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…..
We-ell… I don’t think any of that describes democracy (in truth I think that I probably agree with Aristotle, but hey, nothing’s perfect).
What you have described (very well might I say) is a whole lot of different approaches to the problem of delivering democracy – none of which of course actually do so (IMO).
I personally think it’s time to go abck to the drawing board and see if we can seek a proper definition of democracy that (initially) completely disregards the method by which it is delivered – simply define the problem first, before we start seeking answers.
Ya think? 😆
Well, that is the thing….NO one knows what it is…and if that is true there can be NO delivering that which is proposed…..IMO it is a catch word……and one that is not easily used correctly……and you are right…ol’ Ari pretty much has it right…