Democracy is the worst form of government...

[stevevw]

You keep using these odd terms "state beliefs" which are very odd.

So you don't think the State can have a belief behind what they do. Communism is the ideological belief of socialism of having no private property and class. Whereas Capitalism is the opposite and about private ownership which allows people the freedom to create their own wealth and standard of life. They come from two different ideological positions like all political ideologies.

A political ideology is a certain set of ethical ideals, principles, doctrines, myths or symbols of a social movement, institution, class or large group that explains how society should work and offers some political and cultural blueprint for a certain social order.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_ideologies#:~:text=In%20social%20studies%2C%20a%20political,for%20a%20certain%20social%20order.

I'd rather not. Half the time he looks like he needs a few weeks in rehab.

Lol poor old JP.

This is apparently about Peterson's crusade against a "pronoun" bill that he used to build a following when he was still a professor. Peterson was never actually "gone after", rather it was the other way around.

No he just made the comment that language should not be legistlated. But that isn't what he is in trouble for. Its because of his political comments about the dangers of false science with vacines, climate change and Trans ideology and his criticism of Canadian prime minister. None of this has to do with his professional practice.

As Peterson said every complaint is about Leftist ideological policies. Peterson happens to disagree and is speaking out against this like many people deo including the Left when criticising Right policies. Its a prime example of the State and its agents overstepping the line with our freedoms, with the Right to disagree and criticise the State and its Instituions.

Canada to re-educate Jordan Peterson for ‘wrongthink’

Canada to re-educate Jordan Peterson for ‘wrongthink’ | The Spectator Australia

Wokeism has destroyed Canada. We knew the situation was bad when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau froze the bank accounts of protesters in order to silence political action against his regime’s appalling…

www.spectator.com.au

These are not "anti-Christian" laws just because they treat people different than you think Christians should or would.

I can't see how they are not anti- Christian. Ok what about anti-Conservative and traitional.

No. They are not *anti-Christian*. Un-Christian, perhaps, to the extent that such things form the core of Christian doctrine. (They didn't back when I was a Christian, but perhaps now they do.

What do you mean they didn't back when you were a Christian. If we take the redefinition of marriage with SSM. Traditional Christian marriage was up until lately the law and norm. Now its not. Marriage is now defined as non Traditional and non Christian. You must have been a Christian after this change.

Other than the "Creationists" these beliefs now dominate the way Christians express their faith in my presence here. But, even if they are now the core of Christian doctrine, no one is forcing a Christian to have an abortion, be in a SS marriage (or even go to one), or use the preferred pronouns of trans people.

I'm not talking about whether its right or wrong but the fact that the secular law once upheld the Christian values for these issues and now it doesn't. So there has been a gradual shifting from one ideology belief about these issues to another. The State is not taking a neutral stand and I think no State can.

They may not force Christians to have an abortion but they will deny the Christian position to exist in the public square. We have seen this with how Christian organisations like adoption agecies are being targeted and shut down because of their belief in preferring to place a child with a mother and father rather than SS couples. Thats another way of saying the State doesn't allow Christianity in the public sphere.

I have no idea if they are moral or not. Frankly I don't care.

You don't care. So say a policy makes it allowable to descriminate against women in the workforce. Would that matter.

They aren't in your private lives. The government isn't controlling your churches, etc. It's too bad you "persecuted Western Christians" can't experience some actual persecution for your religion because then you'd realize you're not being persecuted.

Everyone can make a case for persecution. But its more about being consistent and imparcial. That is a Western principle and not just Christian. Principles like free speech, freedom of religion and political association, freedom of conscience and the right to hold opposing ideas and thinking. Which are about democracy and its these Rights that are being eroded by the current State in most Western nations.

Now, let us end this pointless distraction and go back to the thread's actual topic...

I would have thought this was relevant to the thread. Tell me what issues are relevant that we should discuss about democracy and whether its good, bad, going OK or deteriorating.

This is coalition government. It sounds like the labor union's party isn't quite getting what it wants. That happens. You can change the structure of your election systems to force a 1-vs-1 choice, but ranked choice lists and trasferable votes and proportionality isn't going to do that. They are not undemocratic as the power still flows from the people. (In my country, those factions join together into major parties before the election, but a faction can still force things by leveraging the power they do have, such as the power in a legislature to force a measure to fail by withholding votes from it. The TeaParty/FreedomCaucus/MAGAcrazies have done this many times in the US House of Representatives when their party (Republican) holds the speakership. A speaker basically quit because he couldn't take it any more. (Boehner, who was replaced by Ryan[McCarthy was in the higher position], then they lost to the Dems and Pelosi took the gavel again, and finally this year McCarthy became speaker, but about a dozen of the MAGA-crazy faction held his election hostage for a week.)

