The only civilized country that has something like real democracy is Switzerland where men have their rifles at home, ready to use. It works rather well. If you want peace, prepare for war. Liberal Democracy is, essentially a propaganda term, one to treat with suspicion.
Where Criminals Win Elections
In poor countries, full of blacks and browns corruption is part of the culture. Of course there is fraud, murder etc. Political power means the power to steal, to make war, you name it.
Is Democracy Dying?
Pat Buchanan asks a very good question. His answers are gloomy. He is referring to the current alleged democracies, i.e. Representative Democracies rather than the real thing, to #Democracy In Athens. That went too.
Is Democracy On The Way Down?
Pat Buchanan returns to the theme. He is right; Nationalism trumps democracy. He does not quite say but he knows full well that Representative Democracy is not real democracy and it is much easier to subvert. That is the real problem with it.
Dictatorship Of The Proletariat
Is a Marxist version of democracy. It is, naturally enough dictatorship imposed by terror.
Democracy In Athens [ circa 508 BC - 322 BC ]
QUOTE
Athenian democracy developed in the Greek city-state of Athens, comprising the central city-state of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, around 550 BC. Athens is one of the first known democracies. Other Greek cities set up democracies, and even though most followed an Athenian model, none were as powerful, stable, nor as well-documented as that of Athens.It remains a unique and intriguing experiment in direct democracy, a political system in which the people do not elect representatives to vote on their behalf but vote on legislation and executive bills in their own right. Participation was by no means open, but the in-group of participants was constituted with no reference to economic class and they participated on a large scale. The public opinion of voters was remarkably influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theatres.[1]
Solon [ he of the Ten Commandments ] (594 BC), Cleisthenes (508/7 BC), and Ephialtes (462 BC) all contributed to the development of Athenian democracy. Historians differ on which of them was responsible for which institution, and which of them most represented a truly democratic movement. It is most usual to date Athenian democracy from Cleisthenes, since Solon's constitution fell and was replaced by the tyranny of Peisistratus, whereas Ephialtes revised Cleisthenes' constitution relatively peacefully. Hipparchus, brother of the tyrant Hippias, was killed by Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who were subsequently honoured by the Athenians for their alleged restoration of Athenian freedom.
The greatest and longest lasting democratic leader was Pericles; after his death, Athenian democracy was twice briefly interrupted by oligarchic revolution towards the end of the Peloponnesian War.. It was modified somewhat after it was restored under Eucleides; the most detailed accounts are of this fourth-century modification rather than the Periclean system. It was suppressed by the Macedonians in 322 BC. The Athenian institutions were later revived, but the extent to which they were a real democracy is debatable.
Size and make-up of the Athenian population
Estimates of the population of ancient Athens vary. During the 4th century BC, there may well have been some 250,000–300,000 people in Attica. Citizen families may have amounted to 100,000 people and out of these some 30,000 will have been the adult male citizens entitled to vote in the assembly. In the mid-5th century the number of adult male citizens was perhaps as high as 60,000, but this number fell precipitously during the Peloponnesian War. This slump was permanent due to the introduction of a stricter definition of citizen described below. From a modern perspective these figures may seem small, but in the world of Greek city-states Athens was huge: most of the thousand or so Greek cities could only muster 1000–1500 adult male citizens and Corinth, a major power, had at most 15,000 but in some very seldom cases more.The non-citizen component of the population was divided between resident foreigners (metics) and slaves, with the latter perhaps somewhat more numerous. Around 338 BC the orator Hyperides (fragment 13) claimed that there were 150,000 slaves in Attica, but this figure is probably not more than an impression: slaves outnumbered those of citizen stock but did not swamp them. ]
Citizenship in Athens
Only adult male Athenian citizens who had completed their military training as ephebes had the right to vote in Athens. The percentage of the population that actually participated in the government was about 20%. This excluded a majority of the population, namely slaves, freed slaves, children, women and metics. The women had limited rights and privileges and were not really considered citizens. They had restricted movement in public and were very segregated from the men.Also excluded from voting were citizens whose rights were under suspension (typically for failure to pay a debt to the city: see atimia); for some Athenians this amounted to permanent (and in fact inheritable) disqualification. Still, in contrast with oligarchical societies, there were no real property qualification for voting. (The property classes of Solon's constitution remained on the books, but they fell into disuse.) Given the exclusionary and ancestral conception of citizenship held by Greek city-states, a relatively large portion of the population took part in the government of Athens and of other radical democracies like it.[clarification needed]
At Athens some citizens were far more active than others, but the vast numbers required just for the system to work testify to a breadth of participation among those eligible that greatly surpassed any present day democracy[citation needed]. Athenian citizens had to be descended from citizens—after the reforms of Pericles and Cimon in 450 BC on both sides of the family, excluding the children of Athenian men and foreign women.[clarification needed] Although the legislation was not retrospective, five years later the Athenians removed 5000 from the citizen registers when a free gift of grain arrived for all citizens from an Egyptian king.
