Inverted totalitarianism
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Indeed. As a non-American, I find it quite absurd that corporations can "donate money" to change a Congressman's opinion on a law, and then support them in Congress when passing new bills. As far as I know that's what bribing is pretty much anywhere else. So US has in effect legalized bribing, and almost everyone in US seems to think that's "normal" and okay, and that there's "little corruption" in US, when in fact the whole government wreaks of "legalized" corruption.
Does that happen in other countries, too? Sure. Bribing is everywhere. But at least we see it for what it is, and even if we don't catch them in the act, there can be investigations later, and have them arrested. Good luck doing that in US - ever.
Let's be clear: Under US law, a corporation cannot donate money to a candidate under any circumstance. They can, however, spend money independently of a candidate, for example, to produce newspaper or documentary, write and publish a book, hire a billboard, produce and air an ad, etc.
On the other hand, in Australia, Germany, the UK, corporations can make unlimited donations directly to politicians.
My, that does sound absurd.
(Really, I'm not sure what's worse: Your lack of understanding of how US law works, or your lack of understand of how non-US law works. You may understand how your local election laws work, but the world is a big place. Sweeping statements just make you look silly.)
The PAC donated certain sums of money to various candidates at the state and federal level each election cycle. Curious, I called the person who ran the PAC and asked how they chose the candidates. He replied simply, "We'll support anyone who will vote consistent with the interests of BigCorp."
And effectively, that's how corporations donate money to political candidates.
> And effectively, that's how corporations donate money to political candidates.
Actually....no. Rules on PACs are different but still quite strict. They can donate a maximum of $5,000 to a candidate. In American politics, $5,000 is fucking nothing. In a contested senate election, that's a rounding error.
The way corporations influence elections is the same way rich individuals influence elections: Not by donating money to politicians (which are heavily capped), but through independent expenditures, which have no caps.
Look at this list: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?id=N00009638
"This table lists the top donors to this candidate in the 2012 election cycle. The organizations themselves did not donate , rather the money came from the organizations' PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families."
So if we look at Microsoft, $800k went from Microsoft and related entities to Obama's campaign. That's a lot of money, and I have no doubt it bought real influence with Obama. But out of that $800k, at most $5k was the money that went directly from Microsoft's PAC to the Obama campaign. And that's well...nothing. It is 0.625% of the total amount given by Microsoft, 0.0007% of the total amount given to candidate Obama.
I have no doubt that BigCorp was very insistent about your contributing to the PAC; but they had no intention of using more than the barest fraction of that money to donate to the campaign of individual politicians. They couldn't, even if they wanted to. They would have been intending to spend it on much more effective (and unregulated) channels.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Elec... (third paragraph)
The question is not whether a corporation has rights similar to a natural person's -- in order to work at all, a corporation must have some of those rights. For example, it must have the right to own property, the right to enter into contracts, the right to bring cases in court, and so on.
The question is which set of rights corporations should have, and to what extent they can be regulated. Which is far from easy to sort out or solve with simple black-and-white rules.
In particular, free speech is a right of "every ... association representing a segment of American life and taking an active part in our political campaigns and discussions" [1] -- unions, guilds, consumer groups, religious groups, newspapers, political parties, and so forth. Those groups are made up of individuals united for a purpose, and their choosing to unite should not penalize them by restricting their ability to speak. Justice Kennedy made a great comment to this effect: "wealthy individuals and unincorporated associations can spend unlimited amounts .... Yet [under the Austin decision] certain disfavored associations of citizens — those that have taken on the corporate form — are penalized for engaging in the same political speech .... When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful." [2]
[0] Pembina Consolidated Silver Mining Co. v. Pennsylvania, 1886. Yes, that's eighteen eighty six.
[1] US vs UAW, 1957
[2] Citizens United v FEC, 2010 - page 40 of Justice Kennedy's majority opinion
For example, take the Google, Microsoft, etc, NYT full page ad opposing NSA spying. That's precisely what Citizens United protects.
The majority decision did not declare that corporations are people. (Rather, they noted that treating corporations as people protects the real rights of actual people in some situations. If BP was not a legal person, they could not be sued after the Deepwater oil spill. If the New York Times was not a legal person, they would have no free speach rights. If Apple was not a legal person, it would not be illegal to take their cash reserves. We want a world where BP can be sued, the New York Times can publish what they want, and Apple cannot have their assets confiscated at a whim.)
They did not allow corporations to make unlimited political contributions. (Corporations still cannot make unlimited political contributions, and the case wasn't even about that. It was about independent expenditures, such as publishing a book about a candidate, or making a documentary about a political issue.)
