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1.OzQueens, NYSeptember 21st, 20101:31 amYou speak about China as if it's a fair comparison. Of course their economy is booming. They don't have to play by the rules because they don't have any! No safety overhead (see mines, toothpaste and toys), no minimum wage (hence unlimited and cheap human capital) and a government that can do whatever it wants without any fear of repercussions from the 1.3 billion humans it controls.
Democracy has not failed. It has been skewed and tainted by those who insist democracy means everyone must make the same amount of money, enjoy the same benefits with zero accountability. It now means the underdog is always right, is always oppressed and must be given whatever they demand without regard for how many people they blow up along the way.
Democracy means that the people should rule. It was put into place to protect citizens from being subject to the whims of the educated elitists. We elected one and now we are subject to about a trillion stimulating consequences.
Recommend Recommended by 24 Readers 2.imalcomsonSmithers, CanadaSeptember 21st, 20101:31 amDare I say democracy is merely a time-honored process by which government becomes an expanding expression of the people's will, whatrever that means. Overload that process with too many contending ideas, you get a cognitive surge that threatens to paralyze the daily functions of public rule. In this age of instant communication, everbody's ideas seem to count for a lot more than they once did. We now face the prospect of irate taxpayers in my province of British Columbia taking the concept of democracy to new heights or new lows by moving to politically recall key members of the governing Liberal party. The sound of fury has now become the dominant voice of our democratic expression and the only solution to our growing frustration of not being heard by those elected to high office. We may not be too far away from the day when dmocracy has finally morphed into something that no longer expands to include a myriad of clamoring views and starts to shut down.
Recommend Recommended by 17 Readers 3.Mickey BitskoNew York CitySeptember 21st, 20101:31 amIndeed, Tony Judt was a remarkable man. Thanks for the most interesting commentary.
Recommend Recommended by 23 Readers 4.Lee DittmannKingman, AZSeptember 21st, 20101:32 amIf our republic, a representational democracy, is to better serve us, we need legislators who will vote, not with an eye to what the opinion polls say we want at the moment, but to what we WOULD want--if we were fully informed on the issue.
If we could agree on that point, we wouldn't give credit to the recurring complaint (from all quarters) that Congress is acting against the will of the people because "Polls show that..."
The health care bill, a recent example, had a majority of voters against it only because (I think) the opponents falsely characterized it (death panels, government takeover) in order to sow doubt and dissent. The Democrats rightly passed it because they were convinced that once voters found out what benefits they would actually receive, most would support it. This was representative democracy in action as it should work. (That there can be legitimate criticism about the lack of other alternatives--the single-payer option--discussed for serious consideration is a side issue.)
To enable our elected officials to truly be able to vote in our interests (even if we are not convinced at the moment that it is so), we need to reduce or eliminate the need for them to seek contributions from powerful interest groups in order to be able to finance their election campaigns. Not an original idea, of course, but one which bears repeating, again and again.
It will then be our responsibility as voters to elect people who are actually capable of making reasoned, pragmatic decisions based on scientific observation and experimentation rather than an immovable ideology. Eliminating money as a major barrier in politics could help people espousing such values win elections, but ultimately it depends on us to recognize and discredit demagogues of any political stripe.
Living in a democracy is not for sissies.
Recommend Recommended by 94 Readers 5.Huge GlenDowntown New JerseySeptember 21st, 20101:32 amWe all know it's worth fighting for, except for our elected officials. We don't have democratic leaders; we have cash register democracy abd it's failing us. The only hope is revolution.
Recommend Recommended by 49 Readers 6.SandraKent, WASeptember 21st, 20101:32 amCanada seems the more likely ideal for government than America. Now that the Supreme Court has sided with corporate interests and futile wars continue, it looks like the dominoes are just naturally following. If I were younger, I would emigrate to Canada. I don't like seeing America in inexorable decline.