Citizenship could be granted by the assembly and was sometimes given to large groups (Plateans in 427 BC, Samians in 405 BC) but, by the 4th century, only to individuals and by a special vote with a quorum of 6000. This was generally done as a reward for some service to the state. In the course of a century, the numbers involved were in the hundreds rather than thousands.
UNQUOTE
It could be worth having in England.
CITIZENS' INITIATIVE I&R
Is a good idea, one whose time has come. If people want a referendum on something in Switzerland and they get enough signatures, a referendum is held and it has legal force. Representative democracy, the sort we have in England has been scientifically perverted. It is de facto dictatorship. Find out how to make England a better place. Or read the next one.
Active Politics
Democracy is about making the voice of the people heard. Here are some sensible thoughts on being effective.
Democracy And Greece
QUOTE
In what sense can they [ the current inmates of Greece ] be regarded as the legitimate heirs of the ancient Greeks? Not, I think, in the genetic sense. We have no reliable demographic evidence from antiquity, but after the wars of the century around Alexander the Great, the populations of mainland Greece seem to have gone into a steady decline that lasted for a thousand years. By around the time of Christ, the depopulation of the old city states was a matter of general comment by those who lived there and of Roman visitors. It is described in a letter to Cicero. It is implied in an inscription that Nero had placed on the Parthenon. Plutarch ascribes the progressive silencing of the Greek oracles to the diminished need for their services. The great plague of 542 reduced populations right across the Mediterranean world, and would have reduced that of mainland Greece still further. Long before that, however, the majority of those living there might well have been descended less from the nation of Pericles and Demosthenes than from imported slaves and barbarian invaders. Certainly, in the two centuries of disorder that followed the great plague, the territory was almost wholly lost to the Byzantine State. When finally reconquered from the Slavs, it had to be rehellenised from Constantinople........When Lord Elgin arrived in Athens, perhaps half the population was Moslem—and probably not all of these were Greek converts. Certainly, modern Greece as I have seen it is occupied by a rich ethnic mix that embraces every human shade from Nordic blonde to Moorish brown. Athens itself was largely colonized after the population transfers of the 1920s by Asiatics whose claim to a Greek ethnic connection is less well founded than that of the West Indies blacks to an English connection..........
Nor in the cultural sense are the modern inhabitants of Greece Greek......... Turning to wider differences, the religion of the modern Greeks is that of the Byzantine Church, and the tendency of this, unlike that of the Roman, has been to degrade the intellect..... No wonder the modern Greeks are such happy members of the European Union. Not only does it now hand over "project funding" faster than even they can embezzle it, but it also relieves them from all the trouble of thinking for themselves about politics and economics. No wonder so many of the clever Greeks simply get out of the country.
UNQUOTE
We know that democracy and other good things originated in Greece from Greeks. Doctor Gabb explains en passant why Greece is now a loss to civilization. We are being degraded by a flood of immigrants just as they were. He does not follow through the ugly realities of Multiculturalism.
