You can see my world reflected in this water drop. It's not a particularly green world at the moment. The most profound thing I have to say isn't even mine, it belongs to Madison. A democracy is a tyranny of the many over the few. A monarchy is the tyranny of the few over the many. Did you know that until about two hundred years ago democracy was a bad word? It wasn't viewed as some great and noble endeavor that enlightens people and brings about equality, it was seen as just that a tyranny. This is why we have a republic instead of a democracy no matter what the press calls this government. We do not make each and every decision for our nation, we elect representatives to do this for us, and we trust they will make the right decision.
The problem is, they don't make the right decision. Madison said that in that case you vote them out of office. Okay, that works if you're the majority, but what about the minority? What happens when eighty-percent of the people want something, say a high rise office building in New York city and two percent don't want that because it means their lives are lost? It become a tyranny of the many over the few because the many simply take it away from the few. The interesting part to me though is that it isn't so much the many, as it is a representative of the many, in other words, the few that take from the few in the name of the many. Getting confusing?
Think of the Kelo affair. The mayor said this is what the many want. The ones who owned the property argued that no it isn't. The problem is that the many didn't vote the mayor out of office because she advocated for their interests, maybe not just the high rise office building but other things too. Besides what do you want to throw out a perfectly good mayor for because she is abusing her power over one person? There must be something wrong with the one person who doesn't want to sacrifice her life, the one she worked so hard to obtain, in the interests of the greater good for the many people. So voting someone out of office just because she abuses her power over one person isn't going to happen. What kind of appeal does one person who represents only herself have against another person who represents the majority but the truth is the majority has no idea what their representative is doing because they have abdicated their power? So these representatives have tremendous power to abuse because they do so in the name of the many.
Toss in the judicial system that is supposed to protect the interests of the one against the many. Umm, the many are writing the laws. So the many write laws that work in their favor.
I don't know, it seems like a giant puzzle and the pieces are complicated.
1 comments:
I took a biology class where the teacher had made a mistake on his syllabus. We were supposed to have four labs and we were only going to have 3. So he took a vote to see who wanted to count the lab we just did twice.
The lab was to identify two bacteria, so you could get a 0, 50 or a 100 on it. 23 people had gotten 100's and two of us had missed one. Guess what the vote was.
I would like to think that the guy was covering his backside and didn't really count our 50%'s as doubled. In my case I was stuck on C level anyway and it didn't make much difference. Still, it taught me about the tyranny of democracy.
However, that tyranny is in a huge part outweighed by apathy. If a minority *cares* more about something... more of 'em speak about it. Doesn't work all the time, though. Oh, and then there's not being selfish jerks and recognizing the harm that you can do to a minority. Morality ;) If people aren't *afraid,* often they are moral. If they are afraid... we have nothing to fear, but fear itsoelf.
Kewl picture, by the way!
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