They did not say that money is speech. (They said that money facilitates speech, and thus a sufficiently strict restriction on money would be a restriction on speech. Just because money is not speech doesn't mean it would be constitutional to say that politicians from one party can only spend $5 per election cycle on ads. Eqaully, money is not abortion, but under Roe v. Wade a restriction on spending any cash to obtain or perform an abortion would still be an unconstitutional restriction on abortion rights.)
Every specific claim in your comment is factually wrong.
In functional democracies, making bribing illegal works, in theory at least, but in semi-functional democracies like the countries from Eastern Europe where oligarchies happen, dirty politicians are untouchable and mass media is owned by the rich that are part of the ruling parties. Basically, if a politician is bribed, at most you'll only hear rumours and nothing else will happen. And if some big-profile case does indeed happen, those involved will just keep a low profile until the public forgets about it and then you'll see them back in the next elections. There is no real opposition either. They fight against each other only on TV. Note that I was born and still living in Romania. It's not so bad here as I describe it, but not that far either.
The real underlying problem in every country is of course that the public is so freaking stupid, lacking long-term memory and being easily swayed by electoral alms.
Yes. Donations from corporations are legal in nearly every country, in mine, in the USA, most likely also in yours. That's really nothing to bash america over.
As I have said before, there are plenty of really worrying developments in the theory and execution of power in the United States. When I say worrying, I mean worrying in the sense that they remind closely of things that totalitarian regimes have done in the past. We shouldn't be distracted too much by history when analyzing contemporary events - "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
The list, which you can compile by simply reading the news, is quite long: Warrantless dragnet surveillance, world record incarceration rate, selective enforcement and prosecution of unclear and conflicting criminal law, lifetime incarceration for non-violent crimes, utilization of paramilitary forces (SWAT teams) against non-violent offenders, plea bargains as a tool for simplifying prosecution under the threat of lifetime sentencing, indefinite detainment and incarceration with no judicial oversight (Guantanamo), extrajudicial execution of citizens (drone strikes), limitations on free speech during peaceful protests, systematic prosecution of whistleblowers.
These are just some issues which are interesting to discuss. I am an outsider, and I believe the things I have quoted are facts which have very small political bias in the interpretation. The United States' deadlocked political system and prosecutors' role in the execution of power is also worthy of discussion, although it is harder to discuss this without taking a particular political view.
While implying that the US is a totalitaian state will get you lots of up votes from insecure europeans, the word has no meaning if it encompasses the current state of affairs in America. Could that change? Sure. Pretending it is already the case is fine as long as you realize you are just pretending.
Speaking as an America, it's exactly this kind of pithy dismissal from the psuedo-intellectual class that gives our regime a pass. The vast swath of American political discussion is limited to the purview of cable news, and in these few bastions of informed discussion when real political problems of our country are discussed there's always this contingent of people who aggressively don't care and find offense in others caring.
Your post is somewhat amazing in that respect, especially the emphasis on "pretending" as the separation from reality that makes you comfortable with this conversation. There's nothing so uniquely unrighteous about America that it can't fall into the same power struggles that all empires throughout history have. If the citizenry is going to prevent that we need to be able to discuss it without resorting to pretending.
It would be convenient to keep the word "totalitarianism" forever connected with the very specific practices of Nazi Germany or, say, Stalin's USSR, and only those. Unfortunately the word and the practice existed way before and will continue to exist in the future. And there's not just a single form of it.
One can spend all his life between home, office, some cosy restaurant or cafe, friends house, and never understand anything that's going on in society at large, if he's so inclined. Especialy if he's on the upper echelon, e.g not a black, latino, native american, or "white trash", so he doesn't get to transparently see the structures of totalitarianism in a day by day basis.
From the militarization of police: http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...
to cities built for exclusion and closing down of public space: http://www.amazon.com/City-Quartz-Excavating-Future-Angeles/...
to the privitazation of prisons (and the highest incarceration rate of the world by far, surpassing even Stalin's era Gulag percentages when it comes to blacks): http://www.amazon.com/Punishment-Sale-Private-Business-Incar...
to the dwindling middle-class (which is, when it exists, the real pillar of democracy): http://www.amazon.com/Servant-Economy-Americas-Sending-Middl...
Add mass surveillance, three-strike laws that resemble 19th century ethics, the concentrated control of mass media, constant external war, etc etc and you have quite a potent mix.
Well, not that hard. For one, there's a humongous legal framework, criminalizing and turning almost all aspects of everyday life, from speech to nutrition, into a legally mediated issue.
Second, a way over the top (compared to regular liberal western democracies) use of police force (and incarceration).
Third, devising of new ways of tranfering powers to the state (from extended no-rights zones around airports to the Patriot Act).
Fourth, total surveillance over society.