Recommend Recommended by 148 Readers 7.RichardWeston, CTSeptember 21st, 20102:15 amDemocracy is quite wonderful as long as a well informed and educated electorate participates fully in both voting and the mechanics of government. When uninformed voters barely participate in gerrymandered or unrepresentative elections and the politicians are dependent on funding to win election or re-election, that is a poor form of democracy. Of course a benevolent oligarchy is better in the short-term, and one might even say that such a democracy is really a malignant oligarchy in disguise since it puts the interests of those with money ahead of the people. Those who pervert the nature of democracy are effectively traitors as they work against the best interests of the nation. Unfortunately, they continue to have undue influence, and it seems to be growing.
Recommend Recommended by 114 Readers 8.alibeamishphoenixSeptember 21st, 20102:15 amWe no longer live in a democracy. There is no participation from citizens.
If you are lucky you are allowed to vote but the promises are irrelevant. And no one is allowed to confront the politicians.
Politicians refuse to meet citizens and talk without scripts and bodyguards.
The debates and town meetings never discuss real issues.
Recommend Recommended by 61 Readers 9.Shaun NarineFredericton, CanadaSeptember 21st, 20109:24 amExcellent commentary. You've hit all the nails on the head. But the problem is that the democratic systems of the world just aren't working. American democracy is hopelessly corrupt. The worst elements of American society are slowly taking control, the billionaires are coming out of their hidey-holes and blatantly buying political influence, the general public has proven itself to be too inept, prejudiced and easily frightened to live up to the responsibilities of democracy.
By contrast, a place like China can do what needs to be done, albeit through intimidation and fiat. Look at the environment. In the US, right-wing dinosaurs block progress and even threaten to roll back what little progress there is. In China, the most polluted place in the world, the government has declared a need for a green revolution and is going about creating it. Look at healthcare. The US is the only advanced country that refuses to provide its people affordable and accessible healthcare. Efforts to address this are now under threat from a Republican Party that, incredibly, sees votes in destroying the attempts to keep Americans healthy without going bankrupt. This is the example that America presents to the world? No wonder the American model is now widely regarded as a joke.
The failure of the Western democratic model is worsened by the reality of the hypocrisy of the West. Human rights and civil rights, apparently, only matter when times are good. When the going gets tough, the US tortures people to death, locks others away indefinitely, and then tries them in kangaroo courts. Economically, the system of Anglo-American capitalism is corrupt and incompetent. Even worse, the need to change and reform the capitalist system, to bring in regulations and restraints to curb its worst excesses, is blocked by political gridlock created by the very same people who have created the crisis. Indeed, Wall St. feels it has a right to rape the world and to hell with the consequences.
Democracy is worth fighting for. But not the democracy that the US is offering to the world and not the democracy that many so-called "democracies" are presenting to others. The real tragedy here is that, too often, Western publics have only themselves to blame for this mess. In the US, an ignorant and easily manipulated public has been led around like cattle by the worst elements of the American political system. Until that changes, democracy will continue to fail as a model to the rest of the world.
Recommend Recommended by 59 Readers 10.Stephen H. SchwartzNew YorkSeptember 21st, 20109:24 amMr Cohen and one of his commentators, Mr. Dittman, like both sides in the great divide which is destroying America, can only see the failures of the other side and not the failures of their own side. The root cause of what's undermining America can be summed up, "It's both parties, stupid."
Nowhere is this better evidenced than in the health care. Today there is an article in which the Republicans wonder what they will propose if they succeed in repealing or blocking Obama's new health care system. One has to wonder, why the Republicans, this late in the game are only now asking themselves that question.
But the Republicans' lapse is dwarfed by the Democrats' parallel failure to ever sit down and figure out how to reform health care in the past 20 to 100 years during which such reform was their signature issue. What we got is a bunch of know-nothings, making it up as they went along and the result a mess that neither delivers good health or affordable health to America. Mr. Dittman thinks the American people were duped and once they understood the bill they would support it. Is he blind? The more America knows about this gerry-rigged, financially fraudulent bill, the more they reject it. No Democrat in a competitive district is citing it as a great achievement as Obama tried to claim it was.