Minor party politics, still democracy. If the major parties were popular enough without the minor parties to form a majority, the minor parties would have no sway. The Greens were definitely part of a German governing coalition not that long ago.

Sounds all too complicated to many. All most people know is that they are not getting good government. That is why polititians are ranked the lowest on trust and confidence in getting the job done in the best interest of people and the nation.

That points to the political parties breaching voters trust, breaking promises, mismanaging things and vene being corrupt. All this points to the system. Either the system is not being applied correctly or its broken.

Money in politics is bad. I get that. (Also some lobbying is just representing a sub-faction or affinity group to have their voice heard.)

Perhaps thats the root of the problem. Maybe that is why many people are pushing Marxism.

Democracy only declines because we don't work hard enough to maintain it and there *are* forces working against it. The existance of minor parties isn't one of those forces.

Yes I mentioned this above. But I am not sure about minor parties or at least allowing groups whether political, religious, ideological or wealthy corps to buy into the system one way or another. This opens the door for more vested interests. Instead of having 2 major parties and their political agendas we have many other agendas to deal with and the nature of systems (chaos theory) is they break down the bigger they get.

Trump convinced a large, but still minority, fraction of the US voters that their enemies were his enemies and the causes of their problems were their collective enemies. Trump is and was a demagogue and not a friend of democracy.

But thats my point. If Trump had a minority vote and still got into power and this did not represent the majority and as a result many were devasted that this could happen how is that democracy. What ever it is it happened under a democractic country.

Perhaps social media has also changed the political landscape. This may be allowing people, groups ect to influence the narrative and that is also feeding into undermining democracy as it becomes about personalities and identities, fake news, and narratives ect.

Certain organisations do health checks of Democracy throughout the world. They look at key indicators like freedoms and rights to speech, belief affiliation ect and whether democracy is declining due to governments control.

I have no idea what you are trying to say. Too many vagaries.

OK I will simplify it. People don't trust polititians anymore no matter which side of politics. Which shows they are not representing the people.

It is said that in a true compromise no one is happy. But, at the same time no one loses everything either.

But how much do you have to lose to be classed as everything. A person may lose their jobs and reputation and that pretty well is everything. Though they are in a type of society where they can come back it seems silly that the same system causes them to be in that situation in the first place. Maybe thats just life.

Didn't say that.

No I am asking if any minor party or organisation doesn't have any influence on policy that the majority don't want. Like the Gun Lobby don't they have an influence on pro gun laws.

I'm going to need real examples for this bit of non-specifics.

Ok I thought that is what I was doing in saying peoples freedoms are being denied and the State is becoming more controlling. I gave a few examples. Like how State policies are legislating language, how ideologies like CRT and Queer theory are being pushed in education and health.

How free speech is being denied and how people face penalties and personal ridecule for expressing their beliefs and political opinions. Like how Peterson has been treated for expressing his views. A culture of cancelling people for wrong speak and thinking. Of surveillance and infiltration of peoples private lives.

Maybe its better that I link a few articles that can explain things better. Couple showing decline in democracy and a couple explaining why.

For too many people in too many countries, democracy isn’t working
For too many people in too many countries, democracy isn’t working

Why Democracy Doesn’t Deliver
Why Democracy Doesn't Deliver

The Brookings Institution concludes in a 2022 report that the once proud American democracy is facing a systemic crisis and is accelerating its decline. The impact is spreading to all fronts in domestic politics, the economy and society, posing a mortal threat to the legitimacy and health of capitalism. 

系统维护_中华人民共和国外交部

www.fmprc.gov.cn

The State of Democracy in the United States: 2022
A report by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that, since the global financial crisis in 2007-08, 89 countries have regressed in their democratic health and only 27 have improved. Studies now show that less than a third of young Americans think it is ‘essential’ to live in a democracy.
https://www.rifemagazine.co.uk/2018/07/jordan-petersons-right-todays-identity-politics-is-a-dead-end/

NEW REPORT: US Democracy Has Declined Significantly in the Past Decade, Reforms Urgently Needed
Freedom House released a special report which identifies three enduring problems that have undermined the health of the US political system: unequal treatment for people of color, the outsized influence of special interests in politics, and partisan polarization. This report comes in response to a decade-long decline in US democracy.

NEW REPORT: US Democracy Has Declined Significantly in the Past Decade, Reforms Urgently Needed

Measures to address racial injustice, special-interest influence, and partisan polarization should be among the top priorities.

freedomhouse.org

In fact Allan Bloom predicted this deterioration of democracy well before Peterson. Though I think Peterson mentions that he was there when the long march through the insitutions began in the 80s.

