On 16/03/2007, at 6:05 PM, Scott Peden wrote:
> Loyalty to my country remains, even if I will not be loyal to my
> government
> when they are not doing what they are suppose to do, representing
> us, the
> people who are suppose to be the government.
The point remains - if you are a democracy, the distinction between
country and government is a false and dangerous distinction. And
again, why do you have the right to decide that they aren't doing
their job. Is it not possible that you are wrong? You can't just opt
out - democracy does not work like that except for revolutionaries
and despite your history, you really, really don't like those.
> Half the state was using unverifiable electronic hack able
> by High school kid voting machines, the ones that started making a
> visible
> mess and laughing stock out of our elections in 2000 most notably.
Indeed. And it's worse than that. Here's a few ideas.
In Oz we use paper and pencil. Strangely, that's quite hard to alter!
Booths are in just about every Primary School so you don't need to go
far.
Elections are always on a Saturday - not a working day for most.
Attendance at a booth to get your name crossed off is compulsory
although you are quite welcome to spoil your ballot.
Finally, voting is preferential - you vote in order of preference and
the votes for the minor candidates are distributed to your second or
higher preferences as necessary. It's complex but it works.
Oh and all voting is monitored and conducted by an independent
federal authority.
Any of that address your problems?
And did I forget that spending is limited, basic funds for election
purposes are provided by that same authority and all donations over
$1000 must be declared. None of this getting into office beholden to
major financial backers - that's just plain silly.
Having been brought up in the British 'first past the post' system, I
like what we do here.
All that said, we've still had some cretins in high office and I'll
be very glad to see the back of the present incumbent leader. For
some reason that eludes me, people keep voting for him and that's the
point.
>
> I suggest, if one closely and impartially looks at who/what is
> running the
> USA, and looks at it's actions, not the labels attached to it, that
> one
> would be hard pressed to call it a Democracy, much less a
> representative
> Democracy, if you also had to honestly and in the same light, look
> at the
> definitions of Imperialism, Fascism and Nationalism.
No, look at the actions of those systems. You have what seems to be a
compromised democracy but all of them are compromised to some extent
as there is no way that you can build a perfect system. Plato
objected to democracy on the ground that the wrong people got elected
for the wrong reasons - they were charismatic speakers. Nothing much
has changed in the last 2.5 thousand years.
But I do feel compelled to ask when you are going to stop trying to
export democracy and consider importing it.
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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