Political scientists and philosophers have read totalitarianism in these (and other aspects) for ages. Putting them in constast to the relative freedoms of 1960 or 1880 paints a bleak picture.
It's like slowly boiling the frog while it watches Miley Cyrus twerk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays'_Rebellion
Whatever is being suffered now by any minorities, etc. pales in comparison to what they would have been put through in the past. I don't see too many blacks being hosed down by a fire truck nowadays, do you?
So let's keep things in perspective. We have a lot of work on ours hands. But it's a hell of a lot less work than we had in the past.
You are putting words in my mouth - I said no such thing. But getting caught up in this kind of debate is exactly what I was trying to avoid by wording my comment carefully.
Let's discuss it from a different angle, and ignore the world "totalitarianism" for a moment. Looking at my (incomplete) list of recent developments in the execution of power in the United States, consider the following questions: Are these things good for American society and the world at large? What is their implication for the potential oppression and persecution of political opponents? How about other abuses of power, perhaps less systematic, e.g. the oppression of certain demogratic groups? Are they to any degree at all used for such purposes already?
I think these questions are interesting from a purely intellectual point of view, and very worthy of being discussed. Although personally I do believe that the current situation in the United States is worrying in the light of previous world history.
I'm forced to wonder if Germans in the late 30s/early 40s considered themselves living in a totalitarian state. If not, their response to the suggestion would probably be along the lines of your comment.
Don't forget that due to the, let's say, unparalleled "power and efficiency" of the States as a country, also the "dark side" of its government is assuming very scary power and efficiency.
The three main points raised by the article are perfectly reasonable, and worst of all, they're happening, for real, now.
EDIT: It seems the emphasis is a bit heavy on democracy and too little on liberty. The minority that needs the most protection is the individual.
The 9th Amendment (which is essentially redundant in that it would be true even if it didn't exist), states that 'The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.'
The point is, Rights are not exceptions. It is the removal of a right that is the exception. In other words, you have the right to do anything unless it is made illegal, not the other way around.
Moreover, while it's true you can do what you want unless it's made illegal, the interesting question is instead: what can the majority make illegal? That's is the situation where majority consensus is the rule, and rights are the exception. In a democracy, the majority can legislate however it wants, limited only by certain acknowledged individual rights.
In our democracy, we have two layers of legislatures, state and federal. The state legislatures inherited the sovereignty of the English King, and the constitution did not disturb that arrangement except in that the states delegated certain of that sovereignty to the federal government. But at the time of the founding, the power of the state legislatures was almost unbounded. They were not even limited by the rights in the Bill of Rights, which weren't applied to the states consistently until the 20th century (incorporated via the civil war amendments). Even now, the state governments are emphatically not ones of enumerated powers. The majority can do whatever it wants, limited only by federal law, or state or federal rights.
At the federal level, within the broad enumerated powers of the government, the majority can do what it wants, limited only by federal rights. Again, the rule is majoritarian control. Rights are a limited backstop to that general rule.
If anything, American education focuses too much on rights and not enough on democracy. K-12 curriculums tend not to cover any state constitutional law. They focus on enumerated powers and the Bill of Rights. But in doing so they paint a misleading picture of the Constitutional scheme. A scheme in which, as originally conceived, nothing would've prevented states from making it illegal to have sex with the lights on or outside of marriage or to use birth control or any of the other "moral" legislation that was very widespread at the time of the founding. I don't think expansion of rights of individuals has been a bad trend away from the original constitutional scheme, but it's misleading to paint the trend as pointing in the other direction. That characterization is simply a libertarian rewriting of history.
Guantanamo is an example of improper treatment of POWs, not detainment of citizens in a totalitarian state.
Many of the detainees weren't "captured in war" in any meaningful sense, they were civilian noncombatants sold to US forces by various local militias during the occupation of Afghanistan; but its correct that that's more a symptom of the US being a global empire and than of the metropolitan system of government within that empire being totalitarian.
For instance, afaik POWs from lawful sides in conflicts can be kept until the conflicts are over. The Afghan war is still raging, arguably. And the Guantanamo conditions are hardly much worse than the horrid US prison system.
I have seen this subject discussed, but never in a serious way. E.g. please don't write that they should be treated as civilians or something, the point of the Geneva conventions etc was to give POWs some protection, it is just stupid to then argue that to ignore those laws would give better protection.
(And I have no idea how many of the people at Guantanamo are innocent, as dragonwriter claims to know. The people making claims on that subject aren't exactly to be trusted if they really would know!)
Sigh, I guess I deserve downvotes for the stupidity of asking a tricky legal question on newsYC which doesn't have to do with startups. :-)
And as for the conditions at Guantanamo, I hope that "enhanced interrogation techniques", water boarding and similar, isn't used all that frequently in the US penal system.