If ever the devil is in the details, it is in health care reform and that said, what was needed, was for the Democrats, under their leadership, but inviting others into the process, to sit down and figure out what needs to be done, how to do it and how to pay for it. What we got is none of that and slimy deals, legislative trickery and name-calling and a reform that will never work.
To give you some measure of how unprepared the Democrats were to do what they said they have been trying to do is the model on which they based the reform was created by a Republican Governor, Mitt Romney in Mass.
That's pathetic, but Cohen and Dittman blame the Republicans.
Senator Rockefeller once said, speaking of health care, there are not 10 members of the Senate who have a clue about health care, how to reform it or how to run it or anything - and yet these are the people who sat down to fix it. They didn't. They are Democrats who ran this show. They are Republicans who to this day were right in saying the Democrats are doing it wrong and then were so asleep never thought, gee, maybe we ought to have an idea how to do ourselves.
When the Mr. Cohens and the Mr. Dittmans should remember the smart words of that long gone cartoon character, Pogo - I have seen the enemy and it is us. Both parties, stupid.
Recommend Recommended by 6 Readers 11.Jerry EngelbachBrooklyn, NYSeptember 21st, 20109:25 am"Democracy" is not a word with a single meaning. In an oligarchic state such as the U.S., despite full participation in the voting process, working people have little to say about how they are governed.
"The most democratic bourgeois republic is no more than a machine for the suppression of the working class by the bourgeoisie, for the suppression of the working people by a handful of capitalists.
"Even in the most democratic bourgeois republic "freedom of assembly" is a hollow phrase, for the rich have the best public and private buildings at their disposal, and enough leisure to assemble at meetings, which are protected by the bourgeois machine of power. The rural and urban workers and small peasants – the overwhelming majority of the population – are denied all these things. As long as that state of affairs prevails, "equality", i.e., "pure democracy", is a fraud.
"Freedom of the press" is another of the principal slogans of "pure democracy". And here, too, the workers know – and Socialists everywhere have explained millions of times – that this freedom is a deception because the best printing presses and the biggest stocks of paper are appropriated by the capitalists, and while capitalist rule over the press remains – a rule that is manifested throughout the whole world all the more strikingly, sharply and cynically – the more democracy and the republican system are developed, as in America for example...
"The capitalists have always use the term "freedom" to mean freedom for the rich to get richer and for the workers to starve to death. And capitalist usage, freedom of the press means freedom of the rich to bribe the press, freedom to use their wealth to shape and fabricate so-called public opinion. In this respect, too, the defenders of "pure democracy" prove to be defenders of an utterly foul and venal system that gives the rich control over the mass media. They prove to be deceivers of the people, who, with the aid of plausible, fine-sounding, but thoroughly false phrases, divert them from the concrete historical task of liberating the press from capitalist enslavement."
Can even the staunchest anti-communist deny that these words of Lenin were never more true than in the United States today?
Recommend Recommended by 19 Readers 12.Donald HoytAtlanta, GASeptember 21st, 20109:25 amThere has never been any guarantee that democratic government would lead to superior or even satisfactory outcomes. Democracy has always been dependent on a substantial core of involved and informed citizens--the ideal always being a New England town meeting where everyone could have a pretty clear idea of the issues and alternatives, and costs and benefits, and could make an informed (even if ultimately subjective) choice. In the past half century, the issues have become almost impossibly complex--global warming, non-symmetrical conflict, Tom Friedman's flattening of the world, vastly amplified powers of communication without a corresponding increase in thought and understanding. And during the same time, the electorate (at least in America) has become less qualified by education and inclination to grapple with these issues. Given the state of American political polarization, the surprising thing is not that both right and left are attacking Obama (for doing much too much, or for not doing enough), but that a highly educated, thoughtful intellectual with some coherent long-term ideas for changing America could have been elected in the first place (reforming health care, the financial system, public schools and student loans, America's military and diplomatic postures, and America's pattern of energy usage, to name just a few).
