But can you impose democracy on people who have not developed it?  That, in essence, is what is being tried in Afghanistan.  It took the British model centuries to develop. And that isn't just the development of process it is the developmetn of a mindset within the people who need to take part.

You simply can't, as has been proven many times in the last 60 years, move from totally undemocratic rule to full WEstern democracy.  ANd you can't impose a new governmental structure on people.  Not only is that a patently undemocratic idea (even if you are trying to impose soem form of democracy) but it causes amazing push-back for a foriegn power to impose anything.

It isn't the desire to move nations into democratic government that is lacking.  It is the way we think it has to happen.

It is not true that everybody wants democracy. We have seen over and over again countries like Germany and Italy in the mid war period that deliberately rejected democracy. China has shown almost no interest in democracy, preferring a parliament that represents only the communist party. I live in Hong Kong for a time, a place that preferred a powerful governor appointed by Britain to a democracy. The people who wanted democracy in russia lost in the civil war, partly because more people wanted a dictatorship.

Far from spreading democracy, the "freedom loving" west has been a major force in destroying it. The US has supported dictators for well over a hundred years in latin america, and has invaded countries well over a hundred times to make sure they kept their dictators. They destroyed democracy in Iran to install a dictator - which led to the problem we have there now. The US also cooperated in the murder of the president of south vietnam, and then supported the series of dictators who followed him.

As well, democracy must have all kinds of things in place within a society. a really free and honest press (which even the west is weak in), a willingness to accept the democratic decision, a system which cannot be controlled by big money (a very serious weakness in many "democracies", including the US and Canada),,,,,,

Then there is he reality that very large numbers of people prefer dictatorship. Are you going to force democracy on people,and tell them that you are giving them freedom after they have told you they don't want it?

hi graeme

if everyone was given a chance to vote and make up their own minds i would agree but like the people that live in their safe place they can't see this logic

you and i are who we are because of years of conditioning so of course we can't think like people that have been suppressed their hole lifes

it is not my opion but  just another fleeting thought

take  care

oy vay!

well, it's a pretty fleeting thought. In fact, there have been lots of good dictators, and people preferred them. All the "good" kings and queens of history were dictators. Think Elizabeth the first.

History has also been full of corrupt and vicious democracies. It was England under democracy that built the world's largest empire, ripping off other countries and pushing drugs in them to make itself wealthy. It was the US under democracy that slaughtered its native peoples and imposed dictators all over latin america.

As for suppression, it was the US democracy that held millions of its own people in the suppression called slavery - and was the last country in the industrial world to do away with it.

I think democratic nations have been making it their business for years. They

The right to soveriegnty and self-determination is tossed for the fact that "if they were really doing that, they would be a democracy" or if it is in their own interests that it not be a democracy, they prop it up. They butt into a civil war here, overthow an elected leader there... it is not about democracy being best, self-determination... it is about the western world's vested interests, period.

If we read history we will find how little freedom and indepence can mean. They were quite willing to sacrifice freedom and independence for others in Roosevelt's years. Ask a person from the Phillipines. Truman supported many a dictator in Asia and Africa. Ike overhtree a democratically elected leader to install the Shah. Kennedy's presidency loved the S. Vietnamese dictator before killing him and US policy aided in oppressing Cambodia and Laos.  Reagan stood by El Salvador's and Guatamala's dictators. Clinton's administration installed a dictator in Haiti, baby Doc. Bush stood by many a dictator and overthrew Haiti's elected leader in Aristide.  

Again, it is not about freedom or a superior form of government... it is about interests and intervention and meddling... Power and control. Abuse.

graeme

someone that forces them self on others is the masters of mind forming and control

there is fault with all countries but if you were to list the best to worse ,the democratic countries would be on top and is why you can write here today

humans are a nasty species and each wanting their genes to be on top will kill and control all in their way

what you wrote is right

HI StevieG

everything you wrote makes sense but in the world of evils democracy seems to give the most freedom of thought and movement

there will never be peace or harmony with our species because two people can't agree on things not alone billions

take care

hi qwerty

you make it easy to type your name, smart and considerate

you are a person of few words and that is probably the smart way to think

I haven't read the entire thread yet, but I think that your premise in the first few sentences is wrong.  You state (and I paraphrase) that noone wants a dictator except the dictator.   And you imply that everybody wants to live in a demoncracy. 

I was taught in school that democracy is the best form of government, and I believed that everybody would want it.  But then I met some intelligent, well educated people from other countries who stated that in their opinion democracy would be bad for their country.

Recently I had a mature student from an Asian country live with me while doing his Masters in Education at the nearby University.  His country was ruled by a heritary king.  No elections: no democracy.  The King had absolute power.  He could call upon the Buddhist monks for guidance but he was under no obligation to follow their advice.  And the young man I knew thought that this was the very best form of government.  He lived in Canada through an election.  He thought that it was a rediculous way to choose a ruler. 