Democracy Coming To Central Europe [ 7 July 2016 ]
On 2 October Austria gets a rerun of the fraudulent election where all of the main political parties proved their corruption by ganging up on the Freedom Party Of Austria & their man, Norbert Hofer.Angela Merkel, the German dictator is trying to inflict Illegal Immigrants on Hungary so the president is holding a referendum on the same day to delegitimize her attempt at Ethnic Fouling & Genocide.
Do Social Media Threaten Democracy Asks Economist
No, they don't
QUOTE
Do social media threaten democracy?
Facebook, Google and Twitter were supposed to save politics as good information drove out prejudice and falsehood. Something has gone very wrongIN 1962 a British political scientist, Bernard Crick, published “In Defence of Politics”. He argued that the art of political horse-trading, far from being shabby, lets people of different beliefs live together in a peaceful, thriving society. In a liberal democracy, nobody gets exactly what he wants, but everyone broadly has the freedom to lead the life he chooses. However, without decent information, civility and conciliation, societies resolve their differences by resorting to coercion.
How Crick would have been dismayed by the falsehood and partisanship on display in this week’s Senate committee hearings in Washington. Not long ago social media held out the promise of a more enlightened politics, as accurate information and effortless communication helped good people drive out corruption, bigotry and lies. Yet Facebook acknowledged that before and after last year’s American election, between January 2015 and August this year, 146m users may have seen Russian misinformation on its platform. Google’s YouTube admitted to 1,108 Russian-linked videos and Twitter to 36,746 accounts. Far from bringing enlightenment, social media have been spreading poison.
Russia’s trouble-making is only the start. From South Africa to Spain, politics is getting uglier. Part of the reason is that, by spreading untruth and outrage, corroding voters’ judgment and aggravating partisanship, social media erode the conditions for the horse-trading that Crick thought fosters liberty.
A shorter attention spa...oh, look at that!
The use of social media does not cause division so much as amplify it. The financial crisis of 2007-08 stoked popular anger at a wealthy elite that had left everyone else behind. The culture wars have split voters by identity rather than class. Nor are social media alone in their power to polarise—just look at cable TV and talk radio. But, whereas Fox News is familiar, social-media platforms are new and still poorly understood. And, because of how they work, they wield extraordinary influence.They make their money by putting photos, personal posts, news stories and ads in front of you. Because they can measure how you react, they know just how to get under your skin (see article). They collect data about you in order to have algorithms to determine what will catch your eye, in an “attention economy” that keeps users scrolling, clicking and sharing—again and again and again. Anyone setting out to shape opinion can produce dozens of ads, analyse them and see which is hardest to resist. The result is compelling: one study found that users in rich countries touch their phones 2,600 times a day.
It would be wonderful if such a system helped wisdom and truth rise to the surface. But, whatever Keats said, truth is not beauty so much as it is hard work—especially when you disagree with it. Everyone who has scrolled through Facebook knows how, instead of imparting wisdom, the system dishes out compulsive stuff that tends to reinforce people’s biases.
This aggravates the politics of contempt that took hold, in the United States at least, in the 1990s. Because different sides see different facts, they share no empirical basis for reaching a compromise. Because each side hears time and again that the other lot are good for nothing but lying, bad faith and slander, the system has even less room for empathy. Because people are sucked into a maelstrom of pettiness, scandal and outrage, they lose sight of what matters for the society they share.
This tends to discredit the compromises and subtleties of liberal democracy, and to boost the politicians who feed off conspiracy and nativism. Consider the probes into Russia’s election hack by Congress and the special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, who has just issued his first indictments. After Russia attacked America, Americans ended up attacking each other (see article). Because the framers of the constitution wanted to hold back tyrants and mobs, social media aggravate Washington gridlock. In Hungary and Poland, without such constraints, they help sustain an illiberal, winner-takes-all style of democracy. In Myanmar, where Facebook is the main source of news for many, it has deepened the hatred of the Rohingya, victims of ethnic cleansing.