Your point is that democratic countries should behave better than the international treaties they sign, even if it will result in dead citizens of those countries.
And you compare with children, to give "weight" to your argument? Sigh...
The point with democracies is that they take input from their citizens, or the leadership will get kicked out. The point with terrorism is to scare people, mainly in democracies.
If the terrorists succeed in scaring voters enough, then the politicians will throw out the law book and all other concerns (see Germany, UK, Spain, Israel, USA, etc) because they want to get reelected above anything else... What you ask for go against the central interests of the involved parties.
I might also note that your moral world view is based on living inside a society with a state violence monopoly, in a democracy. If you go outside that, the attitude is ... well, read up on clan societies yourself. A typical example is when Israel did one sided peace gestures -- it was taken as signs of weakness and attacks increased (leaving south Libanon and Gaza).
tl;dr: You're not naive, you just don't think. This is HackerNews, please start.
And for the US prison system, Google stop prison rape.
Not only that, also a lot from secure europeans!
Perhaps it is indeed more so the "insecure" Europeans that still eagerly adore the shiny Hollywood/Silicon Valley rendition of "America" ;)
It's easy to be cynical about the way the US government is heading, but I believe that Americans care too much about their rights to let this type of thing continue. I mean, sure we have our fair share of threats to our democracy, but we also have a lot of rights in terms of fighting those threats. For example, I feel we have stronger protections for freedom of speech than most industrialized countries.
As I understand it, in the UK you have nothing to prevent prior restraint on the part of the government. That is, the government can censor you before you publish something. In the US, this is illegal (Of course, the government can still punish you for publishing something illegal. They can only do it after it's been published.)
Also, we've gone to great lengths to protect the rights of even the worst groups (the KKK, Fred Phelps and company), while some countries have provisions against this sort of thing.
Long story short, I'm disappointed with the state of American democracy, but I'm hopeful. I think when more people learn about what's going on behind the scenes, things will change for the better.
EDIT: Here's a fun fact. Part of the Alien and Sedition acts are still the law in the US: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/21
Germany is a terrible example of free speech. So is France. The parent is right, US is still way ahead on this specific point.
Remember, free speech is the ability to voice extremely unpopular views without persecution by the state. Saying something everybody agrees with is not representative.
Surely if anyone can change things in the USA for the better, it's you, Mr. President.
The US system of government is engineered to assure, more than anything else that a single actor cannot unilaterally effect major change.
The executive branch tells us this out of one side of it's mouth, and out of the other side it says it must have broad latitude to act on matters of national security (a term it defines for it's own convenience) without review from the judicial branch and minimal oversight by legislators, who have no idea what questions to ask, never mind any recourse if they get undesirable answers.
It's not wrong to label that a totalitarian tendency.
""" Totalitarianism or totalitarian state is a term used by some political scientists to describe a political system in which the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever possible. """
Sure, there are some really threatening things happening in the name of national security, but labeling these things "totalitarian" is hyperbole.
By the definition you quote, perhaps only North Korea qualifies in terms of pursuing control "wherever possible." It is a definition of comic book villainy. It doesn't even encompass Soviet occupied Eastern Europe.
EDIT: More to your point, of course, if BHO (or GWB, or WJC, or c.) were the sort of person who could conceive of major changes, he wouldn't have been allowed within a mile of the presidency.
What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny – the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through "sensitivity training" and multiculturalist curricula, "hate crime" laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny.
which is sort of inverted authoritarianism.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_T._Francis#Anarcho-tyra...
A lot of the people who complain about "totalitarianism" are simply ideological minorities who don't like the majoritarian consensus and seek to delegitimize it.
What's wrong with that?
The system should be viewed as illegitimate (read: as a system to be peacefully turned to dust or forever changed) by those who find deep ethical fault with it. You're alluding to conscientious objectors negatively. They are one of the few groups of people who have ever pushed progress through the ages on this planet. Of course, you're entitled to love the status quo to the point of making it legitimate in your mind every step it takes. Those who ethically disagree with the current oligarchical model for issuing laws that govern the fate of the world do, indeed, disagree.
I view "majoritarian consensus," which the US doesn't actually have, as only a small step above monarchy. It's a very low bar to set for laws of any serious consequence. To be so presumptuous and selfish as to give one small body the right to govern over vast regions of territory would have to, on an ethical level, require approaching systems models that use near full consensus.
Disagreement is the only necessary factor for a person wanting to delegitimize something mentally. In the mind of an objector, there is no more legitimacy in a dictator's brutality, or in an oligarchical republic's brutality (e.g. imprisonment for nonviolent crimes), other than the reality of the sword that backs the decree. Lest the world become lemmings, may people continue to find illegitimacy as they search their minds and hearts.
