer, it will be corrupted like all other political processes in modern democracies by things such as sectional interests funding preferred candidates who upon election will favour their funders rather than electoral constituents because the most important thing to a politician who has been elected to power is to be re-elected to pursue their personal ambition.
All our (Australian) ‘pure’ minor parties, such as the Greens, sooner or later do deals that shit on their electoral constituents and principles, sometimes by doing deals with the devil as represented by one of the major parties.
But, for all that, I can’t think of a better democratic system in the modern world than a representative democracy. It’s just a question of which one we think is most representative or, more accurately, least unrepresentative, against the one politicians think favours them most by ensuring that they aren’t representative, either proportionally or by representing constituents’ interests in preference to party or funders’ interests. Cunts! The lot of them, and I say this after long acquaintance with them as junior cunts growing into major cunts over the past couple of decades, in both major parties. I wouldn’t piss on any of them if they were on fire.
Like a few other people I know I have rejected requests to stand for election for a given party, although not necessarily the same party as other people I know who have rejected such requests from the other major party, because like those who support the other side I’m not willing to compromise my principles by doing what is necessary to get through the local party selection committee up to being elected as it is all about subordinating oneself to a rigid party autocracy and spouting the party line.
As long us people like us stay out of politics nothing will change. And as soon as we get into it, we will change. So the world is doomed to have a certain sort of nasty, grasping, ambitious, unprincipled person fed up the ranks of the party into government and beholden to whatever interests helped them get there. And those politicians can be relied upon to make their decisions to preserve support from the big end of town that got them there rather than the tens of thousands of citizens whose interests the politician supposedly represents in that electorate. Even if proportionately elected.
Here is why a fully participatory democracy won’t work in Australia. The prospect of several million people descending on Canberra several times a year to vote on major issues is alarming. This is what happens when only a few thousand of our prime voting stock descend upon the national capital in their annual pilgrimage, all of whom are clearly of the highest intellect. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51l74YL-wvM&feature=related
And, don’t forget, all of these people vote. Assuming that they know which end of the pencil to use.
This is our army’s contribution to the national capital’s festival of fuel. It’s my taxes at work, and I think it’s money bloody well spent on a Land Rover, including the Corvette motor, Nissan diffs and a Chevy arse. I gather it’s the Army’s attempt to implement on land the naval command ‘Make smoke’. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuHBWfKmRWI
Please forgive my tardy response, have been a tad busy.
It has been said!
Just look at the way your lot have been fraudulently abusing their allowances etc, across all parties.
I have been looking - so, what’s new?
The problem comes back to the fact that the size of our populations requires us to have representative rather than Athenian participatory democracies.
While PR seems fairer, it will be corrupted like all other political processes in modern democracies by things such as sectional interests funding preferred candidates who upon election will favour their funders rather than electoral constituents because the most important thing to a politician who has been elected to power is to be re-elected to pursue their personal ambition.
As has been happening since at least the time that a few chaps got together, bashed a couple of rocks together and named the result ‘Hot’!
Even the ancients of Athens and Sparta had their spin and and worked their scams, for such is the nature of humankind. As you pointed out, the Athenians didn’t have telecommunications, they didn’t have the printing press, but they were literate. The bounds of their city were small and communication spread like wildfire through the Agora, which is where much of the factional lobbying took place before the assembly, so that many of the policies were done and dusted before floored in the assembly, nothing new there either.
If we complain that our governmemt commits us to war and that we didn’t elect them to do so - i.e. that it isn’t representative of the majority - then we have to find a better way of electing a government that better represents the majority of the electorate. In the UK reform is long overdue not just in the system of electing our governments but in the way parties present their manifestos - the fine detail. Of course that would also put a certain responsibility on the individual to actually read the manifestos.
PR probably goes a fair way to that in the modern world, but it will still be distorted if not corrupted by things such as trade union influence on one side and heavy corporate donations on the other.
There is also the problem, offensive though it is to some with high ideals, that a significant element of the population isn’t capable of making even a mildly informed choice and shouldn’t be entrusted with the vote. Or allowed to breed. But we have to allow them to do both, because that is their right in a democratic society where all people have equal rights, even if they don’t have equal ability to exercise them rationally and or intelligently.
What’s the point in any of that when as soon as they’re elected the bastards renege on the promises they made to get elected?
Our last lot of national professional turds invented ‘core’ and ‘non-core’ promises, although only after they were elected on the basis of clearly stated policies which were not identified as ‘core’ and ‘non-core’. :evil: :evil: :evil:
That’s why we ought to have reform, so that it makes it difficult in the extreme for them to renege on their promises.
Again, economies and their driving forces evolve, and their can be times when something in a manifesto becomes out of date. What we ought to do is make sure that they have a heck of a time proving that that is the situation before they can go back on their promises. If they don’t then the coutnry has a vote of confidence regarding the competence/incompetence of its government which, in effect, would lead to an election. There has to be a better way.
I think I mentioned the chap in the bath previously.
The Athenian education system was geared up so that those that were ‘Dicked’ - as someone so eloquently put it - into forming the 500 actually had an idea of what they were doing - it all boils down to education, then the spin becomes less effective.
Assuming that you’re not trying to educate a bunch of kids (whose parents are resentful, self-pitying troglodytes engaging in the odd bit of crime to supplement social security income for which they also don’t work) who grow up despising education and the well-meaning and reasonably generous society which tried to give it to them, but from which they didn’t benefit because they were too busy disrupting classes or slagging off or belting up teachers or damaging school propery and generally demonstrating their contempt for the institution which offered them the best way out of the shithole they were born into.
Combine that with the vastly greater resources of the government and political parties to exploit the press in all its forms to manipulate the populace and it’s like shooting fish in a barrel as far as manipulating the un or poorly educated, particulary when events such as the (I thought patently weak and specious at the time) arguments for invading Iraq persuaded plenty of highly educated and intelligent people.
Rather than placing the burden on the populace to be sufficienty well educated to identify politicians’ bullshit (which even the best educated often cannot do) it would be better to place the burden on politicians to be honest.
Consumer protection laws give us clear remedies against misleading and deceptive conduct from everyone except politicians. If the bastards knew they could go to gaol for gaining office by lies and deception and for not honouring their warranties, judged by a jury of those who voted them in and were deceived by them, they’d soon lift their game.
I don’t see why I should have a legal remedy against someone who, even unknowingly, sells me a defective product but I have none against a lying, cheating, devious, piece of shit whose lies jeopardise my country’s future just so he or she can satisfy dreams of power.
:D)
