| Topic: |
Science > Philosophy |
| User: |
"Jeff Stanton" |
| Date: |
16 Sep 2004 07:29:06 PM |
| Object: |
How would your own perfect government operate ? |
On what philosophical model/s would your own perfect (serious or
humorous) government operate, if you had full control of one ?
.
|
|
| User: "Immortalist" |
|
| Title: Re: How would your own perfect government operate ? |
16 Sep 2004 10:06:43 PM |
|
|
"Jeff Stanton" <gaz201@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3795ae2a.0409161629.5feba905@posting.google.com...
On what philosophical model/s would your own perfect (serious or
humorous) government operate, if you had full control of one ?
Of course exactly the one the USA has, which is the best ever concieved and
applied.
I would keep the mish mash of Lockian and Hobbsian influences along with English
institutional liberalism;
The Future of Freedom - Illiberal Democracy at Home & Abroad
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393047644/
- Democracy and Liberty
"Suppose elections are free and fair and those elected are racists,
fascists, separatists," said the American diplomat Richard Holbrooke about
Yugoslavia in the 1990s. "That is the dilemma." Indeed it is, and not merely
in Yugoslavia's past but in the world's present. Consider, for example, the
challenge we face across the Islamic world. We recognize the need for
democracy in those often-repressive countries. But what if democracy
produces an Islamic theocracy or something like it? It is not an idle
concern. Across the globe, democratically elected regimes, often ones that
have been re-elected or reaffirmed through referenda, are routinely ignoring
constitutional limits on their power and depriving their citizens of basic
rights. This disturbing phenomenon-visible from Peru to the Palestinian
territories, from Ghana to Venezuela-could be called "illiberal democracy."
For people in the West, democracy means "liberal democracy": a political
system marked not only by free and fair elections but also by the rule of
law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of
speech, assembly, religion, and property. But this bundle of freedoms-what
might be termed "constitutional liberalism"-has nothing intrinsically to do
with democracy and the two have not always gone together, even in the West.
After all, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany via free elections.
Over the last half-century in the West, democracy and liberty have merged.
But today the two strands of liberal democracy, interwoven in the Western
political fabric, are coming apart across the globe. Democracy is
flourishing; liberty is not.
In some places, such as Central Asia, elections have paved the way for
dictatorships. In others, they have exacerbated group conflict and ethnic
tensions. Both Yugoslavia and Indonesia, for example, were far more tolerant
and secular when they were ruled by strongmen (Tito and Suharto,
respectively) than they are now as democracies. And in many nondemocracies,
elections would not improve matters much. Across the Arab world elections
held tomorrow would probably bring to power regimes that are more
intolerant, reactionary, anti-Western, and anti-Semitic than the
dictatorships currently in place.
In a world that is increasingly democratic, regimes that resist the trend
produce dysfunctional societies-as in the Arab world. Their people sense the
deprivation of liberty more strongly than ever before because they know the
alternatives; they can see them on CNN, BBC, and Al-Jazeera. But yet, newly
democratic countries too often become sham democracies, which produces
disenchantment, disarray, violence, and new forms of tyranny. Look at Iran
and Venezuela. This is not a reason to stop holding elections, of course,
but surely it should make us ask, What is at the root of this troubling
development? Why do so many developing countries have so much difficulty
creating stable, genuinely democratic societies? Were we to embark on the
vast challenge of building democracy in Iraq, how would we make sure that we
succeed?
First, let's be clear what we mean by political democracy. From the time of
Herodotus it has been defined, first and foremost, as the rule of the
people. This definition of democracy as a process of selecting governments
is now widely used by scholars. In The Third Wave, the eminent political
scientist Samuel P. Huntington explains why:
Elections, open, free and fair, are the essence of democracy, the
inescapable sine qua non. Governments produced by elections may be
inefficient, corrupt, shortsighted, irresponsible, dominated by special
interests, and incapable of adopting policies demanded by the public good.
