[Grovenet] New to me.

[David Morelli]

Carol,

Valid points.  In many cases the winners of a democratic election are  
the people who got the most votes.  In many cases a large percentage  
of the possible voters did cast their votes.  In many cases the votes  
were freely cast and they were accurately counted.  And still the  
winner is someone who the United States does not wish to recognize.   
At least once, the United States could see the clear front runner,  
and acted to prevent an election.

Right now there is a strong resurgence of fundamental religious  
fervor in the world.  We see it here in the politics of this country,  
and we see it in the politics of North Africa, and the muslim  
nations.  Those with strong religious ideals are working to take  
control of their political machinery and through government action,  
they are working to set their national policy to match their  
religious perspective.  Public establishment of religion, placing  
science under religious control, corporal punishment, religious tests  
for public benefits, women's role, public funding of church schools,  
enforced orthodoxy, wearing the veil, and basing civil legislation  
upon God's words are common items in nations moving toward a  
fundamentalist regime.  And in many of those nations, the majority  
may actually want to replace a pluralistic secular government with a  
religious theocracy.

Both situations work against the long term survival of secular  
democracies.

David


On Aug 2, 2006, at 2:10 PM, Carol Morgan wrote:

> I am not really sure that we don't want democracy for other  
> countries, at least in any kind of hypocritical kind of posture.   
> We are wary of the aspects of majority rule that makes government  
> volatile in the same way that we limit it in our own country, such  
> as not wanting to chuck the electoral system, making it necessary  
> for candidates to campaign in only LA, NYC and Chicago.
>
> It is not really too hard to see limitations of elected leaders  
> chosen by countries that do not have many of the fundamental  
> personal liberties that make a vote equal to an informed product of  
> a free public, such as a free press, women feeling safe to vote  
> differently than they are told, theocratic interference, etc.
>
> So when a country (or at least whatever mouthpiece ends up getting  
> through to us) with these kind of limitations voices the  
> oxymoronic   wish to be free to vote in tyrannical or theocratic  
> dictators if they please, there is an obvious problem, and any  
> democratic-like reforms implemented in them will last about five  
> minutes.  They do need a bit of protection from more mature  
> 'republics' or whatever, or any movement in that direction will be  
> futile, until some of the important civil liberties mentioned are  
> also included to ensure their vote means anything more than  
> dictatorial influences in the area disguising themselves as votes.
>
> And yes I do believe that there should be a limit on the amount of  
> influence an elected official is granted, even if the people decide  
> they want to grant it.  It is written into our government in many  
> forms that one branch will not be entitled to grab power even with  
> permission.  That would be one of the supposed limits on  
> 'democracy' we have imposed on ourselves to protect not just the  
> amount of popular influence on government but its longevity, and  
> both of them are important.  It is not really any kind of  
> contradiction, just a difficult tradeoff that has resulted in a  
> good deal of long-lived personal liberty that I feel other  
> countries are successful to the extent that they imitate it.
>
> Even the parliamentary governments you mention have more limits on  
> personal freedom that make it frustrating for those who live there  
> in that they hamper their people economically and restrict free  
> press.  France has very little challenge to the state run media,  
> and if you are born dirt poor white trash I was you will pretty  
> much stay that way, in what can be close to a caste system.  I was  
> lucky to get born here so that even a person whose parents never  
> gave them a dollar can go to school and do reasonably well and turn  
> their life into a raging success.  I would certainly never be able  
> to go to France or Britain for opportunity, at least before I got  
> my education and foothold here, like happens the other way around  
> from just about every other country in the world.
>
> Yes we often support those countries because they have tended to  
> mimic some aspects of our civil rights (not always with an official  
> bill of rights or anything) and capitalist-friendly attitudes (with  
> many more limitations), but the extent to which they differ  
> explains their limitation, like France's 10 percent unemployment  
> rate to our 4, because they are unwilling to give up working 30 hrs/ 
> 30 weeks.  This situation will deteriorate while ours improves and  
> the countries will continue to go their various ways.  I am glad I  
> am on board on this ship.
>
> Now I have only touched one of your points, the apparent  
> unwillingness for the US to accept a country's apparently freely  
> elected leader.  Israel of course has a whole nother reason not to  
> accept a leader who wants to be at all sympathetic to wiping their  
> tiny population off the earth, and I don't really have much to say  
> about that.  It seems most people have made their minds up about  
> whether or not they have a right to defend themselves and I am  
> certainly not going to influence them!  But 90 percent of the  
> Israeli population wishes to, as I suppose a similar percentage of  
> us would if we had missiles landing in our living rooms, so that  
> would be quite a clearly cut democratic decision for them to make.
>