Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimbuna
The vote is so close the undecided portion will tilt the balance one way or the other....that's democracy for you.
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Sorry for being straight, but that is
Quatsch. Majority rule is not the essence of democracy. In fact, it is self-destruction of free society.
http://www.mega.nu/ampp/kaz/democracy.html
What is democracy really about? The answers will surpise many people, but by ancient Athen'S example are solid and true:
- before anything else: equality of all before the law, everybody being able to become juror;
- replacing hereditary aristocracy with aristocracy based on wealth(!!) (private property decided which men were seen as "free men" and thus as citizens allowed to participate in the various bodies of administration;
http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/g...racyriseof.htm
A very good German introduction is from the "Institut für Wertewirtschaft" and Rahim Taghizadegan:
http://wertewirtschaft.org/analysen/Demokratie.pdf
Modern understanding of what democracy is and means, is very very porked, I'm sorry to say. To declare majority voting the key element of democracy - an argument so very often given and used today - means to mistake democracy with something else: with so-called ochlocracy.
Finally, again my reminder that the Us were founded and intended to be not a democratic republic, to use modern terminology, but an aristocratic republic.
What happens in Scotland tomorrow, is an event where crowds of people will express their decision on one issue with consequences, and the majority will "plow under"
the minority, period. Do not call that "democracy", it has little to do with that. It already starts with that a discrimination regarding Scottish people who are eligible to vote is almost non existent. That already is, if you take serious the ancient history of the term and what it meant,
not democratic!