Recommend Recommended by 14 Readers 13.Markus StokmaierKarlsruhe, GermanySeptember 21st, 20109:26 amSounds nice. But one should go two steps further in order to advance the discussion to where today's problems of democracy are lying:
a) Kant's definition of enlightment: "Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage" - talking about education and what level of education is needed to maintain a society constantly pulling themselves out of tutelage growing like ivy, all in a time of increase social dynamic because money and information have the speed of light.
b) Realize how meaningful the g'old concept of a "social contract" is: individual players, organizations, and corporations have to give up certain parts of their sovereignity in order to enable a free society. I guess Afghanistan is pretty close to Hobbes' state of nature. Nobody has much incentive to found a little company or a bigger one or a political advocacy group if it requires founding a private army at the same time.
But what if I say the social contract of a continental European country including its education system allows a much freer society than the USA at the moment with its diverse mechanisms for economic spinning, political spinning and an outdated two-party system? How much are the incentives for company founding decreased if it requires hiring an army of lawyers? How much of society's energy is drained through this? How much is the general public discussion on questions of freedom and human dignity diminished if most people have to work two jobs?
Recommend Recommended by 20 Readers 14.robsea69Chon Buri, ThailandSeptember 21st, 20109:26 amUndoubtedly, a concensus will be formed among many readers today lieing in the belief that in order to achieve and sustain a functioning democracy, there is a prerequisite, an opening ante, that requires an eloctorate to be educated and informed. Here are some other random thoughts on democracy:
1. Democracy equates to freedom. While precious to Americans,freedom may rank behind honor and loyalty in other cultures.
2. Democracy has had difficulty establishing root in regions that cling to overiding religious and ethnic differences (e.g. Iraq and the former Yugoslavia).
3. In a global economy, a true deomcracy has an additional subset of challenges leading to the potential for inconsistent foreign, monetary, and trade policies. These challenges can create advanatges for countries that have more centrally focused governments.
4. Capitalism thrives in democratic environments. Unregulated and unchecked, capitalaism and democratic institutions co-mingle. The results, as witnessed in America, show a significant loss of influence among the electorate, while increasing power and corruption among elected officials and the capitalist hierarchy.
Recommend Recommended by 15 Readers 15.terrywashingtonville, new yorkSeptember 21st, 20109:26 amThe decline of democracy can be seen in the decline of political parties. The Founding Fathers foresaw much, but failed to grasp that parties are necessary for any functioning democracy. There has never been a society with political and economic freedom without two strong political parties and the strength of those political and economic freedoms, which are linked, is a direct function of political party strength. The increasing numbers of independents, who believe party line voting is an indication of lack of intelligence, are ironically, as study after study has shown, the least intelligent on political issues, the least likely to vote, the least likely to attend government meetings. And, again, as studies have shown, although they always claim to "look at the candidate's records", 70% of them who are undecided in the last 3 days will vote for the candidate who spends the most money. And now that the Supreme Court has granted corporations more rights than actual people, the key issue is whether democracy will morph into plutocracy. And endless wars. Oh, that's right, we are in endless wars.
Recommend Recommended by 7 Readers 16.jnt97bManassas, VASeptember 21st, 20109:26 amI don't think democracy is the problem. I think it's our warped style of government where many career politicians have become beholden to the corporate institutions and wealthy that permit them to remain that way while ignoring the needs of the majority working class who provide the taxes and the bodies to fight the wars to protect the privileged who contribute little. In spite of significant productivity increases wages have been diminished while precious jobs have been exported wholesale to increase margins and the country was almost ruined by these people manipulating the financial system and then bailed out with taxpayer money by their political paladins. In this country, the wealthy with their political contributions have become the 'ruling class', a true inversion of real democracy if ever there was one.
