Socialist States of America still not learning the lessons

[Hitman]

The question is... is it worth the read

It certainly is, even if you disagree with it. His posts are always well reasoned and founded, and at least can get you thinking of new aspects of the matter you had overlooked. We will never have the absolute and perfect knowledge, but we should at least have a desire to learn and think, constantly revising and putting our own wisdom to proof.

The lengthy and detailed explanation Skybird gives about greek democracy is in fact in line with what I had said, only I have less time to post and develop the idea. When I said that greeks considered that a democracy is only as good as the people who take part in it, I meant that this is the reason why they didn't allow everybody in (BTW one aditional reasom why only wealthy people where let in is because they could respond with their wealth in case they caused damage with wrong decissions). The moment they did, it all went down because of the X reason (Make X what you deem more correct Andy ) that cause the society to have a larger amount of people unable to correctly decide what is better for the community. Like he says here:

the greater a group, the lower the groups' mean IQ

Where as in an feudal system or an aristocracy, you have at least the chance that somebody will get prepared well for his later duties and by chance also is an honest character, and thus will take his post as a qualified and serious commander, in our modern democracy such candidates get filtered out and it is made impossible that such people come to power in high offices - we see that in elections throughout the Western world

We have certainly have some examples of that in history, Marco Aurelio comes to mind for Rome. Sadly we have way more examples of the opposite, and I would risk saying that any dictatorshiop that is not inherited offsets the chances of someone like that coming up. You can have by genetic chance a good ruler; but it is almost impossible that someone who becomes a dictator by the use of force and/or politics is actually the ideal person.

"SPQR" in the legions' emblems indicated the identity of the army and the senate - the citizens (free, carrying arms, male) and the political privilege to participate in governing.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but "Senatus Populusque Romanus" meant the alliance between senate (which essentially represented the blue blooded in the first ages) and the free citizen. It was a somehow primitive but effective "social contract" between classes long before the state and Rousseau's concept appeared. Rome was thus integrated by both, acting in alliance together.

again Skybird, you love to make long posts, but what is the practical alternative to the liberal-democratic state?

Yep, that's the million-dollar question Even if I agree with the most caustic critic of the contemporary democracy, and in particular of the vices it will necessary generate, it is hard to think of an alternative system. Of course ideally a benevolent dictatorship by the perfect, illustrated, moderate person would be the answer, but besides the problem of finding him/her ... who decides he shall rule? The population? An elite?
Again we find the problem of "electing", which means we turn full circle into the arms of the democracy vices again.

Diagnosing a problem and finding a solution are certainly very different things