These qualities make such governments undesirable but they do not make them
undemocratic. Democracy is one public virtue, not the only one, and the
relation of democracy to other public virtues and vices can only be
understood if democracy is clearly distinguished from the other
characteristics of political systems.
This definition also accords with the commonsense view of the term. If a
country holds competitive, multiparty elections, we call it "democratic."
When public participation in a country's politics is increased-for example,
through the enfranchisement of women-that country is seen as having become
more democratic. Of course elections must be open and fair, and this
requires some protections for the freedom of speech and assembly. But to go
beyond this minimal requirement and label a country democratic only if it
guarantees a particular catalog of social, political, economic, and
religious rights-which will vary with every observer-makes the word
"democracy" meaningless. After all, Sweden has an economic system that many
argue curtails individual property rights, France until recently had a state
monopoly on television, and Britain has a state religion. But they are all
clearly and identifiably democracies. To have "democracy" mean,
subjectively, "a good government" makes it analytically useless.
Constitutional liberalism, on the other hand, is not about the procedures
for selecting government but, rather, government's goals. It refers to the
tradition, deep in Western history, that seeks to protect an individual's
autonomy and dignity against coercion, whatever the source-state, church, or
society. The term marries two closely connected ideas. It is liberal*
because it draws on the philosophical strain, beginning with the Greeks and
Romans, that emphasizes individual liberty. It is constitutional because it
places the rule of law at the center of politics. Constitutional liberalism
developed in Western Europe and the United States as a defense of an
individual's right to life and property and the freedoms of religion and
speech. To secure these rights, it emphasized checks on the power of
government, equality under the law, impartial courts and tribunals, and the
separation of church and state. In almost all of its variants,
constitutional liberalism argues that human beings have certain natural (or
"inalienable") rights and that governments must accept a basic law, limiting
its own powers, to secure them. Thus in 1215 at Runnymede, England's barons
forced the king to limit his own authority. In the American colonies these
customs were made explicit, and in 1638 the town of Hartford adopted the
first written constitution in modern history. In 1789 the American
Constitution created a formal framework for the new nation. In 1975 Western
nations set standards of behavior even for nondemocratic regimes. Magna
Carta, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the American Constitution, and
the Helsinki Final Act are all expressions of constitutional liberalism.
*I use the term "liberal" in the nineteenth-century sense, meaning concerned
with individual economic, political, and religious liberty, which is
sometimes called "classical liberalism," not in the modern, American sense,
which associates it with the welfare state, affirmative action, and other
policies.
Since 1945 Western governments have, for the most part, embodied both
democracy and constitutional liberalism. Thus it is difficult to imagine the
two apart, in the form of either illiberal democracy or liberal autocracy.
The Future of Freedom - Illiberal Democracy at Home & Abroad
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393047644/
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "Ad Hominy Grits" |
|
| Title: Re: How would your own perfect government operate ? |
16 Sep 2004 08:38:58 PM |
|
|
"Jeff Stanton" <gaz201@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3795ae2a.0409161629.5feba905@posting.google.com...
On what philosophical model/s would your own perfect (serious or
humorous) government operate, if you had full control of one ?
Like Judge Roy Bean's court. With a bounty on Repug-Liars.
$2 per scalp and a quarter per ear.
I would fund research to find the aggression gene and
tests to show tendency, then make a eunuch of any male
who has it. Any female who shows aggression would
be denied silicone.
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "Chzwmn" |
|
| Title: Re: How would your own perfect government operate ? |
18 Sep 2004 04:19:34 AM |
|
|
Every one what shut the ***** up until I asked them their opinion
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "Nils-Erik Forsberg" |
|
| Title: Re: How would your own perfect government operate ? |
17 Sep 2004 02:24:27 AM |
|
|
On 16 Sep 2004 17:29:06 -0700, (Jeff Stanton)
wrote:
On what philosophical model/s would your own perfect (serious or
humorous) government operate, if you had full control of one ?
On the model of God as the whole being I and You are parts of, i.e.
what one is concious about but not in control of.
Nils F
.
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