The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (1987).
Allan Bloom | Closing of the American Mind, Conservative Critic, Educator

 

[Whyayeman]

secular law once upheld the Christian values for these issues

Only in part. Once a certain threshold is passed the state becomes a theocracy. Some would argue for just such a regime but it would have ceased to be a democracy.

Secular law must apply to all and many people are not Christians. They deserve their laws too.

Even among Christians there is disagreement. Many Christians for example disapprove of divorce. Many are tolerant of same sex marriage. Some approve of abortion in certain circumstances.

People don't trust polititians anymore no matter which side of politics

They never did, unreservedly. And that is a good thing on the whole, don't you think?

Which shows they are not representing the people.

We could suggest ways of making improvements to our representation. This is just repeating the problem. I would say that our representatives do not always do the best job. There comes a point in a democracy when they are called to account.

That is sort of the point.

 

[o_mlly]

Once there is a qualification placed on the franchise (beyond majority and nationality) it ceases to be democratic.

Well, awkwardly your position would render the UK to be an undemocratic system. Residence, especially if one resides in prison, but also residing outside the UK, dependent on where and how long qualifies one's right to vote.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Not so. Making the right to vote dependent on the net contribution to the commonwealth does not discriminate solely against the poor. For example, in the USA, the right to vote would also be taken from those whose tax payments are less than their Medicare or Social Security payments. All, whether rich or poor, who have a vote, ie., that is a say on how their tax dollars are spent, would only be those from whom those tax dollars were taken.

This violates the 24th amendment:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

It was exactly because poll taxes were being used to prevent Black people from voting that the amendment was passed in 1962 and ratified in 1964.

 

[Hans Blaster]

What do you mean they didn't back when you were a Christian. If we take the redefinition of marriage with SSM. Traditional Christian marriage was up until lately the law and norm. Now its not. Marriage is now defined as non Traditional and non Christian. You must have been a Christian after this change.

What I mean is that those issues were not even mentioned during my time in the church.

In my youth (let's call it roughly the 80s) I went with my family to a socially conservative, rural, Catholic church. There was plenty of sermons about social issues (abortion, divorce, sexualized culture, fornication, abortion) but not once ever about homosexuality or gender identity. Not once. If positions on those were somehow about the doctrine of the Church, then they forgot to mention it.

Then for a decade I went to univerisity parishes, still Catholic, but not not so conservative. Still none of these "new focus" items were part of the doctrine. (Then I stopped going because I didn't believe anymore.)

This obsession with gay/trans issues as a central focus Christianity seems to be rather new. Perhaps your church spend all of the 90s obsessing with homosexuality, but mine didn't.

 

[o_mlly]

This violates the 24th amendment:

? No, I don't see the proposal as violating the 24th amendment as the proposal does not suggest a poll tax be enacted. Do you have an argument for your claim?

 

[Hans Blaster]

Everyone can make a case for persecution. But its more about being consistent and imparcial. That is a Western principle and not just Christian. Principles like free speech, freedom of religion and political association, freedom of conscience and the right to hold opposing ideas and thinking. Which are about democracy and its these Rights that are being eroded by the current State in most Western nations.

These are Western-Enlightenment principles, but they are not Christian. Some of them are in direct opposition to basic Christian doctrine. (Something about "no other god before ME".)

I may respond to the parts of your message about the nature of democracy later, but I will not entertain any more of the other content.

 

[Bradskii]

Really? Are you asserting that all laws legally passed are just laws simply because those laws were legally passed? Jim Crow segregation statues, for example? Or Nazi Germany's anti-Semitic laws that restricted the civil and human rights of Jews in Germany. Of course not.

It is self-evident that all unjust laws are immoral.

It's a reasonable position that some laws are unjust in themselves, such as the state sanctioned racism you mentioned. So I want to go back to my original statement: 'I don't want government to be concerned with morals.'

 

[Whyayeman]

Well, awkwardly your position would render the UK to be an undemocratic system. Residence, especially if one resides in prison, but also residing outside the UK, dependent on where and how long qualifies one's right to vote.

I agree that these are flaws. Neither of these are necessarily permanent. Prisoners can vote after they have completed their time inside. This is an anomaly that has just never been fixed and there is no appetite to fix it, I'm afraid. Emigres cannot vote unless they have an address in the UK. I am not too concerned about that, though I don't think it is necessarily right.

Neither of these mean that the country is undemocratic, just that it is flawed. That is quite different from having restrictive qualifications on all potential voters.

