[Peace-discuss] Balance and liberalism

[C. G. Estabrook]

I don't think he paid attention in class.  Too busy thinking about how to attack 
Mesopotamia/Iraq and Persia/Iran...

David Green wrote:
> Thanks for reminding me of this. But what did his student Alexander 
> think of this?
> 
> */"C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>/* wrote:
> 
>      From Chomsky (1998) "The Common Good" :
> 
>     "Aristotle took it for granted that a democracy should be fully
>     participatory
>     (with some notable exceptions, like women and slaves) and that it
>     should aim for
>     the common good. In order to achieve that, it has to ensure relative
>     equality,
>     'moderate and sufficient property' and 'lasting prosperity' for
>     everyone.
> 
>     "In other words, Aristotle felt that if you have extremes of poor
>     and rich, you
>     can't talk seriously about democracy. Any true democracy has to be
>     what we call
>     today a welfare state -- actually, an extreme form of one, far
>     beyond anything
>     envisioned in this century.
> 
>     "When I pointed this out at a press conference in Majorca, the
>     headlines in the
>     Spanish papers read something like, If Aristotle were alive today,
>     he'd be
>     denounced as a dangerous radical. That's probably true..."
> 
>     http://www.chomsky.info/books/commongood02.htm
> 
> 
>     David Green wrote:
>      > If we invoke ancient Greece as an example of democracy and its
>     problems,
>      > it seems to me like an example of bad cases making bad law.
>      >
>      > DG
>      >
>      > */Bob Illyes /* wrote:
>      >
>      > I'm not sure I get your drift, David, but let me address the Bill of
>      > Rights.
>      >
>      > The Bill of Rights lists rights of individuals that cannot be
>      > infringed on
>      > by the majority, i.e., the US government. A balance between
>     individual
>      > liberty and a type of majority rule is thus built into our amended
>      > Constitution. Is it imperfect? Absolutely. You'll get no argument
>      > from me
>      > there. The issue is whether or not "perfection" is actually what one
>      > wants.
>      >
>      > Discussions of the problem of democracy tending toward tyranny go
>      > back at
>      > least as far as Aristotle, who saw plenty of examples in Athens. He
>      > promoted something he called "polity", which he defined on a class
>      > basis, a
>      > comprise between rule by the majority and rule by the wealthy, either
>      > extreme in his view being bad. Modern liberalism concentrates more on
>      > rights beyond property, such as are addressed by the Declaration of
>      > Independence (unfortunately a document not part of the legal basis
>      > of the
>      > US). The issue of property vs. other rights is kind-of artificial,
>      > however.
>      > John Locke named ones ownership of oneself as the core property from
>      > which
>      > all other properties are derived, so whatever his flaws, his
>      > argument does
>      > not allow us to value what we now call property over persons.
>      >
>      > Does this answer what you ask???
>      >
>      > Bob
>      >
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