No doubt, many people who object to certain laws believe the system is "broken" without appreciation that the system is fixed and 'well-oiled.'
Elsewhere on this page reference is made to the "democratic" way we elect legislators and certain law enforcement officials in the USA. Polls repeatedly show clear majorities for the legalization of marijuana use, possession, and distribution. Yet somehow we still have (poor) people going to prison, and (not poor) LEOs and attorneys paying off their mortgages, due entirely to marijuana enforcement despite this wonderful process of consensus?
I guess you should just hope you always find yourself on the "majoritarian" side, if in fact you don't continuously censor and mold your own thoughts to ensure that.
No, claiming that any popular policy you disagree with must be the product of illegitimate factors or influences is an attempt to sidestep the essential process of establishing majoritarian consensus.
> Polls repeatedly show clear majorities for the legalization of marijuana use, possession, and distribution.
Marijuana is a bad example for your position, because:
1) The consensus reached the point of favoring marijuana legalization just in the last few years (http://www.gallup.com/poll/165539/first-time-americans-favor...). As recently as 2005, the Gallup poll showed that Americans were against marijuana legalization almost 2:1. And unsurprisingly, now that the consensus has shifted, you're seeing real movements all across the country to legalize marijuana.
2) The polls are still based on a random sampling of people, instead of a sampling of likely voters. People under 30 favor legalization more than 2:1, but people over 65 still somewhat oppose legalization. Guess which demographic is more likely to vote? It's not really a fault of the process if younger people don't care to participate.
Indeed, the essence of "majoritarian" thought seems to be caprice. Why did the prohibition of substances other than alcohol not require an analogue to the 18th Amendment? Again, sucks to be us! Oh well!
It was legal for a long time for private parties to discriminate against racial minorities as well, but majoritarian consensus eventually made that illegal. Adulterating food products wasn't illegal but now is legs, most financial crimes didn't exist, etc. Society's views evolve over time and the structure of the law should keep pace.
> That is indefensible, yet it is what your theory commits you to defend.
What's indefensible about it? Why shouldn't people be allowed to structure their society the way they want? What makes you think that the structure people want won't change over time?
The alternative is to bind people to fixed rules that they can't change, as if they're handed down from God.
A Panglossian defender of the status quo has ample opportunity to poke fun at us nuts who complain about it, especially if our complaints don't display due deference to the way things are. I don't actually have a "concrete" proposal, other than "all this bullshit? let's have less". I guess what I'd appreciate would be if the defenders were to take a slightly more nuanced, dare I hope critical, look at these institutions and processes that apparently require so much defense.
And, yes: "young people don't vote" is in fact the reason that drug prohibition is the factor that it is. Sorry. How do you rationalize your way past that? Young people are overwhelmingly outcompeted in the US by old people.
The fact that young people don't vote is not a contingent circumstance, it is part of the system. However it's pretty far down the list of embarrassing injustices in the USA.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/16/pot-drug-possession...
Summary: lots of arrests for pot possession and LEAP says: "more people were arrested for marijuana offenses alone last year than for all violent crimes combined."
Naw, just kidding. But that would be a deliciously ironic way to interpret your comment.
We may as well find some better-quality writing about the one author's idea, rather than using an article from the Encyclopedia That Any Point-of-View-Pusher Can Edit™ as a coatrack to open up a discussion on Hacker News. Hacker News can be a community in which people use much better sources than most Wikipedia articles (I am a Wikipedian, so I have seen the sausage made) if we let it be.
edit: from the talk and history, the term was invented by Wolin, but has found little acceptance elsewhere. I am all for adding this to Wikipedia once it becomes generally accepted. But not as a means to get there.
I mean, if this is misuse, you'd better nix nihilism, liberalism, socialism, and all the rest, as those are also just "opinions".
It would be like if the article about socialism only sourced books by Bill O'Reilly and was all about how President Obama is definitely a socialist. Even accepting that Wolin is more academic and respected than O'Reilly (I really have no idea), I don't think this meets the bar of encyclopedia entry.
Yes, we clearly should have stopped inventing new terms around Plato's time.
I mean what's these fancy new -isms, like Anarchism, Marxism, et al?
If I say Inverted Totalitarianism, I have to explain what I mean by that.
Based on that, Wikipedia should not be the second step after an author invents a word. Marxism didn't end up in the Encyclopaedia as soon as Marx published. Useful -isms are not established by authors, but by people who discuss them.
You missed my whole point, which is that by your own standards, "marxism" shouldn't have entered the language in the first place, since in 1880 you couldn't "skip the explanation" and people didn't know what marxism was.