Recommend Recommended by 4 Readers 17.JesterJamesPennsylvaniaSeptember 21st, 20109:27 amthere's no such thing as "Beijing Consensus". China have not come out and offered any kind of alternatives to "Washington Consensus", which US have been aggressively promoting(by enticement or force) all over the globe. The only thing that even remotely close to any kind of principle or ideology is China's foreign relations stance of non-interference of other country's internal affair. If one try to sum up Chinese's development principles, it would be, every country's condition is different thus every country's path to development should naturally also be different. No one outside of a country can truely know the best way to acheive their development goals. When a country gets tired of being poor all the time they will find both the political will and method to finally develop their country's economy. The best another country can do is to leave them alone to find their own ways. It's essentially Taoism.
Recommend Recommended by 2 Readers 18.Tom OstermanCincinnati, OhioSeptember 21st, 20109:27 amThe benefits of democracy are not just the goodies that we get such as freedom, a worthy bill of rights, a constitution second to none and opportunities to become who we are and who we want to be, but also dealing with the many imperfections that appear giving us a chance to correct them or improve upon them.
Unfortunately this requires that we be reasonable or at least have an abundance of reason within us to help understand that passions eventually burn themselves out and reasonable people need to survive. But that is extremely difficult in an environment like we are in. Democracy will survive, it has to, because the world without freedom would be unreasonable.
The mere fact that Roger Cohen is free to write this, the NYT is free to print it and we are free to read what is written says a lot more than when you are told what to write, told what to print and told what to read.
After all the whole idea in the first place why this country was formed was because we simply wanted freedom.
Recommend Recommended by 3 Readers 19.David Le PageCape Town, South AfricaSeptember 21st, 20109:28 amWhen nominally democratic nations like the US and the UK use the power of their assembled freedoms to invade other countries, and when you decline as a nation to cease your share of the runaway destruction of our global environment, yes, democracy does look rather less shiny.
I say "nominally democratic" because your US "democracy" is so much driven by special interests that it now rather more resembles a kleptocracy – where power is stolen by corporations. In international climate change negotiations, over 190 countries do not argue over the science - they argue about the implications of the science. Yet in America, your political class will not take action.
The crisis of democracy may well also be related to the crisis of sustainability. As societies and individuals stagger under the weight of the assembled impacts of over-consumption, so perhaps we start to lose the capacity for democracy - which functions best when people have the resources and time to engage in slow and reasoned discussions. In other words, democracy demands a measure of prosperity. And prosperity, in the truest sense of the word: shared wellbeing, is now being destroyed by the pursuit of wealth.
Recommend Recommended by 20 Readers 20.Carolyn EgeliValley Lee, Md.September 21st, 20109:28 amBush's people didn't allow anybody to be where he was speaking if they were not in agreement with his views. They were forcibly tossed out. Atleast it is a little bit better than that now. But we are still talking about fruit, even if it is somewhat apples and oranges, meaning that it often feels like, looks like, and smells like, that we are being manipulated by big money interests as a country. I agree, Democracy is worth fighting for. Even though we imagine that it is different now, it is also true that our democracy has always been messy with insider and monied influences. Maybe we are more aware of it now because of more instant communication as has been pointed out. And yet, even that, seems more tightly controlled by the elite more than ever before. It is quite discouraging as it seems clear we are losing our democracy and because of our foriegn policy (or our bad behavior), democracy is actually on the wane in the world. And now with our jobs over seas and the financial markets caving, the bad behavior has come home to roost. Selfishness really has caused it all. And the days of celebrating selfishness and greed ( consumerism and terrible trade treaties masquerading as free markets) are over.
Recommend Recommended by 5 Readers 21.Rolland NormanCanadaSeptember 21st, 20109:29 am
Roger, your writing is always superb and so inspiring.
