I’ll keep out of the debate you blokes are having on American politics, but the ‘get rid of them all and start over again’ sentiment is shared by a lot of us down here and by many others in Western democracies who are disillusioned with major party machine politics and the tyranny of minor parties and independents in hung or minority governments.
The ‘Occupy Wall Street’ and its imitators around the world are one expression of that general dissatisfaction with the present system, albeit by people who usually have difficulty articulating precisely what it is they’re pissed off about and even greater difficulty explaining what they would do to remedy it.
The ultimate problem is that even if ‘we get rid of them all and start over again’, the people who will put themselves forward to start again are going to be politicians. So we’ll still end up with ‘same shit, different arseholes,’. Unless someone seizes power in the vacuum between demolishing the present system and starting the new one, and then we have a dictatorship which is going to be a lot worse for most of us than whatever we have now.
Much as our (i.e Australian) present system and the arrogant power-hungry arseholes who run it disgust me in many respects, it is and they are hugely better than the alternatives that most of the people on earth have to put up in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America, and sundry other places. Whatever the faults in modern democracies, they rein in the excesses which our politicians would engage in if they had the untramelled power of many regimes in Asia etc.
I think the following quotes sum up the virtues and vices of democracy compared with other systems.
The way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And, of course, sometimes the government confirms their opinion. ~Lewis Mumford, in Anne Chisholm, Philosophers of the Earth: Conversations with Ecologists, 1972
It might be more worthwhile if we stopped wringing our hands and started ringing our congressmen. ~Author Unknown
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. ~Winston Churchill
If people behaved like governments, you’d call the cops. ~Kelvin Throop
We are imperfect. We cannot expect perfect government. ~William Howard Taft
Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor. ~James Russell Lowell
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. ~George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, “Maxims: Education,” 1905
The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy. ~Woodrow Wilson
In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organized robbery? ~St. Augustine
Democracy: The state of affairs in which you consent to having your pocket picked, and elect the best man to do it. ~Benjamin Lichtenberg
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. ~P.J. O’Rourke
If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion. ~George Bernard Shaw
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent. ~Abraham Lincoln
Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse is true. ~Polish Proverb
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them. ~Karl Marx
Governments should not possess instruments of coercion and violence denied to their citizens. ~Edgar A. Suter
Our government… teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. ~Louis Brandeis
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away. ~Barry Goldwater
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time. ~Winston Churchill
Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you don’t think. ~Author Unknown
The cure for capitalism’s failing would require that a government would have to rise above the interests of one class alone. ~Robert L. Heilbroner
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb. ~Author unknown, commonly misattributed to Benjamin Franklin (Thanks, Art)
Majority rule only works if you’re also considering individual rights. Because you can’t have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper. ~Attributed to Larry Flynt
Christmas is the time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell government what they want and their kids pay for it. ~Richard Lamm
Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what’s going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate? ~Will Rogers
Ohio claims they are due a president as they haven’t had one since Taft. Look at the United States, they have not had one since Lincoln. ~Will Rogers
If you want to understand your government, don’t begin by reading the Constitution. (It conveys precious little of the flavor of today’s statecraft.) Instead, read selected portions of the Washington telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with titles beginning with the word National. ~George Will
This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer. ~Will Rogers
Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens - and then everybody disagrees. ~Boris Marshalov
Our political institutions work remarkably well. They are designed to clang against each other. The noise is democracy at work. ~Michael Novak
I’m tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work. We are supposed to work it. ~Alexander Woollcott
The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government. ~Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, 1887
People come to Washington believing it’s the center of power. I know I did. It was only much later that I learned that Washington is a steering wheel that’s not connected to the engine. ~Richard Goodwin
Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be. ~Sydney J. Harris
A civil servant is sometimes like a broken cannon - it won’t work and you can’t fire it. ~George S. Patton
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest. ~Denis Diderot
Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt. ~Herbert Hoover, attributed
It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting. ~Tom Stoppard, Jumpers
Talk is cheap - except when Congress does it. ~Cullen Hightower
The most important political office is that of the private citizen. ~Louis Brandeis
People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote - a very different thing. ~Walter H. Judd
How can one conceive of a one-party system in a country that has over two hundred varieties of cheese? ~Charles de Gaulle, about France
