Majority rules – the basic principle of democracy. But are the majority always right? Does the government voted by majority represent the true interests of the majority? That’s the fundamental question. The majority arrive at their voting decision based on the information available given by the party campaigners even if that information is as absurd as the three slogans of the Ministry of Truth in the Orwellian world:
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
Every political party of whatever persuasion has to have a gimmick or slogan to sell their soap powder to the great unwashed.
For those who still hold firm to the belief that the Party is always right and the War on Terror is fully justified (despite any unintended consequences), perhaps they should spare a thought to the words of Norman Mailer:
“Fighting a war to fix something works about as good as going to a whore-house to get rid of the clap” (The Naked and the Dead, 1948)
May I also remind you, the motto of our beloved politicians:
“Don’t treat people like Idiots. But never forget that they are Idiots!”
(Ne prenez pas les gens pour des cons, mais n’oubliez jamais qu’ils le sont. – F.Beigbeder, 99 francs, 2000)
Mon bon Larousse définit Démocratie : Gouvernement où le peuple exerce la souveraineté .
ReplyDeleteIn translation, le peuple is every body, including children, the convicts, the insane. Governing is choosing, therefore everybody would formulate questions and everybody would choose to say yes or no! The majority wins the day.
We have in most “Democracies” an elite, elected by some people, and the elite formulates the questions and itself answers yes or Ney, in London the “elected” elite is even aided and abated by an unelected elite. These two elites declare themselves Legitimate. This legitimacy is further validated by a hereditary Monarchy.
by any stretch of the imagination could this be called a Democracy. Today we could have the technology to establish a people’s democracy.
Every elector having access to a dedicated computer: 1 to formulate policies, 2 to vote on those policies that a majority of the electorate propose. (with big computer crunching the numbers). Rules to be devised….!
The convention we would choose in all cases is that a majority wins and the larger the majority the more democratic the decision. It would be counterintuitive to leave the decision to a minority.
Can democracy guarantee good governance? Certainly not, yet its virtue is that if we do not like what we get, we have the liberty to correct our mistakes. Trial and error is the foundation of learning and in the long term, in the very long term we will learn to make less errors.