I have some new thoughts today concerning where the modern emphasis on democracy comes from. Why have so many states decided to become democracies, and why do so many people consider all alternative governments unsuitable? There’s no news story to link you to, no current events connection, this post is just from my mind to yours, dear reader. So let’s get started.
Category: Pure Theory
Concerning the sophiarchist system of government, its features and facets, and arguments in its favour.
Pathological British Ignorance
A new survey for the Royal Statistical Society reveals tremendous public ignorance in the United Kingdom about basic political facts. These facts are not matters of mere political trivia (i.e. “who is the current home secretary?”). They are facts the ignorance of which actively misleads British citizens into holding harmful political views, electing harmful governments, and contributing to one another’s mutual malaise.
Prop 8 and Direct Democracy
I ran across an interesting piece today, in which the author, Joshua Spivak, notes that by declaring that the supporters of Prop 8 (the proposition in California which forbid same-sex marriage) did not have legal standing to sue in its defense, the Supreme Court has made direct democracy through propositions and referendums much more difficult to defend. Implicitly assumed in the piece is that direct democracy is an ideal worth defending, and that the Prop 8 decisions amounts to a dangerous precedent. Today I intend to dispute that assumption.
The Biasing Effects of Personal Experience
One of the most common assumptions around is the notion that the only way to truly understand something is to be part of it. It is said that the best way to learn about life is to live it. This idea has tremendous influence–it causes method actors to attempt to directly experience what their characters experience, it causes people to go on trips or to do things purely for “the experience”, and most importantly, it has tremendous influence over how people think about politics, both for the left and for the right. The left scolds well-off politicians, who are assumed to have no conception of what it means to be poor and to suffer. The right scolds young people and ivory tower academics for not directly experiencing the welfare systems they praise, or the private systems they denigrate. There is a kernel of truth in both criticisms, but that’s about it.
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Tomas Young’s Iraq War Letter
So today there’s an open letter going around the internet from a fellow by the name of Tomas Young directed toward George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Young is terminally ill and has chosen to parlay that into an opportunity to vent his anger at Bush and Cheney over the feckless war they waged in Iraq. Having myself been opposed to the Iraq War as early as 2002 (and yes, I was quite young to be in opposition), I agree with some of what Young has to say, but I think he makes a common mistake in conflating two contradictory responses to the war.
Benjamin Studebaker 