In short: that some terms are established and widespread is no argument against creating and using newer terms. The establised terms also began as fringe and unknown themselves. That's how language is enriched.
>Based on that, Wikipedia should not be the second step after an author invents a word. Marxism didn't end up in the Encyclopaedia as soon as Marx published.
Well the 11th edition of Britannica (1910) has an entry, a mere 23 years before the first use of the term. We are 10 year from Wolin's work (2003), which makes it quite comparable, if not sluggish compated to Britannica, given that they didn't have as fast tranfer of information as we have today, nor as easy a process of making new edition as online publishing offers.
>Useful -isms are not established by authors, but by people who discuss them.
Nope, that's a populist argument. Usually nobody discusses most -isms and philosophical terms but a small percentage of scholars, authors and intellectuals. Still they appear in dictionaries, encyclopaedias, wikipedia, and elsewhere.
I argue the new word should be accepted once it's proven useful. That doesn't start with the dictionary.
I don't think it's a matter of time or bandwidth; you can surely find authors who published at the same time as Marx and we're not in the dictionary 23 years later.
Also, note I distinguish useful isms.
The other contributor made his point by pointing it is just an argumentum ad autoritatem.
Then I discovered that wikipedia was turning with NPOV (I had some fights) into an authority : the validation of a NPOV is made by a team of recurrent contributors who have bias (like believing that when someone claim to be a researcher in their page like them it must be true even if we cannot check the real identity of the person).
Every system of knowledge and cooperation tends to be plagued by the emergence of an "aristocracy" of self declared experts.
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts (Feynman).
On the other hand, for now WP is still sane you can still open a claim that this article is violating NPOV. Because that is the case.
Redactors will study your case you might even be winning because you are stating the obvious : it seems (in my opinion) it has nothing to do with an universal non biased knowledge.
Even if I had a grudge with WP that may back your claim, I won't actually agree with until you signal this article as NPOV.
Here is your entry point for making what is right : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view...
But maybe Wikipedia itself is ruled by Inverted Totalitarianism? ;-)
The simple fact that in some cases less than 40 or 30% of the population can choose an election (if you don't believe me, look it up on youtube, CGP Grey made a video about it), show it's hard to take seriously the claim that the US is a democracy.
Then Andrew Jackson used the term democracy as political marketing (probably had the same impact as calling yourself "anarchist"), and the US system co-opted it and rebranded itself as a democracy. Because people naturally would like to govern their lives, rather than political and wealthy elites.
I recommend Graeber's _The Democracy Project_ for more on this; he's an anthropologist who helped found Occupy, and popularized the 99% slogan.
The evolution of the use of the word happened in England and France. Frenchman Marquis d’Argenson (1694-1757) was first to define representative democracy in the way it's used today.
You're forgetting that the Free Silver movement was about exactly this - farmers trapped in debt due to a deflationary gold-backed dollar were agitating for the silver dollar which would be inflationary and thus allow them to escape it. Deny them that, and they're going to switch to something else - like taking a long hard look at what's considered "fair".
You might also note that the modern US has exactly this concept - bankruptcy. It has consequences, but debt can in fact just disappear.
However! It's only very slightly flawed, and it works about as well as all the other systems. The key is this:
> they hold no "political power", they should do what the government has chosen (as a boss would follow the order of the board/owners).
Right. But the government is chosen by the electorate, who are the ultimate "owners" in your analogy. The difference between electing a governor (or state congress, or whatever) and having him appoint a judge, or just electing the judge directly turns out to be really, really minimal. If an electorate would have elected a far-right (or far-left) whackjob to be a police chief, then they'll elect the kind of governor who will appoint a far-right (or far-left) whackjob as police chief. I happen to strongly dislike Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Maricopa County Arizona, but I don't see why Governor Jan Brewer could be counted upon to appoint someone better (google those names and you'll see why). The people there support policies I dislike, and they will find ways to implement them unless forceably stopped. That's democracy.
(Conversely, at one time Senators were appointed by state governments; they are now directly elected. Doesn't seem to have had a ton of impact. Conservative states went from electing conservative state governments which appointed conservative senators to just electing conservative senators. I think the earlier system might have been better, but I'll be damned if I can point to any concrete evidence either way.)
People seem to get the government they deserve. :)
The legislative branch is to be elected to make and change laws, which represent the will of the people. The executive and judicial branches are appointed by the legislative branch and not de-appointed.
This keeps houses of power (writing of law, execution of law, interpretation of law) at arm's length, and makes change slow and difficult. That's actually theoretically a good thing, under some assumptions: that the will of the people is fickle and ill-informed; that we have a pretty good system already; and that forces which last a long time are likelier to be for good than bad in our society.
