I have been bothered, during the recent cycle
of political debate, say, since 1989, by the use of key words,
for instance,
justice, by people who seem confident that they know what they
mean, but
don't say what they mean, and don't seem to be aware of the
difficulties
implicit in what they are saying. Therefore, I have begun to
pin down
some definitions, in hopes that our discussions may become more
truly
productive than otherwise. For starters, using language from an
on-line
abstract of Plato's Republic, by D. R. Bhandari:
WHAT IS JUSTICE?
According to Thrasymachus
in Plato's
Republic:
- Justice is the advantage of the stronger.
- Justice is obedience to the laws.
- Justice is the advantage of another.
According to Plato:
- Justice is a human virtue that makes a person
self-consistent and
good.
- Justice is a social consciousness that makes a society
internally
harmonious and good.
- Justice to the soul is as health is to the body--not mere
strength,
but harmonious strength.
- Justice is not the right of the stronger, but the
effective harmony
of the whole.
WHAT IS DEMOCRACY?
Starting with some language from the "wikipedia,"
on-line:
- Democracy is government in which all citizens can
directly participate in the decision-making process--usually only in the
legislative decision-making.
- It might include binding referenda, effectively
scrapping a law;
and/or the right of recall of elected officials; and/or
citizen-sponsored
ballot-initiative.
- Direct democracies have included New England town
meetings (women
and children couldn't vote, though); ancient Hellenic
city-states
(slaves, women, and children couldn't vote, though; and
the Venetian
oligarchy (that is, a "democracy" of the ruling
group).
- Indirect, representative democracy:
- Edmund
Burke's principle: that representatives should
vote according
to their consciences--as opposed to the principle of
delegative
democracy, whereby the representative should
consider, or vote
what the majority of his or her constituents want.
(Problems
with either choice seem apparent to me--you,
too?)
Problems with democracy:
If the citizens are poorly educated, wrongly informed,
under shared
delusions, what then?
Mainly from Aristotle's
"Politics":
- Monarchies (which are great in the rare case when a
wonderful
person is monarch) tend toward tyranny.
- Aristocracies (government by the best ones) tend toward
oligarchy--government
by the strongest, as opposed to the best, ones. (Then the
oligarchies
tend, too, toward tyranny.)
- Tyrants act in their own apparent self-interest,
against the interests
of the governed.
*Democracy tends to the tyranny of the
majority poor
against both the deserving and undeserving rich (those
whose wealth
comes via efforts which provide benefits--at low real
cost--to many,
and those whose wealth is theirs
otherwise).
*Democracy tends, likewise, to the tyranny of
the majority
against the (in any way) outstanding. (Remember high
school?)
*E.g., Salem witch-trials and executions,
trial and execution
of Socrates, USA McCarthy-era persecution of intellectuals
whether
Communist or not.)
Toqueville, "Democracy
in America," 1835:
"In America, the majority raises formidable barriers
around
the liberty of opinion; within these barriers, an author
may write
what he pleases: but woe to him if he goes beyond them....
He is exposed
to continued obloquy and persecution. His political career
is closed
forever ...every sort of compensation, even that of
celebrity, is
refused him... He is loudly censured by his opponents,
whilst those
who think like him, without having the courage to speak
out, abandon
him in silence. He yields at length, overcome by the daily
effort
which he has to make, and subsides into silence, as if he
felt remorse
for having spoken the truth..."
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