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Occupy Wall Street Protests
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Post by
MyTie
. . . *snip* . . .... *snip*....You said stuff. I say stuff now. Stuff has been said... and oddly... nothing has been said.
Ooooo... I like this game.
Post by
Heckler
. . . *snip* . . .... *snip*....You said stuff. I say stuff now. Stuff has been said... and oddly... nothing has been said.
Ooooo... I like this game.
Well, I don't know how to approach you and have you not react childishly or rudely, so I suppose I'll go back to ignoring you. It's just easier, and I won't feel like I've wasted energy by typing out a reply.
I don't think Elhonna saw my edit, so I'm going to move it here.
http://memebase.com/2011/10/16/internet-memes-pushing-patrick-concerned-sloths-unite/
Thought this fit in here, as the discussion is about lack of reaction to things we disagree with.
This is one of the topics where I'll purposefully delude myself so as not to lose faith in the idea of Democracy altogether. It's sad (especially given my level of interest in 1770s society) to watch the dynamics of our political culture in action (though the books I've read about the 1770s are probably giving me rose colored glasses anyways). Your picture is depressingly true -- and I think it probably applies to much more than just "internet beliefs" as well.
Post by
MyTie
This is one of the topics where I'll purposefully delude myself so as not to lose faith in the idea of Democracy altogether.
So you are saying that
you
believe in Democracy? Interesting.
Post by
Fulgorater
I'm surprised no one has brought this up yet in the conversation (although perhaps I missed it)
Hayek vs Keynes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc
And I haven't seen any references to Ron Paul yet...
---------------------------------------------------------
and democracy is truly a scary thing. Thus why the USA was founded to be a Republic and not a Democracy. I cringed every time I here some talking head or politician spout about how great democracy is... they have no idea what they are speaking about.
Post by
Azazel
I find it ironic that America is the so-called "Land of the free", when it is one of the most judging and nationalistic countries in the world.
Post by
MyTie
and democracy is truly a scary thing. Thus why the USA was founded to be a Republic and not a Democracy. I cringed every time I here some talking head or politician spout about how great democracy is... they have no idea what they are speaking about.
I have been less and less supportive of full democracy ever since I started paying attention to the voting population. When
Alvin Greene
won over 27% of South Carolina voters, I lost quite a bit of faith in the system.
Post by
MyTie
I find it ironic that America is the so-called "Land of the free", when it is one of the most judging and nationalistic countries in the world.
I don't understand the irony. How is freedom inhibited by being judgmental or nationalistic. I'm not saying I agree with you that America is judgmental or nationalistic, but even if I did, I don't see how these concepts are mutually exclusive.
Post by
Fulgorater
You are free to be nationalistic, and also to be anti-nationalistic. Thus the Land of the free. But more importantly it is called land of the free because of the freedom the nation and its laws allow for the individual to make his own path and luck. The individual is solely responsible for his success or failure. Unfortunately this is no longer the case as government and big business/banking create an oligarchy and set thresholds and barriers into success and businesses.
Why is being judging detract from land of the free? Like MyTie said... I do not follow your logic...
And I don't like how you say "America" is "judgmental" I think the sample population you are using to be "America" is a bit skewed and biased away from the true population
Post by
Azazel
A perfect example is Christina Aguilera(spelling?) that sang doing some football game a few months ago. It was all over the news because she forgot the text. You might say it's historical and all that, and I follow you through that. But it was just a song, and I heard people even threatened to kill her.
Things like that are what I mean when I say judging.
Post by
Heckler
and democracy is truly a scary thing. Thus why the USA was founded to be a Republic and not a Democracy. I cringed every time I here some talking head or politician spout about how great democracy is... they have no idea what they are speaking about.
While it may not be a "pure" or "direct" Athenian democracy, the U.S. is most certainly a democracy, per at least one use of the word. Being a representative democracy and a constitutional republic doesn't negate the fact that the U.S. would certainly fall under the "Democracy" category if compared to, say Hereditary Monarchy.
A read of
The Federalist
gives a lot of insight into the reasons certain democratic forms and structures were preferred over others, definitely a fascinating set of documents. Some of the assumptions and reasoning of Hamilton/Madison agree with what we're talking about -- the People are governed more by Passion than Reason, and therefore their Power should not be supreme. However, even in the limited power the Constitution grants to the Voter, some of the assumptions they make about the political involvement and knowledge of the average citizen would probably overshoot today's culture -- we've definitely lost something in terms of respect for the fragility (and necessary care) of our chosen governmental form.
