[ExI] south carolina primary election

[Stefano Vaj]

2010/6/15 Dan <dan_ust at yahoo.com>

> Also, there seems to be the notion that somehow in the past -- maybe the
> distant past, maybe in someone's lifetime -- that somehow democracy worked
> and produced good results, but today this has been corrupted. Isn't the
> truth more that things have always been corrupt?
>


I think there are two angles, one the proverbial "golden age myth", the
second the fact that most revolutions work at best in their doing, but end
up disappointing when they should be celebrating their ultimate success. In
this respect, democracy in the strictest sense is in good company with
practically any other political ideal (which of course does not mean that
western democracies in their current form would be the final, eternal form
of government for all ages to come).

In a broader sense, however, democracy refers to the fact that political
doctrines should and do nowadays legitimate themselves through some kind of
reference to self-determination and popular sovereignty. From the US
Declaration of Independence to the Iranian costitution, from Mein Kampf to
the Soviet 1977 charta to National Liberation Fronts propaganda in the
sixties, you would be hard pressed to find any regime or movement suggesting
that you should rejoice of being a colony of a foreign power or that you
should obey an individual owing to your being his private property.

Even though, now that I think of it, Saudi Arabia comes pretty close to the
latter... :-)

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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