From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Aug 04 2002 - 13:23:05 MDT
Charlie Stross writes
> > A. Is the vote fixed?
> > B. Are the citizens coerced?
> > C. Can but few inhabitants vote?
> >
> > and while the answer, pleasantly, is "No" for our democracies, they
> > indeed differ as to how representative they are.
>
> I've got a headache with this list: it takes no account of majoritarian
> tyranny.... Northern Ireland prior to 1968... post-independence Zimbabwe,
> Zanu-PF and Zapu, each representing one tribal group that had been
> involved in the civil war
>
> Such a situation is technically a democracy -- by Randall's definition --
> but it's not a healthy one because the votes are rigged along tribal or
> ethnic lines. To avoid legitimizing it you need a fourth question in Randall's
> list:
>
> D. Do the citizens vote across hereditary lines?
Even more important, perhaps, would be to add
E. Can majorities vote away rights of minorities?
as your examples maybe illustrate. But we've switched from
defining (or characterizing, rather) democracies to saying what
makes *good* democracies.
Fine, but I also want a short list that serves as an objective
guide to the proper employment of the term "democracy". Randall's
original A, B, C, do a fair job, but I have a hunch one or two
more are needed. (Yours and my D and E are merely for identifying
good as opposed to poor democracies, I would say.)
> To paraphrase Winston Churchill, democracy is a bloody awful form of
> government -- it's just not as bad as the alternatives. I'd rather look
> for a better alternative than accept that this is the best we're getting,
> thanks.
It sounds like we mostly agree on a number of steps that can
be taken to improve any extant democracy. But here it sounds
like you want to discard the concept in a search for a better
system. I claim that you'll never find a better system (until
human beings are replaced by something else, or conditions
change drastically in some other way from what we're used to).
> > Vice presidents and others in American administrations are always
> > denouncing their opponents, and their opponents always talk about
> > the "chilling" effect on free speech, and I'm often annoyed by
> > such chilling. But nobody ever seems to go to jail for it, and it
> > doesn't seem any more or less likely than throughout the 20th century
> > that anyone will.
>
> In this instance, people are being interned. In some cases, democratic
> governments that are theoretically bound by laws on habeas corpus aren't
> even admitting the names of the people they're holding, much less the
> reasons, let alone charging them with crimes. In other countries, soldiers
> are killing and injuring people, many of them civilians, while the
> governments that ordered these actions are attempting to chip away the
> freedom of information regimes that enforce civil accountability.
This has nothing at all to do with democracy, in my opinion.
If those people were being interned because it was feared that
they'd vote the wrong way, or because a majority wanted to
violate their normal legal rights to get their money or to
deny them opportunities, then this would be anti-democratic,
I'll posit. But they're being interned because a mild state
of war exists, right? Or are we talking about different people?
> The situation can get worse; from where I'm standing, it looks as if
> the Shrub has decided to start a war of aggression specifically to
> get rid of a guy who he hates for family reasons.
Higher on his list than family hatred is probably how re-election
will work out. But as I said before, perhaps in a different thread,
Bush or any other constitutionally elected leader in a traditionally
democratic country has a whole slew of motives, just like any normal
person. He's animated by wanting to protect the US, taking an issue
away from his political opponents, intimidating terrorists or nations
whose policies annoy the US and its friends, gauging his re-election
chances, finishing what his father started, an urge to do justice,
revenge, duty, and so on. So it sounds like you're over-simplifying
too much.
> Lots more people will die if this goes ahead (and Saddam Hussein,
> who is not a nice guy, will be at most only one of them).
Yes, but it's a very complicated equation. Suppose the UK had started
the idea going in 1934 that it should secretly build up and then
invade Germany in 1936. Hundreds of millions of lives would have
been saved. So you never know, and you always have to weigh the
odds on everything, and employ a lot of very smart people with vast
historical, military, political, and societal understanding to help out.
> There's a long way to go down from here, but a state of war excuses
> restrictions that would be unthinkable in peacetime -- and it looks to
> me as if that's exactly what's being done.
I think that it's always done when democracies are at war.
What would have happened in Britain in World War II, say
1942, to anti-war demonstrators or pro-German editorial
writers. Anything? I know Bertrand Russell spent time
in prison during WWI for, I think, pacifism. A nation's
got to do what a nation's got to do to win.
Lee
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