Just think of how many people you’ve known throughout your lifetime who consider themselves moral people, but who would willing buy items that were very likely to have been stolen. Usually they rationalize the purchase because it’s such a deal, and because if they don’t buy it, then someone else will, or perhaps it was stolen from a huge impersonal corporation.

I tell them they are paying the thief to steal from an innocent victim, and that anyone who pays a thief to steal someone’s property should be shot in the knee, same as the thief. It’s a good way to generate a blank stare.

This is very widespread.

–John Danforth–

So democracy rewards and encourages the destruction of the very values necessary to its moral foundation.

“Few people champion robbing Peter so as to “help” out Paul—we usually believe that Peter needs to agree to the idea.”

I think he’s wrong. I think that there are large numbers of people – the majority, really – who champion theft. In their view the theft they champion is benign, well-intentioned theft, but theft all the same. I have argued with all sorts of people about Social Security, Medicare, affirmative action, the minimum wage, foreign aid, even the theft of farms in South Africa, and my opponents are always shocked at my immorality for arguing the positions I do. They are shocked, SHOCKED, that anyone would deny the proper power of government to right past wrongs, and distribute wealth so as to attain a proper distribution of wealth. As far as they’re concerned, theft is good so long as it’s a Robin Hood style theft.

So I think I disagree with the author. He appears to believe that the practice of democracy violates what we learn in school. On the contrary. What we learn in school supports the practice of democracy, with all its vices, kickbacks, and open thievery.

However, it seems that most leaders tend to lose sight of their (apparent) original goals once the money , power and influence comes rolling in. They then often abuse their power and influence to enrich themselves at the expense of their followers. In some organisations (such as churches and clubs) this is mitigated by the fact that the followers can leave at anytime they please (unless of course they are muslim in which case they would be best off withholding their wealth from their rabid and evil leaders). However, democratically elected and unelected officials are untouchable until their next term, especially in South Africa. In theory one could force a re-election, but the ruling party is far too immature to allow that to take place, and there are too many sheep bleeting “four legs good, two legs bad” (or in the South African version “Black skin good, white skin baaad!”).

This problem is magnified by the fact that a huge portion of the South African population acts as a collective where their leaders are all powerful and untouchable. Democracy is not really geared to tackle these types of collective bodies and these type of collective bodies have no place in democracy. Evidence of this can be seen simply by looking north to the conflicts between muslims and europeans throughout Europe.

Perhaps the only way for a democracy to work is to have a strong and objective constitution that is enforced by law, and watchdog organisations to ensure that the constitution is not breached by laws passed convieniently by the ruling party. The constitution should represent a contract between the various people of a country and a breach in this contracts is a declaration of war by the leading party on the rest of the nation.

[You omit a component highlighted again and again in my writing about the horrible adventure in Iraq, and which has not sunk into the American consciousness: not all cultures are conducive to democracy. As I said here: “only a radical, oblivious to reality, would conclude that, because all people seek safety and sustenance for themselves, they’ll allow those they disliketo peacefully pursue the same.”]