The Failure of Democracy

[TheDragonKnight]

Drop your illusions and happy thoughts and lets face facts be it USA or Canada, our governmets dont work, at least not the way they are supposed to, and as a side effect of this, neither does the UN, its largely a farce now, thanks to the United States actions in the middle east.

on paper, our governmental structures were inspired, brilliant, and the ideal forms to use, a sturcture immune to corruption. It would be perfect. i governemnt run for the people, answerable to the people, communisim was unrealistic but this, this would work.

But someting happened, People stopped caring, beacuracy set in, the government slowly gained more and more power, nobody cried out, noone said "hey! your not allowed to do that."

now we have monolithic structures that go through the motions of democracy but nolong follow its own rules.

The biggest and easiest example to point to is the US system, under a supposedly republican govenment, has its election system controled by a cadre of eletiest (The elcetorial college). A republic stands for a minimal level of government control, yet teh government keeps gaining more and more power. Canada has its own issues, we simply receive less press about it (lucky us)

Governments are nolonger answerable to us, they have gained too much power, lone voices are ignored, orginazed groups are marginligzed.

in days gone by aremed rebellion was possilbe, if your leaders weer fucking up bad enough you kiced them out (and 300 years ago this was a credible threat) but today what can civillans do about abrams tanks? super sonic fighter jets, and long range missles?

And as our governemnt doesnt answer to us anymore we are subjected to more and more exploitation, politicals sit on 6 figure incomes, and then complain that the government cant run essential services anymore becasue of budget probelms. How much extra cash do you think teh government could come up with if every governemt employee who made over 100k a year too a 10% pay cut?.

We have evolved a new form of government it involves electing serial dictators whos only gaol is their own agendas (when is the last time you remeber a politican keeping his election campagine promises?. Who was teh dumb shit who thought the price of hydro whould go down by privitizing it? (its basicly tripled) think his dumb ass got fired? doubt it.

im not sure what to name this new form, "serial diticator-ship" smmes kind of a mouth full, however its essentialy what we have

on a lighter note, i think the french and british would agree here, after all when they were ruled by monarchs and dictators they had empires, now under a democratic form the british empire has dwindled to less than a 10th its former side, and the french, well there french, EVERYBODY makes french jokes now.

How the mightly have fallen.

[Astrolounge]

I think the problem is that its gotten to the point where a politician is doing fine until thier caught in bed with a dead woman, a live boy, or... Pizza, apparently.

[BAMAToNE]

Heh, I don't really want to go point by point on this one. Suffice to say, I think TDK is wrong. We may not be perfect, but it's the best form of government available. And the U.N. was irrelevant way before the U.S. took any military action in Iraq. Way before.

[TheDragonKnight]

hmm well theres faults with any form of government i suppose, and i have to agree the UN was a joke before bush trampleded over it.

our goveremnt has become far too large, therse many comitties sumcomitties and comissions coming out of our pockets that we dont need, too many bueracratic postions that are tenured.

i think we need to have alot more of these positions eliminated (or at last given smaller pay checks, poor baby can only afford one benz now?)

the idea is supposed to be that our governemnt is answerable to us, well lets make it tru for moer of those bastards, we barealy elect more than a couple dozen people to their officers right now, i think if more people were depened on the peoples votes to say in office we woundt see as much bullshit.

When we had hydro privitized we didnt vote on it, the governemnt in pwoer simply decided for us, somehow i think if that was their party platform during election they woudlnt have gotten in. "were going to hand one of the essential public services over to a bunch of money grubbing corporations, becasue it will keep the price down." and if you fell for that one ive got some real estate in brooklyn to sell you.

[SeymourGuado]

Drop your illusions and happy thoughts and lets face facts be it USA or Canada, our governmets dont work, at least not the way they are supposed to, and as a side effect of this, neither does the UN, its largely a farce now, thanks to the United States actions in the middle east.


It was not the US that was at fault. Also the UN was useless way before any middle east policy, if things were left to the UN saddam would still be being pandered to and the same goes for the rest. The UN talks too much and never does anything. In dafur for instance it has sat back whilst genocide occurs....it truly is useless.

On democracy it certainly does work to a large extent, it is a much better substitute to a dictatorship let's face it. Proportional representation however is the way forward, here in england we have a useless "first past the post" system, it is undemocratic.

In any case a half-free socirty is better than what iraq had under saddam

Seifer Almasy

[bjp4444]

The UN talks too much and never does anything. In dafur for instance it has sat back whilst genocide occurs....it truly is useless.

Well, the US claimed to go into Iraq [well, at least ONE of the ever changing reasons] to stop the killing and to protect human rights. We had to go in and save the people from the atrocities [after the WMD magically dissapeared]. Yet, when one brings up Sudan to the administration, they feel it is a problem best one left to be solved by the Sudanese themselves. Huh?