Any of those assumptions could be off-base, but if you're fine with them, then a slow government where each branch is at arm's length and has minimal effect on each other's composition at any given moment is effective.
Elections for all branches of government would make them all fluid and reactive to public will. That may be fine, but it would mean a much higher capacity for fast change in our lives, both for the positive and the negative.
Sorry if I'm not clearly making a point -- I don't really disagree with you, but I feel that there are well-defined reasons in our political system for not electing members of the other branches of government.
Personally I believe enforcement should be neutral and unbiased, whereas the creation of those laws are the realm of politics and where the will of the people should count. The US clearly has the opposite opinion.
Personally I think that leads to arbitrary and unreliable enforcement, justice only for the majority (or even the rich).
What we cannot elect, is the mayor, or the head of the province. Both are placed by the King.
The problem in the Netherlands is not that we cannot elect local representatives, as that is simply false: we can.
The problem is that we are not a pure democracy like a republic would be, but that the head of the state, with actual political power, is Elected By God. Not the people.
Is it really a problem though? In practice, they (European rulers) have little actual power, so it's not unlike the president of Portugal, except it's a bit fancier during state visits...
But, now that you ask: I personally feel a monarchy is a problem, in a purely academical way: the idea that some person, instated by God, rules me, and not the democratically elected government, goes against my principles. Academic, yes, because in practice, a King will hardly ever use the given power; and even if so, he'll do exactly once. "But she is such a nice person" is what people often said about our Queen. And "Willem is really a very likable person" about our current. As a person, and maybe even as a ruler, I trust Willem, our king, a lot more to make the right choices then our current MP will do. In practice, there is little wrong with a monarchy, in our day-to-day lives. But in theory, there is a lot wrong with the concept. And one needs not look very far in history to see how kings and emperors, or others placed outside a democracy have misbehaved.
It might do something. But shortly thereafter its unlikely they would retain the legal authority to do it.
If (enough) people really wanted it to be different, it would be.
(While USA invasion has turned out well for some nations, that hasn't happened recently. If you care for your nation and its inhabitants, you really ought to do your damnedest to stay off the list.)
the Bush Doctrine that the United States has the right to launch preemptive wars
Unless the American citizenry, along with the western allies, oppose this militant attitude, it's not going to end well - whatever new term you call it.
Strictly speaking, preemptive war is a universally understood prerogative of every nation -- "preemptive war" is proximate self-defense against a specific, real, imminent threat before the attacking blow lands.
What Bush did is redefine preemption to include preventive war -- "self-defense" against a vague, general, nonspecific, distant potential threat that an enemy might, someday in the future, decide to attack (using capacities that do not even yet exist and which are themselves nonspecific, speculative, and distant potentials).
Preemptive war is problematic in practice, but generally regarded as an essential corollary of the right to wage war defensively; the Bush Doctrine of preventive war, OTOH, is equivalent to allowing the "self-defense" as a defense to murder charges because the killer had a belief that the victim might, someday in the future, get a gun and kill them and so they needed to kill them before that occurred.
http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2009/05/06/combatantcivilian...
Your ignorance is middly acceptable because US media and other information reporters are biased or coerced into giving bad statistics about the issue:
http://www.lawfareblog.com/wiki/the-lawfare-wiki-document-li...
Total civilian deaths are higher because there are more civilians.
Israel-Palestine is a special case because it is so one sided. I'm not very sympathetic to Israel (did Nelson Mandela recognize the right of the Afrikaner people to exist, and affirm the existence of South Africa as an Afrikaner state? This is what the Israelis are always going on about right?) but that's not really relevant to whether being a soldier is in general more dangerous than being a civilian.
Maybe I am addressing a different point to everyone else, but I think it's important given that deaths of soldiers are sometimes considered on a completely different moral plane to deaths of civilians, even though from a utilitarian perspective they are equally important.
But the answer is: No, I wish there weren't any soldiers to begin with. Dead being just the most common way they disappear, plus is always a political assertion the prime causative, so to avoid refilling wars with youngsters it's more effective to stop that.
You really ought to read different history books. This is akin to saying "statistically the sky is usually magenta in color".
Also problematic is Wolin's implied assumption that hegemony can only exist if democracy is compromised. But that's utterly absurd. Why would anyone expect that voters, given the free choice, wouldn't want the benefits that accrue from their country having global supremacy? Does anyone think that, deep down, Americans really want to be like Europe, just another player on the world stage who must modulate their foreign policy based on the consideration that they can't impose it unilaterally? Even people who believe the U.S. should act multilaterally when possible don't necessarily believe the U.S. should concede the option to act unilaterally when necessary.
