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Originally posted by Howard:
Furthermore in the American system non of the cabinet needs to be elected the entire cabinet can be drawn from people who have never stood for election... In the British and Canadian systems for example every member of the Cabinet is elected by a local constituency...

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Yesterday and Today: Nazis and the Righteous Right
If we take a look at pre-WWII Germany, we notice it has some things in common with the United States now. Start with the concept of exceptionality. Nazi ideology grew out of Germans’ belief that their country was uniquely privileged because it was uniquely valuable. This made them an exception to rules and norms. The average “Proud to Be an American” bumper-sticker-buyer believes the same thing. (I’m still waiting for some churchgoing patriot to notice that being born American is a gift of grace and to begin marketing “Humble to be an American” decals.) A belief in your country’s exceptionality takes you way out beyond the warm self-appreciation of patriotism; in naming your heritage “exceptional,” you cut your ties to the family of nations and set yourself above the rules. Our belief in our own exceptionality erodes the walls that hold back human greed, fear of otherness, and violence. Exceptionality makes the unthinkable possible, even reasonable.
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Another family resemblance between Germany of the ‘20’s and ‘30’s and the Righteous Right of today is the feeling that somebody done us wrong. For Germany, the sense of being aggrieved was related to the famously vindictive Treaty of Versailles that settled the overt hostilities of World War I but left Germans with smoldering bitterness against what they saw as injustice and injury. The core resentment that energizes the swing toward right-wing “Christian” totalitarianism is the confusing, painful panic at seeing The Way and The Truth become one of many ways and many truths. As one pulpiteer expressed it, “having our culture become a subculture” is felt as a wound, an assault. On September 11th, the cultural assault on our inner landscape then manifested as a physical attack on our outer landscape, echoing the unsolved burning of the Reichstag building in 1933. Then, as now, terrorism coupled with an effective propaganda machine helped those in power to bring the country together while separating it from its civil rights. Once we feel ourselves to be under attack, are there any limits to what we will permit in the name of “self-defense?”

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Originally posted by SignyM:


2) President Bush's war. Most people now believe that the war was a mistake. Nonetheless, there is a noticeable lack of hard questions from the Dems or hard reporting by the media.

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Originally posted by Howard:
John Kerry voted for the war not because there
were no alternative available ideas or
information.

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He voted for the war because he
is a loyal servant to the empire

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and wanted
to show his class based loyalty to the commander
in chief. While keeping his corporate lobbyists
well satisfied.

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It is only blind ignorance that assumes America has done no good in the world, as it is only blind ignorance that assumes America has done no bad, that her system represents ‘pure’ democracy, and that she really does have uncompromised freedom of speech.

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Originally posted by JubelLate:
believe it or not, free speech is not a requirement for pure democracy

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because pure democracy allows for tyranny of the majority.

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In this essay Mill also warns of a second danger to liberty, which democracies are prone to, namely, the tyranny of the majority. In a representative democracy, if you can control the majority (and get them to vote for, and elect, your candidates) then you can control everyone (because your candidates, once "democratically elected", will pass whatever laws are needed for this, as was done by Hitler's agents in the 1930s in Nazi Germany and seems to be happening today in the U.S.A.).

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IT is in the examination of the exercise of thought in the United States that we clearly perceive how far the power of the majority surpasses all the powers with which we are acquainted in Europe. Thought is an invisible and subtle power that mocks all the efforts of tyranny. At the present time the most absolute monarchs in Europe cannot prevent certain opinions hostile to their authority from circulating in secret through their dominions and even in their courts. It is not so in America; as long as the majority is still undecided, discussion is carried on; but as soon as its decision is irrevocably pronounced, everyone is silent, and the friends as well as the opponents of the measure unite in assenting to its propriety. The reason for this is perfectly clear: no monarch is so absolute as to combine all the powers of society in his own hands and to conquer all opposition, as a majority is able to do, which has the right both of making and of executing the laws.

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Elitism suggests that people's desires are ignored in favor of upper class goals, which is not the case in most situations.

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Elitism suggests that people's desires are ignored in favor of upper class goals, which is not the case in most situations.

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In November 2004, voters in both Florida and Nevada approved constitutional amendments to increase the minimum wage to $6.15, with automatic cost-of-living increases. In both cases, the measure was approved by substantial margins: 71 to 29 percent in Florida and 68 to 32 in Nevada. Nationally, a 2001 poll for the Christian Science Monitor found that 75 percent of Americans support an increase in the minimum wage. A 2002 Lake Snell Perry poll reported that 77 percent of likely voters support raising the minimum wage from $5.15 to $8 per hour, and 79 percent favor regular cost-of-living adjustments to the minimum wage.

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