It would seem to me if you are going to claim one thing as suitable invasion grounds for one country, then it should apply to another in the same siuation. I mean, even if we did SOMETHING, I could appreciate it since I know the military is already overexpended, but to do nothing, to just sit there and say, "Hey keep at those peace talks, you're doing great!"? Inexcusable, at least IMO.

-bjp

[SeymourGuado]

I agree, its time the UN had an overhaul so that it can deal with things through action, military if necessary rather than sitting there with kofi Annan grinning

Seifer Almasy

[Galthol]

"I'm note really at libratiy to say this, but, I have become part of a small plot to revamp the world's government's and institue a new way of doing things, I movement is small and won't take full effect intill it's founding members are long dead. BUT IT WILL WORK AND THE WORLD WILL REACH A TYPE OF UTOPIA.

[Astrolounge]

Mass indescriminate killing of every human being on the planet?
Mutated Smallpox scare?
Am I close?

[Locke]

Planting time bombs that are set to go off around various government buildings 20 years after you "founding members" are dead maybe?

Either that or waiting for time to heal all things, and therefor it just means you'll do like the UN and sit and talk. And talk. And talk. The slap someones wrist and threaten things in the basement of whatever house you decide to use as you secret base.

Or, you got the whole thing out of a book. Possibly brave new world, but it's been ages since I've read it (though I know you guys are reading it in school).

[Galthol]

No, think more ....Philosophicaly.

[TheDragonKnight]

hello, folks, we have a topic here, and this is the SERIOUS discussion section, wandering off topic and making bad jokes is really not acceptable, try to be (who would have thought) serious! about this please.

[jetblue]

Practicing democracy needs to be in conjunction with worship of the gods the way it was intended. Using the single god or no god changes it drastically.
The gods rule over our destiny's but we rule over ourselves. You can only do this if you fear and respect the gods. ANd there were slaves and stuff and the warrior class,and sacrifices must be made to the 12 and other translations that I cant remember right now.
Even the gods vote and had jury's over man.




pay no attention,been up at the pc catching up. Want to close eye's but cant.

[TheDragonKnight]

uhh jet? thats democracy, not theocracy(sp?) hmmm me thinks you need either more coffee or sleep.

[Doreagarde]

I can agree with jetblue, in a way. The Founding Fathers who wrote the Constiution did state that we were to be one nation, under God (I know that's from the Pledge of Alliegance, but they all had the same idea...)), and you have to admit, God has some pretty good ideas on how to run the place (e.g. Don't kill each other, keep your hands off your neighbour's wife, etc.). However, the situation you describe, jetblue, sounds like more of a theocracy, like TDK said.

As for the Failure of Democracy, I don't think it was much of a democracy in the first place. I think that the electoral college system and the division of the political system into three equal parts (President, Congress, Supreme Court) are engineered to aid in the representation of minority groups. That doesn't sound like true democracy to me. I think that this is what the Founding Fathers intended; that everyone's voice be heard, no matter how unpopular their standing. This wouldn't mean they're all reasonable voices, but at least they get their say.

Of course the system would be flawed, though. If not a possible error in calculation by the Founding Fathers, then the flaws of humanity would seep their way into the system. Good people do not need laws, and the morally challenged render them useless. I'm not saying that America is rancid with corruption... aloud... but it would only take a few to ruin it for everybody. Canada tried to correct some of these flaws with the Parliament and the Legislave Assembly, but, personally speaking, Canadian Politicians are dicks.

However, I'm just a lowly Canadian fresh out of High School, and I am very aware that my ideals could use adjusting. Keep those posts coming, guys; this is a good one!

[TheDragonKnight]

ive recently been shown a very nice site where among other things you can get the actual offical text of the patriot act, and it scares me, i realise that i harp on it rather alot, however that doesnt change anything, it only scares me more.

i agree the system is imprefect any system will be, thats a given but, if the patriot act doesnt scare you you might try checking out ADVANCE i think it was, either way VERY eduactaional site for americans

http://thomas.loc.gov/

[Pezito]

Interesting topic indeed. :) Just wanted to point that the past British and French empires being gone doesn't look as a bad thing to me - at all. I dislike this imperialist point of view, and I don't think our empires did any good through the world except to us... Basically it was just "conquer a place / trust their resources / force our culture into them / make them weaker as we get richer / think about conquering next place". :wonder: Of course, one can wonder what the world would be if we hadn't done so... I mean, without the British and French fighting over some newly found continent, there would be no USA today. ;)

What has to be remembered of those past empires is that they led to great injustice, lots of wars (which of course were fought by the people, not the great men whose name remains in history books), and they left a lot of countries ravaged. But then, our current countries and governments were built thanks to these empires... So...

All I can say is that uniting the world under a single banner is pure utopy, and nobody will ever achieve that - which doesn't mean the world can't be united and countries work together ! Just, not all under the same rule. And this can but lead to conflicts of opinions, but diplomacy is often more effective than war... And it leaves less harsh feelings of revenge in people's minds (unless they value war more than compassion).