Social media, social responsibility
What is to be done? People will adapt, as they always do. A survey this week found that only 37% of Americans trust what they get from social media, half the share that trust printed newspapers and magazines. Yet in the time it takes to adapt, bad governments with bad politics could do a lot of harm.Society has created devices, such as libel, and ownership laws, to rein in old media. Some are calling for social-media companies, like publishers, to be similarly accountable for what appears on their platforms; to be more transparent; and to be treated as monopolies that need breaking up. All these ideas have merit, but they come with trade-offs. When Facebook farms out items to independent outfits for fact-checking, the evidence that it moderates behaviour is mixed. Moreover, politics is not like other kinds of speech; it is dangerous to ask a handful of big firms to deem what is healthy for society. Congress wants transparency about who pays for political ads, but a lot of malign influence comes through people carelessly sharing barely credible news posts. Breaking up social-media giants might make sense in antitrust terms, but it would not help with political speech—indeed, by multiplying the number of platforms, it could make the industry harder to manage.
There are other remedies. The social-media companies should adjust their sites to make clearer if a post comes from a friend or a trusted source. They could accompany the sharing of posts with reminders of the harm from misinformation. Bots are often used to amplify political messages. Twitter could disallow the worst—or mark them as such. Most powerfully, they could adapt their algorithms to put clickbait lower down the feed. Because these changes cut against a business-model designed to monopolise attention, they may well have to be imposed by law or by a regulator.
Social media are being abused. But, with a will, society can harness them and revive that early dream of enlightenment. The stakes for liberal democracy could hardly be higher.
UNQUOTE
This is Propaganda from the Main Stream Media. They are being bypassed by the Internet, the world's biggest truth machine. Look at it, filter out the crazies, the dross and you are in with a chance. You might like some of our Fellow Travelers.
PS The Economist continues the theme with Once considered a boon to democracy, social media have started to look like its nemesis - Less Euromaidan, more Gamergate but you have to pay money to read the lies. You might; I won't. We are being worked on by Social Engineers. How? See e.g. How To Frame A Patriot.
Politicians Pervert Democracy [ 23 January 2019 ]
QUOTE
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible … make violent revolution inevitable,” said John F Kennedy.In 2016, the U.S. and Britain were both witness to peaceful revolutions. The British voted 52-48 to sever ties to the European Union, restore their full sovereignty, declare independence and go their own way in the world. Trade and immigration policy would henceforth be decided by a parliament elected by the people, not by bureaucrats in Brussels. “Brexit” it was called. And British defiance stunned global elites.
Two and a half years later, Britain is still inside the EU, and no one seems to know when or whether the divorce will take place — a victory of London and European elites over the expressed will of the British people.
Appalled by the Brexit vote, these elites played a waiting game, broadcasting warnings of what could happen, to panic the British public into reconsidering and reversing its democratic decision. Losing candidates and losing parties accept defeat and yield power.
Establishments have agendas they do not regard as subject to electoral repudiation or repeal. Defeated, they use their non-electoral powers to prevent unwanted policies from ever being implemented.
Call it [ very ] limited democracy.
In 2016, Donald J. Trump was elected president when a spirit of rebellion against America’s failed elites roiled both parties. Both the Trump campaign and the Ted Cruz campaign, which ran second in the Republican race, offered anti-establishment ideas. So, too, did the Bernie Sanders campaign in the Democratic primaries..............
He [ Don ] would build a wall across the Mexican border to halt the flood of illegal migrants. He would extricate us from the half dozen Middle East wars into which Bush II and Obama had plunged us.
He would abrogate the trade deals that had seen imports from NAFTA nations, China, the EU and Japan replace goods made in the USA. He would halt the shuttering of tens of thousands of U.S. factories and the hemorrhaging of millions of manufacturing jobs.
