From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Thu Aug 08 2002 - 18:59:07 MDT
Charlie Stross wrote:
> Sort of.
>
> Most of our conceptual and philosophical frameworks have progressed
> since the 18th century, so why hasn't our theory of government?
>
Well, in part because we have totally forgotten things that, for
instance, the American founding fathers, were well aware of at
the end of the 18th century.
> Right now we seem to have a collective cultural blind spot about
> the merits of different forms of government that's as enormous as the
> widespread opinion in the early 17th century. Back then all right-thinking
> people agreed that monarchy was the only possible way to run a country --
> and that all the alternatives would lead to civil war, disaster, famine,
> and the withdrawl of divine blessings. (Only a few barking mad religious
> visionaries dissented from that view, although it's the beliefs of
> those Levellers that has set the agenda for the forms adopted by today's
> liberal democracies.) Similarly, today everyone pays lip service to the
> idea of democracy as a Good Thing, overlooking the numerous problems
> that a democratic system can succumb to and the ways in which a democracy
> can become a majoritarian tyranny. Democracies are less prone to tyranny
> than dictatorships or monarchies, but they're not immune to the disease,
> and they may well be less stable than tyranny or monarchy over long periods
> of time.
>
That is why the US was set up to be a *republic* rather than a
*democracy*. Both are representational forms of government.
But in a republic the rights of minorities (even and especially
the lone individual) cannot be voted away by any majority in
whole or in part. The forgetting of that distinction (or never
quite understanding it) is in large part what "went wrong" with
America regarding individual rights. It is not surprising that
most Americans, much less much of the rest of the democratic
world, does not understand this. It is very seldom taught or
mentioned. We here that we are out "to spread demoracy" and
forget why a republic is different and better. Of course it is
in the interest of over-inflated government that we do not
remember or understand this.
> This doesn't mean that I want to replace democracy unconditionally
> -- just that I want to keep an open mind about the possibility of
> better forms of government being possible (for purposes of reconciling
> individual freedoms with collective necessity while maximizing individual
> freedom). I'd stipulate that democracy *doesn't* always work to maximize
> personal freedom, or even optimize it, and it would be great if somebody
> could come up with a wholly new philosophy of government that would fix
> the drawbacks.
A republic is better. It is obvious and was obvious hundreds of
years ago that democracy is not an ideal form of government or
even the "best possible".
- samantha
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