[Peace-discuss] Who opposes the war? (democracy)

[C. G. Estabrook]

On Fri, 27 Jan 2006 Morton K. Brussel <brussel4 at insightbb.com>
 wrote-- 

>Thanks Carl for your reflection of my whimsical question.
>
>I would only comment that left-right political determinations
>might include, in addition to degrees of authoritarianism and
>democracy, something about economic and social rights, such
>as the right to have lodging, food, health care, decent
>living conditions, education, culture….  Democracy in its
>political sense does not necessarily include these aspects of
>human life and welfare...


I'd say that the answer to this point it found in Nobel
laureate Amartya Sen's work on famines: he contends that no
functioning democracy has ever suffered a famine.  Famine
occurs, he argues, not from a lack of food, but from
inequalities built into mechanisms for distributing food. 
Taking democracy seriously (the far Left position) means that
not only the polity but also the economy should be under
democratic control (a minimal definition of socialism) .

"Democracy in  a political sense" is a truncated democracy,
not worthy of the the name.  Such limited democracy is taken
as a standard form, in part because that's what the US 
constitution provided.  Madison make it clear in his notes on
the convention that the great fear was that a truly democratic
government would quickly move on to  distribute wealth more
equally (he was probably right) and that had to be prevented.

Madison was not in favor of a democracy for America, saying
that "Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and
contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal
security, or the rights of property." Madison wanted a system
of checks and balances built into the Constitution so as to
prevent the majority of the citizenry from "discovering their
own strength" and from acting "in union with each other" --
precisely because he wanted to protect the property of wealthy
Americans from governmental action fueled by the desires of
the majority of poorer Americans: "Landholders ought to have a
share in the government, to support these invaluable
interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to
be so constituted as to *protect the minority of the opulent
against the majority*."

It was to guard the "the minority of the opulent against the
majority" that the limitations on democracy were built into
the constitution (and reinforced by devices like "judicial
review" -- the ability of the Supreme Court to declare an act
of Congress unconstitutional -- which of course is not in the
constitution.) True democracy would necessarily include rights
to lodging, food, health care, education, culture...

Regards, CGE