Post by
Squishalot
and democracy is truly a scary thing. Thus why the USA was founded to be a Republic and not a Democracy. I cringed every time I here some talking head or politician spout about how great democracy is... they have no idea what they are speaking about.
While it may not be a "pure" or "direct" Athenian democracy, the U.S. is most certainly a democracy, per at least one use of the word. Being a representative democracy and a constitutional republic doesn't negate the fact that the U.S. would certainly fall under the "Democracy" category if compared to, say Hereditary Monarchy.
What I actually find amusing is the cringing going on in the Western world at the news that after the UN helped topple Gaddafi and installed democracy, the Libyan people are intending to base their new legal system on Sharia law.
Post by
Heckler
What I actually find amusing is the cringing going on in the Western world at the news that after the UN helped topple Gaddafi and installed democracy, the Libyan people are intending to base their new legal system on Sharia law.
Maybe the two concepts aren't mutually exclusive... In fact, I remember a conversation some time ago where someone said the most healthy thing that could happen to Islam as a whole would be a large scale modernizing reformation (much like Christianity has had in the past). Maybe trying to "mash up" democratic ideals with Islamic law could lead to a change in what "modern" Islamic law is all about, or at least take it a step in the "right" direction.
Whatever the Libyans do, I just hope they do it themselves without too much outside interference or "assistance." I don't think democratic principles can't be "forced" into place, they require certain things from the population -- namely, instituting them on themselves through democratic action, spontaneously from within. If they choose, as a people, to institute Sharia law on themselves, then in all likelihood a democratic form forced from without would ultimately have failed anyways.
I'll just try to stay hopeful that the new government is more progressive than the old, for the Libyans sake -- and that the entire episode moves the world in the right direction, even if only slightly.
Post by
gamerunknown
While it's not related to the Occupy Wall Street protest, the Libyan revolution shows similarities to the Iranian revolution. In the Iranian revolution, the rebels constituted a coalition of various groups including Communists, democrats and the Islamic forces. The Islamic forces held superior arms but not larger numbers from what a friend tells me and promised free elections once the Shah was exiled. Once the Shah was exiled, the Communists and vocal opponents of a theocratic state were executed. Should something similar occur in Libya, the US won't bat an eyelid unless the new government is hostile to US economic interests (very unlikely, but they'd probably intervene even if a government was democratically elected and hostile to the US: they imposed the harshest sanctions on Palestine after Palestinians elected Hamas democratically).
Having laws based on Islam isn't a bar to democratic elections - in fact, some populations would protest any government that opposed Sharia (Arabic for "law", so Sharia law is a bit redundant) from my understanding. At the moment the democratic Afghani government enforces the death penalty for apostasy.
On topic though: I believe in direct democracy. In all instances where individuals have claimed greater political knowledge than the aggregate of the population, they've proven to be somewhere on the scale of incompetent to despotic. In every instance where the question of democracy arises, when an individual desires a reduction in democracy, it's very rarely their own rights they're abnegating, it's those of others.
If it really is the case that certain things are too arcane for the population to grasp, then the show of putting them on a platform is a farce. The people that are competent to judge on such issues should be given fixed positions and allowed to engage in a dialectic in order to establish the most efficient way of resolving problems, with no interference from the ignorant population. Who would determine these individuals? Well, the enlightened individuals would probably be the most qualified to say. After all, democracy really is tremendously inefficient. My friend said that in an enlightened Muslim state, four of the smartest imams (intelligent and moral, see) are appointed and they select from about five candidates from one party. Very swift, no potential for abuses of power, no leeway for an independent press or empathy to influence their decision. Gaddafi recognised the central fact about the terrible cost of democracy: holding elections and producing enough propaganda to ensure one's seat was safe is vastly more costly than just torturing and murdering one's political opponents. I certainly don't think that Libya could have ascended to be the most developed country in Africa without his innovation in that regard.
One can look at less anomalous instances of "appropriate" barriers to entry to voting as well. Land owners, generally regarded as more intelligent, less prone to passion, more industrious and knowledgeable about business matters were not so naive to believe in the pursuit of happiness for all. They'd studied Plato, they knew some men were born of clay (and their complexion suitably earthy!) and were destined to serve their silver masters. Then of course there was the issue of the fairer sex that had to campaign endlessly, achieving enfranchisement decades before the passing of the Equal Rights Act.
So one has to consider that when the framers are talking about the general public being easily swayed by passions, they didn't even account for the hideous lapses into further democracy America has succumbed to.
Post by
Squishalot
Maybe the two concepts aren't mutually exclusive...
