I asked:
> > Ian, what's your alternative to democracy as the main political principle?
He answers:
>Hey, I'm with Churchill on this one.
do you think that Churchill _really _ liked democracy?
>Preference dynamics and transitivity paradoxes indicate the need for
>institutions that accommodate significant cultural change with regards to
>issues of negative and positive liberty. That just ain't happening in the
>US and libertarian and anarchistic attitudes towards institutions, and
>bureaucracy don't seem to appreciate the complexities of *very* large
>societies. Thus we get increasing attacks on our 18th century defined
>'sphere of liberty' despite a supposed anti-authoritarian 'pop culture'.
right, I guess.
>Whether we should see democratic polities through the tropes of irony,
>tragedy or both is an open question; right now my money is
>on tragedy. We can't even seem to agree on what liberty means anymore, nor
>even on whom shall 'have authority' to define it's scale and scope.
the classic definition of a "tragedy" refers to a conflict between two
goods. To a large extent, the dominant trend in US society is backed by the
power of Organized Capital. That's hardly a good.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
