Friday, March 31, 2006

Does Democracy Require Revolution?

The United States was born in flames. When the British attempted to recapture their prize in 1812, the White House was burned to the ground. The American Revolution was bloody. Out of it, as the best possible compromise between the colonies, a democracy was formed.

In a democracy, each election is a dance between the old and the new. Sometimes the old survives, sometimes the new replaces it. Each election contains a revolution in miniature.

In the American system, the Democratic Party does its best to corral and incorporate into itself every revolutionary movement that appears. The strong anti-war movement of 2002-2003 became the Dean candidacy. This was folded into the Kerry candidacy. Suddenly America's choice was between two Crossbones Club Yalies, one of whom despised the war in which he had enlisted, the other of whom loved the war in which he hadn't.

If the Democratic Party sits atop a steaming heap of frustrated mass movements, the Republican Party sits in marble halls admiring itself in the mirror, the adoring words of bought thought soothing its ears and misguiding its actions. It presumes to speak for small business as it sells the cow to pay the milk bill.

The Republicans understand salesmanship but lack human sensitivity. The Democrats have human sensitivity but fail to understand salesmanship.

In a two-party system, the parties can come to represent any pair of opposites. The Republicans love vertical relationships. Authority travels vertically. The Democrats love lateral relationships. Mankind's love for itself travels laterally. The Republicans speak for the worth of what is and what was, while the Democrats can't stop singing about tomorrow.

Revolution is inevitable.

Monday, March 27, 2006

Does Freedom Require Democracy?

Can a king be just? Kings are surrounded by courtiers with agendas. While theoretically a king who worships the infinite can't help but be just, in practice this has not been so. In practice, the highest principles soon dissipate into autocracy.

A king is just only when forced to be so. One such force is the people. Oliver Cromwell and all. Another is the visibility provided by television combined with the search for truth implicit in the web.

A king is at the top of a pyramid of nobility. At the bottom are the serfs. Were the nobles only noble, all would be well. A king can't be just if the nobles aren't noble.

Does freedom require justice?

An injustice suffered is a constraint against one's true freedom. Fear of injustice limits what man can say. Fear of injustice binds one man to the will of another. Freedom requires justice.

Does justice require democracy?

In some places, all it requires is a hot gun and a fast getaway car. Where life has little value, maintaining justice is inevitably a personal responsibility. In other places, groups with pitchforks and torches have delivered justice to a cruel nobility. The seeds of democracy.

But popular justice in its mass hysteria can drown girls as witches and hang Negroes. Or kill gay people in Iraq, as is happening today. To protect the freedom of all, each individual dispenser of justice needs to hand his task over to an agreed upon system.

In this era, justice is dispensed by the legal system. It presumably is fair to all and owned by all. Its fairness can only be increased by the transparency brought by the electronic age. Where it is not owned by all equally, network news will tell us, and the blogs will tell on them if they fail this.

So justice, which freedom requires, demands democracy.

Freedom requires democracy.

Your thoughts?

Welcome to Peaceful Freedom

This blog hopes to explore the peaceful pathways to freedom. While the United States seems intent on spreading freedom by military methods, those may soon fall by the wayside, as they are not economical. What will replace them?

India was freed from Britian's rule by Gandhi's path of peace. Nonviolent resistance is hard to resist! Of course, the British could have shot him, but what then? Would they rather have had chaos? Or have had to put up with a nice, friendly man asking for freedom for his people? Gandhi's path is called Satyagraha.

The peaceful path recognizes the humanity of the aggressor. It seeks a mutual win. It believes that God's soul is in the person of the aggressor, waiting there in hopes of new understandings. The peaceful path wins by evolving the aggressor.

The peaceful path does not need to deny the negative - it affirms the positive.

More on this as life develops.