 

[Bradskii]

"... can only be described as obscene"? I think you make my point: government sometimes legislates morality.

obscene​

adjective​

ob·scene äb-ˈsēn abhorrent to morality or virtue​

​

What metrics evidence that the inequality of wealth has become "extreme" so as to be abhorrent to morality and government intervention is necessary?

This is more akin to saying that as murder is immoral so I would be against laws against murder. I'd rather describe laws against murder and extreme wealth inequality as being concerned with justice rather than morality per se.

 

[Bradskii]

Not so. Making the right to vote dependent on the net contribution to the commonwealth does not discriminate solely against the poor. For example, in the USA, the right to vote would also be taken from those whose tax payments are less than their Medicare or Social Security payments.

You want to take away the vote from those who are either poor or sick? Someone is working two jobs to make ends meet and he loses one of them. Does he take social security to keep food on the table or lose his vote? His kid gets sick. Does he take her to the doctor or lose his vote?

Something tells me that that won't fly.

 

[Bradskii]

Emigres cannot vote unless they have an address in the UK. I am not too concerned about that, though I don't think it is necessarily right.

I don't have a problem with it. I didn't lose my British citizenship when I became Australian but I can't vote because I don't have a UK address. Maybe I could wangle it somehow but if I don't actually live there then I shouldn't be voting on matters that affect those that do.

 

[Hans Blaster]

You want to take away the vote from those who are either poor or sick? Someone is working two jobs to make ends meet and he loses one of them? Does he take social security to keep food on the table or lose his vote? His kid gets sick. Does he take her to the doctor or lose his vote?

Something tells me that that won't fly.

In the text you are replying to, you may need to know that "Social Security" is the government old-age pension program and "Medicare" is the government's medical insurance/support program from the same older persons. The poster was saying that elderly people dependent on government support should lose their votes.

The income support programs for non-elderly low income/poor people have different names.

 

[Bradskii]

In the text you are replying to, you may need to know that "Social Security" is the government old-age pension program and "Medicare" is the government's medical insurance/support program from the same older persons. The poster was saying that elderly people dependent on government support should lose their votes.

The income support programs for non-elderly low income/poor people have different names.

So this would include anyonewho now pays no tax. Like me. Now retired, I have a net negative worth as far as the commonwealth is concerned. I'm too well off to draw a pension but I can use the health system free of charge if I don't want to use my insurance, and I have most of the benefits of my working, taxpaying buddies (they are now paying for roads, defence, police, health, schools etc) but my contributions are now nil.

I'd like to keep my vote...

 

[Hans Blaster]

So this would include anyonewho now pays no tax. Like me. Now retired, I have a net negative worth as far as the commonwealth is concerned. I'm too well off to draw a pension but I can use the health system free of charge if I don't want to use my insurance, and I have most of the benefits of my working, taxpaying buddies (they are now paying for roads, defence, police, health, schools etc) but my contributions are now nil.

Yep. It's a really horrible idea and as I noted above, it is unconstitutional in the US.

I'd like to keep my vote...

And if you were in the US, you would. Not sure if anyone is proposing anything similar in your country and what preventative measures exist.

 

[Whyayeman]

Not sure if anyone is proposing anything similar in your country and what preventative measures exist.

It is the poster who wants to restrict voting rights to disallow non-contributors who has proposed this. It is system that has never existed anywhere, and a figment of that poster's imagination.

 

[o_mlly]

It's a reasonable position that some laws are unjust in themselves, such as the state sanctioned racism you mentioned. So I want to go back to my original statement: 'I don't want government to be concerned with morals.'

What one wants and what is are often two entirely different things as is the case with laws and morals. One cannot wish away or escape the fact that there are moral and immoral laws

 

[o_mlly]

You want to take away the vote from those who are either poor or sick? Someone is working two jobs to make ends meet and he loses one of them. Does he take social security to keep food on the table or lose his vote? His kid gets sick. Does he take her to the doctor or lose his vote?

Something tells me that that won't fly.

No. For the third time, what is proposed is that those who take more from than they give to the commonwealth lose only their right to vote. They would not lose their right to participate in social welfare programs.

Those who have posted that such a proposal would bring on an Armageddon to those welfare programs must have little faith in the depth their fellow citizens’ charity. Conjuring up anecdotal nightmares does not further the argument.

 

[o_mlly]

Yep. It's a really horrible idea and as I noted above, it is unconstitutional in the US.

So you claim but have not yet substantiated with a legal argument.

 

[o_mlly]

... extreme wealth inequality as being concerned with justice rather than morality per se.

? The relationship between the concepts of justice and morality are so intertwined as to be inseparable. Societies with unjust laws are inevitably judged as immoral. People whose acts treat others unfairly are judged to have committed immoral acts.