Seeing the condition our government is in now, and the choice of leaders that we have, I think perhaps he had something there.

hi seeler

you can condition any human at an early age to believe anything and feel as you want that person to feel

all i am saying is when someone forces themselves by force or heredity than you take the chance of getting a nut

at lest we can shake our bag of nuts up a little

there is nothing perfect but at least we can try and find what that unattainable thing is

thanks

I don't have much time to be online at the moment so I'll make this short (I may come back here and post some more thoughts on the subject but lately the Cafe has been draining my life with all the crazyness ).

So, after that, I have  a question for you-

Jenny1, how do you know that you have not been conditiond to feel that democracy is great? I have never met a person who has lived in a comunist country so I am not speaking for the people who do/have, but I'm sure that many of them would prefer their countries own political style to democracy. I also don't think that a democratic country has any more right to impose it's political ideas onto another country any more than a comunist country should impose it's ideas onto a democratic nation.

...I tried to post a picture but it didn't work out...if any1 could tell me how it's done I'd be very appreciative, thanks in advance.

Peace, me and my sister are going to watch Coraline, I might be back after but I don't know so (bye bye)> ^(^_^)>*waving*

okay, talk about being conditioned. no matter what anybody says, you will simply go on repeating the same thing. So let's get real.

1. name a democracy.

2, tell us what makes it a democracy.

3. show how it behaves better than other countries.

Kinda like your view of democracy ;)  See the double-standard?

have you seen some of the democratically elected leaders?  Have you seen the lists of all the crap they've done?  Just talk to graeme, he knows.  At least in heretity or force, you can get mad.  If you elect the nutcase...you've no one to blame but yourself.

I think it would be interesting to see how the frequency of dictatorship change/overthrow compares to the change of party in a democratic county (conservatives in alberta anyone?).

As-salaamu alaikum, ramadan mubarak!

-Omni

The-Omnissiah

we have the best of the worse and all you have to do is look around and you will see the difference in our movement and ability to search for truths right or wrong

when we agree or condone one person or a group of people to rule over others you take away your importance as an equal human

just looking knowing a formed mind is locked for life

have good days

hi graeme

your thoughts were formed long ago and if what you say is right in your mind than  it is right

just looking and writing not trying to change a formed mind

take care

hi Sebb

we are all conditioned to think like the stronger thinkers and influence in early life, otherwise we would learn on our own

it took years to shed the years of male corruption from my head and look at the unfolding from a neutral position

that doesn't make my thoughts any more right than others just that i spent more time doing it

smiles

graeme =)

Oh dear, what type of democracy is best? There are tons and tons of types.

They all pretty much behave the same as other types of democracies. Then again they also behave like monarchies and dictatorships....

We can listen to the US recently on health care and find out our parliamentary democracy is not a democracy and is socialism.

The US is representative democracy and limits direct democracy.

In fact, it is also a federal republic. They don't like that said much...But they do not say the pledge of allegiance to democracy, they say "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands..."

oh, so we're all right. okay. I can live with that.

But if we're all right, what is there to discuss? and why?

 hi graeme

your a smart person and you and i both know why

be good

Upthread I spoke against the assumption that everybody, except the dictators themselves, would choose democracy over a dictatorship (or a monarchy).  I hope that I didn't come across as indicating that I didn't believe that democracy is the best form of government for this country at this time. 

I do believe in democarcy for Canada!  But I don't necessarily agree with how our government operates, or know if it is the best form of democracy.  For instance: 

- it is my understanding that, at least in theory, we don't vote for the Prime Minister.  We vote for the person running in our local riding - Those elected choose a leader or 'Prime Minister' from their numbers.  Why then, after each election don't the elected representatives meet and with a secret ballot choose one from among them to be Prime Minister.   Perhaps it would take several ballots.  Maybe the first round would have 20 or 30 different people suggested.  Choose the top 10 and vote on them, and then have a final ballot with the top four  (or two more ballots, reducing the numbers to five, and then to the top two).

- also, I don't understand why elected representatives vote along party lines.  Why doesn't each person vote according to what they believe is right for the country and for the people in their riding?  Why don't they truly represent the people who voted for them rather than following party lines and a party leader who they may or may not agree with?

- I don't think that I am saying do away with parties.   But I would like to see every member of a party having a say rather than being controlled by the leader; and I would like to see the leader chosen by the majority of elected representatives.

I have never studied political science.  There are probably lots of reasons why this wouldn't work.  But I'd like to see it considered.  The system we have now isn't working either.

I was about to reply to this but saw what time it was and now I am going to go get supper started (we're having a vegetable tikka masala with rrice and naan, yum ^_^)

I'll be back to eddit this post after I eat ~_^

there are dangers in what you suggest.

