From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Thu Mar 02 2000 - 04:30:04 MST
The Libyan government has a bad reputation in the west -- for various
reasons -- but it's by no means a conventional tyranny. According to
the Daily Telegraph, Ghadaffi has just abolished almost the entire
central government:
Interesting quote:
>All is presaged in the three volumes of The Green Book, in which
>he outlines a "final solution to the problem of the instrument of
>governing". He believes that all political processes inevitably result in
>"the victory of an instrument of governing, and the defeat of the people,
>ie, the defeat of genuine democracy".
>
>He reserves particular scorn for representative democracy since,
>"the victory of a candidate with 51 per cent of the votes leads to a
>dictatorial governing body, since 49 per cent of the electorate is ruled
>by an instrument of governing they did not vote for".
I dunno about you, but I for one did a double-take when I read that
last paragraph -- because it's one of the most telling, and troubling,
criticisms of democracy: a majoritarian tyranny is still a tyranny
(as far as those not in the majority are concerned).
Whether or not Ghadaffi's prescription, on the basis of this diagnosis,
makes sense is an issue I'm not going to comment on. But I've got a
feeling that some very interesting ideas are being overshadowed in the
western media by the general reputation Libya acquired for sponsoring
terrorism in the eighties.
-- Charlie
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:27:08 MST