He would call off the new cold war with Russia.
Halfway through this presidential term, where are we?............ And we are being pushed toward a new Mideast war with Iran. This was the establishment’s agenda, not Trump’s..............
Yet there seems a massive media disinterest in a conspiracy that might portray Trump as the victim of dirty campaign tricks. Which brings us back to the larger question: While populists have won elections and carried out peaceful revolutions, often the policies for which they have successfully worked are never implemented.............
In the last analysis, Kennedy was surely right. People who see the policies they have voted for rejected again and again, by the very elites they defeated, will inevitably turn to other means to preserve what they have.
The “yellow vest” protests in Paris show us that.
UNQUOTE
Yes, Theresa May is determinedly betraying us. The American Establishment is attacking Donald Trump while Merkel is destroying Germany with malice aforethought. Politicians, left and right in Sweden are conspiring against the Sweden Democrats and the people. Then there is Ireland ruled by a Homosexual Pakistani and perverted by Jews. Pat Buchanan is right again.
The Case For Direct Democracy Switzerland Style
QUOTE
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong’ – Thomas Sowell‘Britain is now an elite dictatorship where majority opinions are crushed . . . How do we make Parliament more representative, and reduce the power of the Blob? One answer would be to use a lot more referenda, as the Swiss do; another would be radical reform of the Civil Service, turning ministers into CEOs with proper control over mandarins’ – Allister Heath, Daily Telegraph
‘We will not recognise the end of democracy when it comes, if it does. Advanced democracies are not overthrown, there are no tanks on the street, no sudden catastrophes, no brash dictators, or brain mobs, instead, their institutions are imperceptibly drained of everything that once made them democratic’ – Lord Jonathan Sumption
THERE is a palpable sense of frustration and anger in the electorate of many mature Western democracies, nowhere more so than the UK. Decades of broken manifesto pledges, votes ignored, targets unmet, policies introduced without consultation, public opinion flagrantly disregarded, have left the impression that we are living in a uni-party world which is a democracy in name only. Once elected, our entitled elites on both sides of the aisles forge on with activist policies and agendas which are often at complete odds with the people that they supposedly represent and to whom they owe their positions. It is unsurprising if a disempowered electorate are prepared to take matters into their own hands via civil disobedience and potential acts of violence. Before discontent turns to action, we should start to be forward-thinking and propose solutions to the limitations of our representative democratic model.
Perhaps it has been ever thus. However, a perfect storm of societal shifts, global alignment of the cognitive elite and technological changes mean that we find ourselves in uncharted territory where the systems we have relied on to date are no longer entirely satisfactory. The dividing line between right and left has been rendered almost meaningless, being replaced around a new axis of authoritarian vs non-authoritarian, woke vs anti-woke. Institutions which should stand as a balance against any overly political ideologies have been steadily captured by the same intellectual conformity that ensures the tyranny of the faceless ‘blob’. Academia, the judicial system, regulatory bodies and legacy media think and act as one. More alarmingly, as recent events have shown, these institutions are now being used to vilify, silence and destroy anyone whose message contradicts the official narrative.
Unable to generate societal consensus, governments have resorted to creating an almost permanent state of crisis to justify increased controls and surveillance, and bypass the democratic process. They create ‘external enemies’ to divert The People away from local issues. Extraordinary restrictions on our freedoms to speak, to associate, to dissent become justified on the basis that the immediate threat overrides medium- to long-term planning. If Covid was the awakening for many people to how these systems work, the ‘climate crisis’ is the most recent and pressing example of how any means are justified in order to ‘save the planet’. The solution must always be at a global level, obviating any need for local input and delegating even more powers to supra-national organisations such as the WEF, EU, WHO and UN.
