(Markuzick's nonsense ignored - life's too short...)
The people in Angola, North Korea, Syria etc. decide nothing. [...] |
That's silly. No dictator can control a population by blunt force alone! They must all pay very close attention to public opinion in order to gain and then hold on to power. Sure, they also influence public opinion, but so do all governments. That influence need not be total - it should be just enough, but too much of it will backfire.
[...] the dictator eliminates any opposition by force [...] |
The more sophisticated the country, the more sophisticated are the means of accomplishing this. Blunt force is messy. The two party system, the subtle influence over the media, and (worst of all) public schooling do the same trick in the United States.
[...] the sheep's right to life is legitimized by law [...] |
And where does "the law" come from?
[...] Anyone who understands political science understands that wherever Anarchy has existed, that Anarchy was a temporary void, which was soon filled by either a dictatorship, or democratic rule. [...] |
In the late 19th century you could have said that "anyone who understands the history of engineering understands that wherever heavier-than-air flight was attempted it always came crashing down". But things change. Rational AnCaps see anarchy as a vision for the future that will not be attained overnight.
Even coming as far as we have would have been impossible before the Internet! Further technological and social advancements -- greater functional literacy and access to information, better understanding of economics, higher average quality of life, more accurate methods of declaring property ownership, better passive security systems and non-lethal weapons, innovations of contracting techniques, more sophisticated corporate management, etc -- are what will someday make anarchy possible!
You're making a circular argument. Democracy is defined thus because democracy behaves thus - in this culture, at present. The degree of freedom that is experienced in our culture doesn't come from democracy, democracy merely reflects what is there for pragmatic political reasons
78 million years from now on planet Zoltar, neither you nor I know what the word "democracy" will mean. Perhaps it will mean banana-split with cherries. Let's talk about here and now.
Yes, let's abandon all attempts at objectivity. Let's ignore history (democrats killed Socrates), foreign lands, literature, and inductive / deductive reasoning... Democracy is when a guy called Obama is in the white house and James Cameron is releasing a 3D space adventure film called
Avatar about the Na'Vi who live on planet Pandora. Anything different is not a "democracy"...
Humbug! In fact, how about I stop using the word "democracy", since people are so confused about its definition, and use the term "demagogue politics" to refer to its idealized vision, and the term "mob control" to refer to its functions in real life.
It is no coincidence that in countries where people have equal access to power, power is divided among several bodies which check and balance each other. It is no coincidence that in these countries, since power is checked, individual rights are maintained much more than they are in dictatorships.
It's no coincidence that all sophisticated economies find it prudent to keep their citizens on a longer dog-leash through demagogue politics to some degree, for the same reason slavery becomes impractical with the advent of the industrial revolution. And "equal access to power" is an illusion.
- a nation with an advanced service-based economy requires a literate and independently-minded populace, which in turn requires [demagogue politics].
Required by whom?
By evolutionary pragmatism. It's like asking "who" dictates that cars have round wheels instead of triangular ones - the alternatives don't work very well.
Look up "democracy" in an encyclopedia published in North Korea and you'll get a reflection of the North Korean culture, which doesn't contain even an inkling of things like free speech.
Where does an individual enjoy more freedom, in North Korea or in South Korea?
In the less democratic one, err, I mean the one less driven by demagogue politics - the South one. Their president gets approval ratings that make Bush look like Elvis, but he and his group of pragmatic technocrats are able to exploit flaws in the electoral process to gain power and push through their unpopular reforms (which I'm a big fan of, BTW).