Let me share with you and your audience my abbreviated,
incomplete definition of democracy which I have written sometime
ago. It is expanding your set of ideas quite well, I think…
Still today, I feel excited when my mind is surfing back, some
50 years or so, to my university time, when living on the “wrong
side” of the Iron Curtain.
I used to discuss then with my peers a true(?!) meaning of
democracy; the meaning so fascinating to me and so unpleasant
to the totalitarian regime, we lived in. Still today, living in North
America, I am excited when I talk about this subject.
Democracy… how do you define it? I have been asked by my
friends.
Is it an objective, natural phenomenon, or a bunch of subjective
wishful ideas? What is the relationship of democracy to…
the rhythm & blues?
Did ongoing satirical political cabaret and a striptease (one person,
exposing herself for a fraction of a minute!), in a student club,
in Warsaw in 1959, when the totalitarian regime was in power,
represent a rebirth of democracy?
How did the biggest minds of antiquity define it?
Does the statement (negative!) by Aristotle, …democracy – the
perverted rule by many -…, carry some weight today?
Or Nietschean definition: - democracy is a scheme for keeping
the superior few under the power of the inferior many -; does it
make any sense today?
Is democracy the synonym of some sort of balance – fusion of an
idea and feeling?
Should democracy be defined as something unattainable; should
it be perceived as a "moving target”?
Does British democracy can be recognized as an exemplary
model of democracy? How skillful social manipulation it does
represent?
Why did British Empire install democracy in the pre-feudal India?
Was it an altruistic gesture or an economical practicality?
Is the Hyde Park Corner a symbol of democracy for the masses?
Do the British have moral authority to lecture the others about
democracy?
Is it democracy about illusion of shearing power between all
layers of the society?
Is it democracy a gift of the wise few to the vulgar many?
Is it democracy a real alternative to various forms of tyranny?
Is democracy a time-honoured process by which government
becomes an expanding expression of the people's will?
Is the majority ever right?
Does democracy symbolize an impotence of human hopes?
Is it a struggle against inertia and repetitious paralysis, so common
to gone by Communism?
How did the Reformation (diminishing feudal power of church),
the Renaissance (empowering man with critical mind) and the
social revolutions (French and Russian), impact the meaning
of democracy?
Does a recent granting of political rights to women by His Highness
Emir makes Kuwait an instantaneous democracy?
Is …the pursuit of happiness… an essence of truly democratic
political system?
Is it right to lob a laser guided bombs to somebody’s yard in the
name of democracy?
Is the internet a tool of world universal democracy in making?
Does globalization bleed democracy of content?
Is democracy a show business?
Does democracy offer redemption from banality of commercial
civilization or is responsible for creation of it?
The list of questions can go forever.
My initial fascination with British model of democracy went through
metamorphosis during many years. It went a long way from admiration
to condemnation. Brits were a peculiar colonial power building
parliaments in the conquered lands. In India, they collected all
maharajas (with a few abstaining exceptions) in the freshly constructed
parliament building, in New Delhi, and ordered them to behave like
the British parliamentarians. One governor, with the help of relatively
small army, could then govern the whole sub-continent, in a cost
effective way. Economically, from the British point of view, it was a marvel. Morally and ethically, it was the biggest defeat of democracy, since the word has been invented by the Greeks.
My romance with American democracy is continuous. Through love
of American music, analysis of American political system and
reading American Constitution, I became a committed believer in
the American way of life.
It would be just fair to mention here the overgrowth of a parasitic
lawyers’ elite, as a one of major shortcomings.
The pursuit of happiness…this phrase makes my eyes occasionally
watery… American democracy is direct reason of American
prosperity. The Silicon Valley phenomenon could happened only in
America because an individual has freedom to utilize his potential
in democratic environment, without brutal interference of the state or
the constrains imposed by the backward tradition.
