Day: May 17, 2010

What Is The Big Deal?

And the winner is……….Rima Fakih…Miss Michigan

Did you hear the news?  An Arab-American won the Miss USA pageant…and now the crap begins….while the news should be that a beautiful, intelligent woman won the pageant on her abilities as a runway model and able to chew gum and walk at the same time…but instead of giving this woman her due, after all she has a BA in economics and is a perfect example of what America stands for, the “lame” stream media (a Palin term that someone wrote for her) is focusing on the answer that Miss Oklahoma gave to the question about Arizona’s new law……

Basically, they are saying that her answer to the bill thing was unpopular and for that reason she lost the contest…….she replied to the Law:

“I’m a huge believer in states’ rights. I think that’s what’s so wonderful about America,” Woolard said. “So I think it’s perfectly fine for Arizona to create that law.”

She has an opinion and voiced it…..I am not saying that she was wrong, only that it is being used as an excuse for her losing to Miss Michigan……they are saying that her answer was a trap akin to the one set last year for Miss “whoever” and her views on same sex marriages…..on that point, she was NOT wrong in her answer and it should have NEVER been a news story…..

Back to Miss Michigan……does politics play a part in the judging?  Only the judges can answer that….but the media is making it so…not the contestants.  Instead of giving Miss Fakih her time in the spotlight….the media is looking for something dark and sinister….

All we need to know is that she is 24, a grad of U of Michigan in economics, beautiful and a winner……

Come people….give it a rest…not everything is a left wing plot!

In The Eyes Of The Beholder

Inkwell Institute

Subject:  Democracy/Political Theory

Paper #15

Democracy is a word that is used liberally these days…all sides of the political spectrum seems to think they have a monopoly on what it is and how we get it…..I do not mind a closed mind but these most people have closed theirs and boarded up….in other words…they have NO idea what they are talking about….why?….because they will not accept a rational exchange of views……that then makes it a moronocracy not a democracy…..and a democracy may not mean the same thing as you mean when you use the word….even Aristotle thought democracy was a bad idea, he considered it to be “leadership by the stupid, who make unrealizable promises to the ignorant”…that sounds more like our US Congress!

But these days it is in vogue…everybody wants to live in a democracy….but what does it all mean?

Liberals understand it in individualist terms as consent expressed through the ballot box, democracy being equated to regular and competitive elections.  Democracy constrains the abuse of power, it must always be conducted within the constitutional framework in order to avoid majoritarian tyranny.

Conservatives endorse liberal-democratic rule with exceptions like the need to protect property and traditional institutions from the untutored will of “the many”.  The New Right has linked electoral democracy to the problems of over-government and economic stagnation.

Socialists traditionally endorse a form of radical democracy that at its basis is a form of popular participation in the governance of the people…They desire to bring the economic activity under the thumb of government and dis miss modern liberal democracy as just an extension of capitalism.

Anarchists endorse a direct democracy and call for a continuing popular participation and a radical decentralization.  They see electoral or representative democracy as a facade to hide the fact of elite domination of the masses.

Fascists embrace democracy, but a totalitarian democracy that holds that a genuine democracy is an absolute dictatorship, where the leader monopolizes ideology and is the sole person that can articulate the interests of the people.  So, Party and electoral activities are corrupt and degenerate.

(Thanx once again to Andrew Heywood and his book “Political Ideologies” for the simplifies definitions)

There you have what the most popular political ideologies believe about the concept of democracy.  Democracy is in the eyes of the beholder…all good or all bad…..