1. If we elected a pm directly, then he would have authority for years, like a president. In effect, you would have a dictator for four or five years. As it is, he/she has authority only so long as he/she can hold the support of a majority in the house. I must say, a Harper with absolute power for five years would scare the wits out of me.

2. In the US, congressmen are not (or very little) controlled by their leader or by their party. That's why they are having such a health of a time getting health care approved. What has happened is that, not controlled by their party, they get control by companies that buy them off - like health insurance companies. And that's not much of a democracy.

I don't know of any system in which members can vote as they please which has produced a legislature which votes for the good of the people or the good of the country or anything like that.

Graeme - I hope my post didn't suggest that we should elect a PM directly, even though that is what many people think we do now.  I hear them say "We voted for Harper, why don't we let him do his job."  No way - we didn't elect Harper.  We elected the person running in our riding.

  I meant the exact opposite.  We don't elect or vote for the PM.  I don't think we should even presume that the leader of the party that gets the most votes should be PM.  I think that the elected representatives from all four (or five) parties should choose among themselves who will be PM.  I'm no expert, as I said, but I would assume that this PM would be subject to the same restraints as are now in place.  If he gets a vote of "No Confidence", then there would have to be a new election with a new set of representatives who would then choose their leader.  Or if the Governor General decided against another election, she could ask the representatives to choose another leader. 

2.  It seems to me that if the representatives were not tied to the party line, then it would be harder for powerful companies and interest groups to influence them all, rather than just having to put pressure on the ones at the top who can then order the rest to follow suit.  Again, I could be wrong.

Perhaps you can speak to this as a historian graeme, but I suspect the myth of the independent Victorian parliamentarian has always been just that - a myth. 

"- with so few discrepencies between ruling bodies, despotic governments can act very quickly and put things into practise very quickly (to which you will say that it may not be in the best interests of all the people and I will counter with the fact that this happens in democracies as well) "

True, but authoritarianism being more efficient is a myth.  The opposite tends to be the case.  Authoritarian governments rely on secrecy, which means you have a lot of officials who can't be held accountable by the public.  This encourages corruption.  Have a closer look at how Communist governments in Russia and China, and the Fascist government in Italy worked, and you'll see that at the lower levels in particular, corruption was huge.  China has incredible corruption, and they've only started to pay attention now because it compromises their economic development.  The way Beijing is dealing with the problem is by unleashing the hounds of the public on lower-level civil servants.  After the milk scandal, criticism towards the central government was shut down, as always, but lower-level state and city officials were toast. 

seeler - the leader of the biggest party is not automatically the pm. That was the impresson many news media gave recently when the opposition threatened to form a coalition and replace Harper. Many in the media gave the impression they were acting improperly, and that Harper was the electoral choice. He was not, and the opposition was acting quite correctly. The pm is the one who can gather majority support. It could be anyone. When one party has a clear majority, then it will obviously be the leader of that party. But if you aren't the leader of a party with a majority, then any combination of the other parties could beat you.

You're right, of course. big business does put pressure on the pm to keep his followers in line and support what they want. And it works since every leader knows where his campaign money and pr and election help are coming from (however cutely it may be disguised). Trouble is, the US has a much looser system - and the corruption there is even worse than it is here. At least here, a whole party has to take responsibility for its actions. It's not possible, as it is in the US, for an individual member to go unnoticed.

Freethinker - Victorian parliamentarians in Canada were bought and sold. In 1867, the whole Canadian (now ontario and quebec) cabinet were directors of the Grand Trunk Railway which just happened to want confederation passed. It was well understood that the Bank of Montreal pretty well owned the conservative party of John A. Sir Charles Tupper, long in the conservative cabinets, retired a wealthy man, though his working life as a doctor before politics had been very short, and his pay as an mp was very small.

Conservatives then represented the business interests dominated by Montreal. The Liberals represented those dominated by Toronto. We had a Liberal pm from 1873 to 1878 who was stunningly honest. But he was an exception.

Even well through the 1940s, Mackenzie King was not above accepting gifts. I don't know that you could outright buy him - nothing coarse or obvious. But he was pretty casual about what he considered to be ethical behaviour.

As to Chinese corruption, I once saw a long train stopped at a station - can't remember the name of the city. But I was surprised to hear it had been there for many days, and was loaded with rice. Turns out it was a major part of the food supply for Beijing, and that local officials were holding it back to get a cut before letting it loose. It as a powerful reminder to me of the history of the last century or so in China, and why the central government is so fearful of regional threats to its power. This is a country that has lived chaos for well over a century, at least, and not even a government as authoritarian as it has had for the past 60 years has been able to overcome it.

poor Besphin : (