That has an easy answer if you look at treaties like TPP: The hegemon uses power over trading "partners" to work around the will of the people. Hegemony is no benefit to the majority of the people. It is a tool used against them.
"Nothing to hide" is an apathetic "Yes, Sir" to losing self control, letting the results machine analyze and respond to your life actions with all power of an authority you've amplified for yourself.
Apathy toward drone "signature strikes" is a "Yes, Sir" to striking and killing exactly where the results machine wishes.
The results machine does not have human well-being programmed as a core, infallible rule. That means that mistakes like collateral human damage are not seen as mistakes at all, they are part of getting results.
Trusting any machine we've built to probe and manipulate the earth to meet any end other than human growth and good is very scary and selfish.
Apathy is the new allegiance toward our scary and selfish state.
* In Nazi Germany, the state dominated economic factors, in the U.S. corporations do
* Nazis advocated political action, U.S. does not and does not advocate voting
* Nazis mocked democracy, U.S. made it its ideology
* Therefore Nazis and the U.S. are very similar
Doesn't anyone see why this is problematic reasoning? He just made three points that showed how the U.S. and Nazi Germany have flawed political models, but the connections seem to be few and far between. I get that he's saying that they are both nondemocratic systems under the guise of democracy, but it seems a little farfetched using this argument.
Needless to say at the end, of these war neither Athena nor Sparta won, because they both lost.
Plato's Republic is a simple HOWTO turn a democracy ruled by citizens into a system claiming to be ruled in the best interest of the citizen by a minority of "Wise men" with an elite of watchmen that enforce the power.
Read Alan Moore's "Watchmen" for a criticize of the republic (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
Pericles(or Solon (don't remember) before Athena became a Republic said the same thing as Eisenower: beware of the richs that want to get a grip on a state and extend their power through their influence and will use military power for expension.
Nothing new under the sun. The guy is reinventing the wheel
* Today's govt. marketing makes it seem more legitimate than it is. Democracy is vulnerable to a panem-et-circenses strategy.
* If citizens' needs are not satisfied by a welfare state, they are rendered helpless enough to be managed by a veiled totalitarian regime.
The former is an interesting problem, expressed well. The latter is more concerning. Are opinions (votes) really worthless just because voters are exposed to economic realities?
I don't think democracy rests on voters being "secure" (in the welfare state sense) when they make their decision.
Classically the line is drawn at secret/anonymous voting. OP suggests voters also need to have their economy guaranteed, if their votes are to give the government any legitimacy. That's very different.
This is a really interesting question/assertion. I lean toward security being necessary for good decision making. For example, people whose time is spent primarily on "getting by" will have far less time and psychological wherewithal to propose new ideas that meet their needs and the group; creative problem solving is less likely[1]. They may be able to voice their opinion on a multiple-choice proposal, however, which could pass as democracy I suppose.
A smaller number of people may have a creative ability that is inversely related to stress--necessity is the mother of invention and all that. But I don't think that is a majority, and perhaps unfortunately, democracy depends on the psychological traits of the majority.
Its easier to lobby within a party to change things then try and form a new one, given the way the first past the post voting system in the US works. In countries without one, new parties can form and gain some influence all the time.
The premise of democracy is that the will of the governed gives legitimacy to power.
This (I argue) doesn't presuppose that the governed have security of income, a positive view of the future of the nation, perfect information, or anything like that. What matters is they choose, not their reasons for choosing.
No, an insecure population can also act democratically, but it's much more easier to pressure it.
It might not invalidate it legally or procedurally, but it invalidates it in the spirit of democracy (each deciding what he deems best, not what he was pressured to vote in order to get something unrelated to the issue under voting).
The sort of pressure OP is talking about is more vague: the pressure of having some skin in the game. I can't imagine what elections would be without that pressure.
The democratic spirit of "what he/she deems best" doesn't rule out the influence of reality over voters' decisions.
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If the frog is boiling, where are we at on the scale of "didn't make tenure" to "jack booted swat team renditions you"?
Q: The United States is moving towards facism CMV (sic)
A: Does the US exhibit some fascist traits? Sure. But I'd contend that we are moving farther, rather than closer.
http://np.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1se6cr/the_unit...
Which is not to understate the scale of the problems alluded to, but the analogy isn't enlightening. It's just name-calling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
"Godwin's law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Nazis – often referred to as "playing the Hitler card". The law and its corollaries would not apply to discussions covering known mainstays of Nazi Germany such as genocide, eugenics, or racial superiority, nor, more debatably, to a discussion of other totalitarian regimes or ideologies,..."
How does "Bottom Up Godwin's Law" sound to you?
;-)