Unquestioning slaves to western humanism

I know, it's such a problem, given how intelligence is so intangible.  I also know many people with high IQ's (or at least I think they have high IQ's) who have no sense about them, and are completely uninformed about politics.

Originally posted by gcle2003 Originally posted by BMC21113 -Being said, what is the meaning of all of this? It is simple, we are all unique individuals, not all of which are capable of making complicated decisions regarding the fate of the nation. Instead of politicians, many crooked, attempting to advance their agenda based on underhand deception, we should allow the capable to decide for themselves. Now, I understand that this is a controversial position.Determining what exactly "qualifies" a person as capable of making decisions is another issue in itself, though I feel that you can see where I am going with this.......   No I can't see where you are going.   At the moment (in democratic societies) the choice of who is capable of making decisions is made by a majority (not necessarily a simple majority) of citizens.   What are you suggesting instead?   Tobodai ducks the question again by saying the new leaders should be appointed by the old leaders - without saying how the original leaders are chosen.   There is no reason to suppose an unelected oligarchy would be any less corrupt - or corruptible - than an elected one. And it would be a whole lot harder to deal with once it had become corrupt.   With regard to the idea of 'earning' the right to vote, this is of course illegal in the US at the moment specifically because of the corruption it led to, particularly in the South. Which is not a bad reason for it being illegal.   Moreover though you are still up against the basic question of who determines who has the earned the right to vote. Maybe in Georgia it should be 'people who have studied the Bible and accept it as literally true'?   If there is an overall solution to this problem it has to be with improving the education of the electorate to increase its sense of reponsibility for its government. Tough, I agree. And there are minor changes that help: proportional representation, capping the amount that can be spent on political campaigns, guarantees of free television time and the banning of paid political advertising....   There is no ideological situation to the problem; merely a number of incremental improvements that can be introduced from time to time.

I will admit that democracy is fine if everyone is educated and intelligent, but I do not beleive that everyone is intelligent or capable of being rational.

One central idea I want to cover is best said not by me but one of my heroes:

Yes this is my original point, that has been lost in the subsequent thread.  And I have to say BMC that block voting and similar stuff is a very valid point you bring up I missed entirely.

 I think everyone is born equal as they have yet to show by their actions what they are.  Thus I regard all children (exciept for my devil child nephew) as equal, legally.  Once however you graduate from high school although you should forever retain rights to live your private life however you wish you should not immediatly get voting rights.  I mean tome there are 10 year olds who are smarter than some 50 year olds and cannot vote because of their age, while a couch potato welfare sucking parasite like my grandfather can merely because he is older. 

-Unfortunately, I do not really feel that the majority is capable of truly deciding what is best for their country. It does pain me to say this, as I do believe in Democracy and would not trade the rights I posess as a United States Citizen for anything in the world. This claim comes from the overall influential public, those whom often blindly follow that which is told to them instead of actually thinking for themselves. I feel as though all citizens should be entitled to equal rights, though that does not necessarily endorse the idea of true equality. When I speak of equality, I speak of talents, characteristics, personality traits, etc.... People are not all leaders. If they were, the term leader would in fact be nonexistent. Being said, perhaps the single greatest flaw in a Democracy is the assumption that all people can and should decide the fate of our country. As of now, "block" voting is often a manifestation of fast talking politicians. Most people are fairly oblivious to that which is going on around them, and thus, follow policies and ideas that look nice, yet have no foundation in feasibility. We can break this idea down a level further and examine the basic structures of society in general. Now, we can all agree that people are either successful or unsuccessful for a reason......I mean, we can not all be PhD's. Of course we should all have the opportunity to pursue this goal if we wish, but in reality, there is no way a society of doctors could ever get along. Take a successful independent business man with little education. There is a reason he is more successful than the competition...personal characteristics and successful traits.....

Edited by Tobodai - 18-Aug-2006 at 23:05

Hum hum hum.

I was wondering why I didn't like your all idea. Then I remember: what you are advocating has a name, it is called the FUHRERPRINZIP. Its is the very base of national-socialism. A leader will come out from the mass to skip them to the most glorious days of their History! Heil!

I of course do not assimilate you with the nazis yet that is indeed how your speach sounds like. If you have an elite ruling the country they have to come from somewhere. I guess you are refusing the government of the wealthiests or the government of the nobles, so as gcle would say where do the power would come from?

Interestingly you point out the fact unelected bodies were at the origin of "most of the western societies societal sucess". This may be partially true in the countries of common law (namely US and UK and for that matter the EU) but it is defently not the case in the rest of Europe where it is almost always the elected bodies that are at the origin of any move (after usually the due pressure from society). This goes from allowing syndicate, separating church and state, banning death penalty, and so on. Some countries like Italy are so disgustingly democratic that the most important questions are often left to referundum. And I'm not even talking about the Swiss.

Finally what you are failling to see is that if in democratic societies unelected bodies have any form of sovereignty it is precisely because they are chosen and closely depend from the elected ones this is true for all the judges, the suprem court, and even the military HQ (not mentionning the ministers, secretaries) etc. The one and only exception to this rule (we needed one, didn't we?) is the English Lords who are indeed not elected (I think though I'm not completely sure).

A King can be responsible to parliament for instance, or in Coke's immortal words, "the King can have no powers except what the law give him".