Politics are changing here too as we're continuing the construction of Europe, and it causes a lot of thinking and debating. And so far, I think people are divided because all can see what you describe as "the failure of democracy" and they would like to improve the american system ; to keep its good sides and try to fix it flaws. But of course it ain't easy, of course people come up with very different propositions on how to do better, and it takes lots of talking...

To make a long story short, I think it's hard to try and build bigger and more efficient "empires" (= groups of nations) ; it's common fact that the bigger a company grows, the less efficient it becomes (same thing for living organisms). That doesn't mean it becomes the less efficient in comparison to others, but that its efficiency grows inversely proportional to its size. Governments are the same.

Time even shows that the more influent a government grows, the less the various parties in it will take strongly oriented decisions. Politicians tend to get confined in their "We, the Great" kind of world, and the differences between them smooth out as they all move towards some sort of community where nobody wants anything to change *. You can observe this kind of behavior in today's governments, when Democrats and Republicans aren't as opposed as they used to, and a left-side party sometimes come up with right-side laws while the opposite party does the inverse.

*Who wants drastic changes ? The unhappy. Who's unhappy ? The people. Are influent politicians unhappy ? No. So they don't work for drastic changes.

Hrm, I'll stop now. XD

[TheDragonKnight]

go pez!

prehaps i should add to teh topic line (and the subsequent rise of the beauracrat)

to my way of thinking it is the beauracrat who has ruined our government, it is the beauracrat who clogs teh ranks and fills the payrolls, and to me the worst part is these beauracrats who head up the comitties who make the decessions, we didnt elect these people, they can work soley in their own intests noone will kick them out at the next election, weather they are republican, democrat, consertave, liberal or NDP, regardless of whos in office they stay.

they are teh reason a governemnt needs to spend billions on paychecks alone tehy are the people who are runing it. a politican fior all his failings gets fired if we dont like him, but the beauracrat stays.

[oneforthelord]

Yet the system can't function that well without the bureaucrats and the bureaucracy. Sure, you can cut them down a little, but eventually you'd need more bureaucrats to run the bureaucracy simply because the volume of information being processed and transferred is very large. If you kick them out you'd risk having anarchy because decisions won't get made and actions won't happen with sufficient information.

On the British and French empires, I agree that mass exploitation did occur in many countries. I myself live in Malaysia and Singapore, both former colonies of the British Empire. Yet I myself see that we benefited a lot from being under the British. Our judicial system, education system, system of government, labor laws, and many other things are a result of that colonization. Without it both countries would be quite backward.

What I want to say about democracy is this: Neither the US nor any other country in existence practices the original form of democracy. It has undergone localization to suit the needs of the current government.

[Marona]

don't all politics suck?man they should select the most powerful and smartest...heheh like me!

what?it would work...would it?

[SeymourGuado]

Gonna add my piece to this in the light of the London Bombings which were so obviously going to happen.

Firstly I would like to say to the Muslim association of britain, pick up and get out of my country.

Secondly to Blair, stop the lies and tell the truth about Islam.

Thirdly, democracy won't fail as long as we have someone like Bush in power. Sadly he too liberalises alot of the goings on in Islam.

Thanks to the weak and ineffecyive justice system in this country this tragedy will happen again. I live here so I am best equiped to judge what is happening here. If we took strong action like executing these sick little bastards (i.e. the IRA (Irish terrorists) as well as jihadists) we would have less of a problem....

Sadly my country is a LAUGHING STOCK. It is a free-for-all when it comes to criminal before victims. Liberals will be out in force to stop any kind of effective measure but they won't stop the riots we will now have thanks to their barmy polices.

They will also not stop another attack as they are all for the criminal as said. We need to wake up and deal with this problem outright.

No more wishy washy liberalism, no more wishy washy do-gooders, no more bullshit.

I leave it at that and I will not be back to add to this at all.

This is what I think of Islam and all those against free speech:
http://www.bnp.org.uk/news_detail.php?newsId=380

they can kiss my arse.

I leave it at that and I will not be back to add to this at all.

Seifer Almasy

[Geosgaeno]

a few things i would like to say about that, but i wont because it will have repercussions on me.

basically Muslims etc were to blame again, and it has to stop NOW Blair. and i have a feeling that Manchester is next as it has a loads of ethnic minorities around or should i say majorities.

Enough said really, but when will Blair knuckle down and sort things out, i saw the state on that bus they blew and it was BAD, and kings cross will be damaged for a while, RIP for those 37 dead (and probably more tomorrow), and good luck to those recovering, yet again Terrorism shows its never going to be gone.

[Kilu]

I'm closing this before it gets out of hand. You all know it would if it remained open. We have seen it happen before, I have no doubts that it would happen again.