It is becoming blatantly obvious that the pursuit of truth is no longer the lodestar around which many of our once independent institutions are ordered. There is simply too much evidence in the public sphere that our instinct that something is not quite right, and has been rotten for a long time, is spot-on. Once objective inquiry is replaced, a secular religion with its own shibboleths of ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance), DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) etc takes its place and the new priesthood of politicians and technocrats enact their wishes under the conviction that they, and they alone, are best placed to decide what is necessary ‘for the greater good’.
This moment is critical. Technologies are primed to impose unprecedented changes upon our societies, from surveillance cameras that can look through walls, facial recognition, permits for 415,000 low-level satellites that will ensure 24/7 surveillance, Central Bank Digital Currencies, digital IDs, Net Zero – the list goes on. All done without discussion and without consultation, and once implemented, impossible to reverse. These ideas seemed to belong to dystopian novels but the evocation of ‘emergency’, as seen during the reaction to Covid, shows how easily constitutions can be bypassed and frightening precedents set. Our democratic societies are being replaced by global totalitarianism run by a technocratic elite, based on propaganda that they control. Dissent will be impossible once it is in place.
It is clear that the UK’s system of representative democracy on its own is no longer fit for purpose in a world where technology and modern communications allows us to be tapped into the forefront of everything that is going on in the world, but with only a once-in-five-years window in which to express our views. Increasing numbers feel politically homeless, sandwiched between two political parties which are no better than ‘two cheeks of the same arse’.
Now is the time for bold and visionary leaders to propose a much-needed change. With a General Election a year away and cynicism and scepticism at an all-time high, the idea of a direct democracy is being mooted by journalists such as Allister Heath in the Telegraph and successful business people including Hugh Osmond who look at the success of Switzerland, one of the wealthiest, happiest and healthiest nations in the world, and wonder whether a government which is more regularly made accountable to its people, and is thereby more transparent in its working, might not be a template for a modern Britain. There is good precedent: the UK and its constituent countries have held 13 referendums since 1973. The more a democracy is direct, decentralised and devolved, and the more responsibility voters are given, the more responsibly they behave.
Switzerland successfully combines and integrates representative and direct democracy: no small feat. There are several mechanisms for calling a referendum. Citizens may petition to call for a change or to approve or reject a proposed law, plus there are mandatory votes on major decisions, such as to revise the constitution, join an international organisation or introduce emergency federal legislation for over a year. The system has an effect during the drafting phase of a law, as the Swiss politicians and civil servants know that if they don’t take the interests of the people into consideration, they will face a referendum. Additionally, in seven of the 26 Swiss cantons citizens can revoke and recall their elected authorities before the end of their elected period.
While the Swiss example is a tried and tested solution, the exact model that the UK should adopt will obviously have nuances adapted to the size and structure of our parliamentary system. There are naturally caveats, not least the requisite to limit the abuse of well-funded groups to advance their own agendas.
While no system is perfect, it is imperative if we are to maintain the benefits and privileges of our Western democracies that we explore ways to change the system to counterbalance major decisions where our elected representatives have deviated from the views and priorities of the citizenry. More regular referendums should be used to enhance national decision-making, understanding democratic will and ensure the accountability of our elected representatives. Yet here is the rub: it would have be introduced by existing decision-makers, and they are unlikely to support a system which would reduce and redistribute their power.
However greater citizen co-operation, participation and transparency could be a boon to governments who adopt such a system. Voters who are fully engaged and know that their referendum vote genuinely does count are happier to comply with laws that they have created themselves. In this way both society’s successes and failures can be credited to the people, rather than solely laid at the door of the government. That really would be democracy.
An appendix of references to recent writings on the history and practice of direct democracy has been compiled here.
UNQUOTE
Neil Oliver writing in the Conservative Woman makes lots of sense. England has never had democracy. Now would be a good time to start.
Errors & omissions,
broken links, cock ups, over-emphasis, malice [ real or imaginary ] or whatever;
if you find any I am open to comment.
Email me at Mike
Emery.
All financial contributions are cheerfully accepted. If you want to keep it
private, use my PGP key.
Home
Updated on