Rolland Norman
Recommend Recommended by 1 Reader 22.BabeoufIrelandSeptember 21st, 20109:29 amThis article makes the Democratic point by way of an accident. Justifying the current Western political systems with 18th century ideas is of course part of the problem. An honest evaluation would admit that the social movements that aimed to establish Democratic government have not succeeded in a single country. We do not choose to put our selves under Representative Democracies but find them in existence. As organizers and agents with power over us. And the center of this power is by social construction beyond our control. It may launch us into wars or some of our number into space. Restricting the ability of tyrants to emerge does not make a system of government Democratic and ours isn't. Something that a first year philosophy student should be able to grasp. The same student could point out that freedoms( as in freedoms derived from markets) could be more extensive under some tyrants than under an actually Democratic society. The tyrant might permit the purchase of children for sex. Or the sale of every drug known to humans, or the publication of endless critical attacks on tyranny ,etc. The freedom that the tyrant wouldn't permit is the freedom of the ordinary citizen to determine government policy and actions. Nor do we. And this is one of the reasons that European Representative Democracies have fundamental problems. Like the Communism of the Chinese Communist Party the Democracy of the West is recognized as purely nominal by a growing number of its subjects.
Recommend Recommended by 2 Readers 23.martin weissmexico, moSeptember 21st, 20109:30 amMy US Senator lives in my town. I have never spoken with him. That's OK. He's a Republican and has no qualms about voting for vast debt and illegal invasions. He is retiring this year, otherwise his slogan might be: New, Improved War and Debt.
Democracy works when the people are respected. Making law that limits our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is merely a means of creating profit centers that extort us for our appetites and needs. The usurpation of government by corporate legal fictions has ruined us. Money has become our master, not human rights. Money has ruined Justice, with incentives for prosecutors to lie us into prison, incentives for banks which take drug money to invest in private prisons. In short, incentives to imprison us.
President Obama has observed that "..all men and women are born with inalienable rights..". Why, then, does he not strike down the "Patriot Act", which abolishes most of our rights?
The advent of corporate legal fictions has littered our landscapes, contaminated our resources, and made a joke of our rights.
In a thousand years, geologists will note the layer of contamination we have allowed. Mercury, radiation, and petroleum will leave a ring.
Pollution and greed and a birthright wasted on military destruction will be our epitaph.
Doing something about it would be democracy. Bailing out banks is fascism. Giving corporate legal fictions free speech rights is psychotic.
No, no-- democracy works. What we have now doesn't.
Recommend Recommended by 17 Readers 24.R HTorontoSeptember 21st, 20109:30 amThe greatest threat to democracy is the growth of the power of the corporatocracy. With the Roberts' Supreme Court on its side, under the guise of anonymity, people like the Koch brothers are subverting the democratic process and manipulating many dupes who simply know they are unhappy with the economy, but are too lazy to read and study the issues and understand the mechanisms and causes.
People seem to always want simple solutions and instant gratification - witness the inherent contradiction between the following expressions: "what have Obama's Democrats done to restore jobs?" and "We need smaller government and less government spending."
What I believe is needed is more intelligence, better education and understanding, and more openness to ideas.
Recommend Recommended by 15 Readers 25.a r vattacaryIndiaSeptember 21st, 20109:30 am“So what? So what if money trumped democracy and stability trumped open societies for hundreds of millions of people? So what if the rule of law or individual freedom was compromised, the press muzzled”
It matters Mr Cohen; that is why people no longer think their vote would change anything. Especially so, after President Obama’s reluctance/failure to override concerns of money lenders of wall street and other vested interest groups. They made money when the economy was booming as well crashing. In India, marginalized people are taking up arms.
What globalization has done to the world economy is much less compared to what it has done to democracy. By dis-empowering, marginalizing majority of people and disinheriting their rights to their nations’ natural resources, all in the name of democracy, the money lenders have eroded people’s faith in democracy
Recommend Recommended by 12 Readers |
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