Democracy

[poliphilo]

We carry on in the West as if Democracy were an absolute value- and use it to justify most of our knaveries abroad- but few of us really believe in it.

Because we know for a fact the Demos is a fool and not to be trusted. After all large sections of it don't think like us and friends.

Therefore we're always trying to limit it and hedge it round. Votes for prisoners? Oh no! Votes for teenagers? Don't be silly! Votes for women? Damn, we already let that one through!

Here, for example, is this huge fuss going on about the Labour leadership election. Ed Miliband, in his wonkiness, decided he wanted to make it more democrat by letting anyone apply for a vote. At the time this seemed like a good idea. We all love democracy in the abstract, just not how it works. And now, oh dear, we've discovered that all sorts of unsuitable people with unsuitable views are entering the polling booth.

Damn you, Demos and your tricky ways!. Why won't you play nice?

Harriet Harman has said she tried to cancel the election to give her time to rewrite the rules to stop the unsuitable people voting for unsuitable candidates for unsuitable reasons. but the lawyers said she couldn't.

(We all hate lawyers- and how they complicate our lives- but fundamentally they're a damn good thing. Good for democracy, in fact.)

Comments

[matrixmann]

I think one thing which Democracy already has proven to be "insufficient" for is when big issues hit the state. Don't even think about war, be it something like natural disasters or the current stream of people coming from the Middle East and Africa.
Okay, the latter one could say "people don't get even asked at all", but one can see how the states in EU already manage those endless streams and one can imagine in between what would be if states would ask their people a national referendum. Democracy on its own proves to be too slow for managing things like this.
Sometimes there are people needed in deciding positions which can develop a plan with a large extent and also induce it to be executed.
In that aspect you can claim "Democracy works in peaceful times, but if crisis is on, it is like as unsuitable as letting people fight over the last remaining food".
...Think I once wrote something myself about it. (Found it: http://matrixmann.livejournal.com/140848.html)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You have a point.

When Britain faced it's last great crisis- in the Second World War- it effectively suspended democracy and handed dictatorial powers to Winston Churchill. At the end of the war- crisis over- democracy reasserted itself and gave Churchill "the order of the boot".

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Democracy is, at its core, the process that allows for power to change hands bloodlessly.

We have that. And that's a very good thing.