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OrpheusAgonistes -> RE: Democracy y/n? (5/11/2010 1:37:24 PM)
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It is not an experiment It is our daily lives and the lives of our progeny. I know the phrase is meant as a salute to what may be the best form of government yet devised, but when you say we need to take our obligations seriously you ignore the long history of competing interests. Each constituency has an obligation to its own interests, so our democracy is a free marketplace of competing needs, wants and ideas. Kinda messy.
How do I ignore this? My contention is that through rational discussion and compromise these competing interests can come to agreements that maximize the good, or at least minimize the damage, for all parties. This can only happen if all sides are as informed as possible and take the process seriously rather than simply engaging in vapid sniping at each other. Rightly understood self-interest is the basis for rational action and rational decisions, arrived at through dialogue (however messy that dialogue may become) form the basis for the American experiment. I don't think we disagree on this point--or if we do I still don't see how since nothing you've said so far has clashed with anything I've said.
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Well, Hamilton was a lousy shot as it turns out and a bit too passionate for his own good. And the Federalists, however horrified by the bloodletting reported from France, lost the election to Jefferson. The final blow to elitism came with the election of Jackson.
It takes a pedantic jackass to quibble with throw-away historical snark, and I am that pedantic jackass. There's a pretty good chance Hamilton chose to waste his shot, and assumed Burr would do the same. He was neither the first nor the last person to underestimate Burr's venal mendacity. At any rate, you seem to have misread my post, in that the success or failure of the Federalist Party isn't a major concern of mine. I brought up Hamilton and Jefferson to point out that it's a given that not even brilliant and passionate statesmen are going to be able to always remain civil and rational in their disagreements. But even when passions run high, the only way the democratic experiment is going to succeed is if all parties remain committed to the process of deliberation and compromise.
Incidentally, I find the contention that Jackson's election dealt a death blow to elitism extremely odd. I wonder what you mean by "elitism" in this case, if you think that it's dead in America.
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I can't really agree with your solution that "something can be salvaged" if people would start listening to each other. Are you suggesting we be polite and civil to opponents?
I meant to be fairly clear that I didn't mean this at all. If I was unclear, let me clarify. The deliberative process won't always be a model of decorum and civility. But all parties have to remain fundamentally committed to the idea of give and take and the possibility of persuasion through some combination of rational argument and rhetorical flourish. If there is no exchange of ideas and no possibility of persuasion, then the democratic experiment is dead.
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We place high priority in our Constitution on freedom of speech not freedom of listening. Messy it is but it is what it is.
I don't really understand what this means. I think you probably mean "not the duty of listening." It's true that there is no law on the books that says "All American citizens must be informed, rational, and committed to the democratic process." If people choose to (continue to) be irrational, irascible, flaky, vapid, shallow, slow to compromise, quick to be inflamed by blind partisanship, informed by prejudice, and more interested in irritating the "other tribe" than in arriving at the best possible position on an issue then the American citizenry will grow more and more to resemble Hamilton's great beast.
We undeniably have the Constitutional right to thumb our noses at each other, swing our dicks like we just don't care and jeeringly piss the whole thing away.
Democracy can work if there is a commitment to dialogue, to the possibility of persuasion, and to rational behavior. Otherwise, the American ideals really are nothing more than fairy tales.
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