Heckler, you just fell into the same trap as everybody else. They're not mutually exclusive. The democratic process is separated from the laws that are put in place, provided that the lawmakers and their authority have been determined constitutionally.
Post by
Heckler
Heckler, you just fell into the same trap as everybody else. They're not mutually exclusive. The democratic process is separated from the laws that are put in place, provided that the lawmakers and their authority have been determined constitutionally.
Well it was a response to a few papers I've read on the subject where people argue about the mutual exclusivity of democratic ideals and Islamic law. Many say they're not, many say they are. This is where context comes in with the term "democracy," the concepts of equality and freedom are inextricably linked with the context I was referring to. A democratic government who votes that only men have the power to vote, for example, is not following these democratic principles. Or one that grants rights to one segment of the population which are not granted to others (Men vs. Women in Iran, or Homosexuals vs. Heterosexuals in America).
It could easily be argued that no Nation lives up to these ideals of democracy perfectly, that's what I meant by "a step in the right direction" -- the direction of freedom and equality, which forms the basis for democratic systems. I didn't simply mean creating a system of laws through constitutional authority granted by some definition of popular sovereignty; I don't think that's a sufficient description of democracy.
. . . *snip* . . .
Nice post gamer, 10/10.
The issue of direct democracy is interesting. Ballot initiatives and referendums are good examples of direct democracy in action. It's actually pretty startling how easy it is to amend a State constitution via an initiative (Proposition 8, for example) -- gather enough signatures and then get 50% of the vote and voila, Constitution amended.
My own misgivings with direct democracy are not so much in the
inability
of the populace to grasp the necessary concepts, it's in the
unwillingness
or
disinterestedness
of the populace. This leaves them vulnerable to manipulation by faction, and can give a lot of power to a small group which says the right things to sway the disinterested voter (example again, Proposition 8). The natural protection against this "apathy" was originally self-interest. In the day when the
Union
was considered a delicate thing ready to collapse at a moment's notice, the danger of apathy was immediately apparent, and through self-interest alone the American populace was motivated to stay involved.
. . . wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.
Today... it seems like people are much more worried about other things. Whether that's feeding themselves, keeping a roof over their heads, remembering to TiVo the football game, who won Dancing with the Stars, the best ways to avoid taxation, or anything else; it feels as though people have lost the veneration of how truly remarkable the history of America is. It gets lost in myth and folklore, when the factual history is infinitely more impressive.
It probably sounds like I'm saying "people better wake up, or this whole government might fall under the control of some nefarious agent" à la Glenn Beck -- but in less end-of-the-world way, that's already happened with corporate influence on lawmakers and regulations. That's what makes OWS so intriguing to me: from a "first principles" viewpoint, it really seems like a truly democratic response to widespread problems throughout our culture. As Jefferson said, things have gone so far wrong as to attract the People's notice, and the People will set things right. That's why I wish they were doing more than just standing in the park. But standing in the park is more than I'm doing, and it's still getting peoples attention, and it's still starting conversations -- so I'm glad they're doing something.
Post by
MyTie
On topic though: I believe in direct democracy. In all instances where individuals have claimed greater political knowledge than the aggregate of the population, they've proven to be somewhere on the scale of incompetent to despotic. In every instance where someone desires a reduction in democracy, it's very rarely their own rights they're abnegating, it's those of others.
Could there be some sort of political knowledge test that must be taken to work as a standard qualifier to participate in elections?
Post by
MyTie
Today... it seems like people are much more worried about other things. Whether that's feeding themselves, keeping a roof over their heads, remembering to TiVo the football game, who won Dancing with the Stars, the best ways to avoid taxation, or anything else; it feels as though people have lost the veneration of how truly remarkable the history of America is. It gets lost in myth and folklore, when the factual history is infinitely more impressive.The best way to avoid taxation? What sections of the population were you referring to?It probably sounds like I'm saying "people better wake up, or this whole government might fall under the control of some nefarious agent" à la Glenn Beck -- but in less end-of-the-world way, that's already happened with corporate influence on lawmakers and regulations. That's what makes OWS so intriguing to me: from a "first principles" viewpoint, it really seems like a truly democratic response to widespread problems throughout our culture. As Jefferson said, things have gone so far wrong as to attract the People's notice, and the People will set things right. That's why I wish they were doing more than just standing in the park. But standing in the park is more than I'm doing, and it's still getting peoples attention, and it's still starting conversations -- so I'm glad they're doing something.What kinds of things would you suggest they do?
Post by
Jubilee
The best way to avoid taxation? What sections of the population were you referring to?
