[Peace-discuss] Repeating a lie ad nauseam

[Laurie at advancenet.net]

Carl,

Let's not get too carried away with quotes from the past or with making
assumptions about what people who believe in democracy have as their goals.
The ancient Greeks warned against mobocracy or the rule of the majority;
their democracies were not of all the people but of selected groups of
people - excluded were women, slaves, and many other groups that were
residents but not regarded as citizens back then.  Even back in ancient
Greece, emphasis was always on the "good leader" as a personality and not on
the process by which they acquired the leadership position; each society
presumed that the process by which leaders were recognized and elevated to
positions of authority were "good" processes independent of the character of
the leaders they produced.

Implicit in the popular notion of representative democracy is that democracy
is good because it is based on the clash of conflicting interests and the
democratic apologetic "golden mean" will produce the common public good. A
belief that presumes Adam Smith's "magic hand" that would guide the
governance of a society much like it would the marketplace of that society.
But even the populous notion of representative democracy was elitist and
excluded large segments of the population and their vested interests.
Nevertheless, there is nothing to guarantee that the masses recognize, know,
or are willing to act in their own interests - then or now.  

The key difference, in my opinion, between the past and the present is that
the citizens are in reality no longer individuals but corporations; and it
is their interests that are being represented in the representative
democracy.  The wealthy shareholders, corporate executives, managers,
lobbyists and government officials - elected, appointed, and civil service -
are all merely cogs in the establishment corporate machine.  They are
interchangeable and throw-away actors as much as are the line level workers
and shareholders in the scheme of things.  To be sure, the wealth and
contacts that the higher level personages acquire while in their positions
does provide more security and insulation against bad times than is the case
for lower level minions of the corporate establishment - which we are all
apart of and cannot escape.

The whole notion of "making good political judgments" depends on the context
and framework that one is operating in and required for rationality in
decision-making that the information used is narrowed down by some criteria
or other, which is a matter of preference.  I am sure that if we take
religion and morality out of the equation, one could argue with some
justification that those who are against abortion are supporting the
corporate interests in maintaining a Malthusian kind of cheap labor supply
that would result from overpopulation as well as a larger supply of cannon
fodder for their neocolonialist and capitalist corporate competition in the
form of limited wars.  It could also be argued that the prohibition against
abortions would be in the corporate interests in that it would produce a
large consumer pool for their goods and services.  Hence, those opposed to
abortion are representing and serving the corporate interests and not
necessarily the common individual good unless one identifies the corporate
interest with the common good as one executive of GM once did.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net [mailto:peace-discuss-
> bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of C. G. Estabrook
> Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2008 1:51 PM
> To: Bob Illyes
> Cc: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Repeating a lie ad nauseam
> 
> If there's any sense at all in this bit of intentional silliness, it's
> the revelation of the tacit assumption, explicit in European politics
> of
> the early 20th century, that things will improve only when the good
> leader emerges.  That seems to me a dangerous, indeed sub-political,
> notion.
> 
> For people who believe in democracy -- a goal, by no means an existing
> reality -- attention to how leaders of a polity get to where they are,
> particularly what interests they serve to get there, leads to
> hesitation
> in calling them good.  A good leader would seem to be in the first
> place
> one who serves the interests of the majority, not the opposing
> interests
> of a minority.  (James Madison said about the 1787 constitution that
> its
>   goal was not democracy, which he and his good colleagues saw as
> dangerous, but "to protect the minority of the opulent against the
> majority.")
> 
> Making good political judgments probably requires knowing something
> about history. --CGE
> 
> 
> Bob Illyes wrote:
> > Hi Marti.
> >
> > I can explain it all, in bad logic. There have been no good
> presidents
> > (Carl assures me). Obama may be the president. Therefore Obama is
> bad.
> >
> > Even worse, Obama is a liberal, a group much maligned by Carl and
> > disliked by both the Marxist left for thwarting the revolution and by
> > the Libertarian right for insisting that there are more rights than
> just
> > those of property.
> >
> > It is therefore irrelevant to ask if Obama misspoke or was misquoted
> in
> > the single source.
> >
> >   QED
> >
> > If you don't see the excessive complexity lurking beneath the surface
> of
> > the ongoing condemnation of Obama, look again. Another violation of
> > Occam's Razor is in evidence..... Obama is no angel, mind you, but
> who is?
> >
> > Bob, unrepentant Occam guy
> >
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