*raises hand*
Post by
gamerunknown
Well, I think discussing issues is a viable way of achieving results. At it's best, conversation changes the way people view things: thoughts influence actions and change is accomplished. Even an argument one doesn't agree with can change the conversation. For example, the framing of abortion as "pro-choice" or "pro-life" can very quickly create distinctions when people may have a more nuanced view.
Personally I am a little wary of the protest as I think their goals are a little nebulous. On one hand, it may be better than having a charismatic central figure that ends up dividing support and entrenching the movement into a minor political niche, but on the other, it could be as general as holding a sign saying "down with this sort of thing". I'd agree that the system needs to change, but I'm not sure that the majority of the country would agree with the ways in which I think it should change and I admit I haven't given thought to the precise wording of every bill I'd pass if I had the chance, nor to the consequences on every sector of the population. I think the democratic process should be sufficient to accommodate such things and if the Ox produces petitions, there's a chance I'd endorse them.
I do agree that there's a declining rate of participation in politics, at least in England and the US. I'd normally contend that there is a positive trend in the population and that the general public isn't as dull as one might assume, but in this case statistics bears out the fact that a lower percentage of the population votes in each election. In fact, we had a poster in our politics class pointing out that more people voted in the Pop Idol finals than in the local council elections or something.
There are a few different ways of interpreting that set of data though. Two radically different approaches would be that either the people are generally content: there has been a gradual shift towards the centre from both parties, with the Conservative parties "big society" idea in the UK or the Labour party dropping its commitment to nationalisation. The complete opposite would be that the population are actually fed up with the stagnation of the major parties and the fact that the first past the post system prevents minority views from being aired and are thus abstaining from the broken electoral machine.
One method of combating this (and raising some revenue) would be to fine all eligible able-bodied people that do not vote (excluding if they abstain). Australia utilises this model and they have turnout rates among the highest in the world as far as I'm aware. Apart from North Korea's 220% turnout or whatever it was...
This doesn't negate the problem of source and quality of information for the average voter, but that problem is extant with representative or direct democracy. In fact, under direct democracy, the propagandists have to work particularly hard throughout the year for every referendum rather than concentrating their efforts every four years or so.
One area where the general population was more enlightened than I thought is over the issue of the death penalty. I remember reading about polls that showed the majority of the UK was in favour of the death penalty when I was younger, so I assumed that to be the case... However, after looking on the direct gov website, I noticed there were two competing e-petitions. The first was in favour of re-establishing the death penalty with 20k votes and the second in favour of maintaining its ban it with 30k - needless to say, I was rather pleased.
Edit:
Could there be some sort of political knowledge test that must be taken to work as a standard qualifier to participate in elections?
I don't think so after the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I mean, on a theoretical level I might support a test that establishes whether the voter has a connection with reality, but depending on who writes and arbitrates the test, it could very easily be employed (especially selectively) for ulterior purposes. I wouldn't trust anyone to write a completely neutral test, not even those I greatly admire. I'd be suspicious of my own ability to write such a test. I suppose that'd serve as a good criticism of the leading questions of referendums, though ratification amends both issues to a degree.
Even over something as relatively innocuous as intelligence, the possibility for intergroup discrimination and establishing an underclass is too risky in my opinion.
Post by
MyTie
I don't think so after the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I mean, on a theoretical level I might support a test that establishes whether the voter has a connection with reality, but depending on who writes and arbitrates the test, it could very easily be employed (especially selectively) for ulterior purposes. I wouldn't trust anyone to write a completely neutral test, not even those I greatly admire. I'd be suspicious of my own ability to write such a test. I suppose that'd serve as a good criticism of the leading questions of referendums, though ratification amends both issues to a degree.
Even over something as relatively innocuous as intelligence, the possibility for intergroup discrimination and establishing an underclass is too risky in my opinion.
1) Who is the current president of the United States?
A) Newt Gingrich
B) Osama Bin-laden
C) Barack Obama
D) Bill Clinton
2) Who is the current US secretary of state?
A) Janet Napolitano
B) Hillary Clinton
C) Barack Obama
D) Michelle Obama
3) How many states are in the United States of America
A) 50
B) 13
C) 51, including Guam
D) Barack Obama
4) How many senators can each state elect to the US senate?
A) 1
B) 2
C) 13
D) Barack Obama
5) Who was the second president of the United States?
A) George Washington
B) Thomas Jefferson
C) John Adams
D) Barack Obama
People must answer all 5 questions correctly to vote. In my opinion, this wouldn't be biased.
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