Who would you vote for as President of the World?
I vote for a fictional personage – Atticus Finch played by Gregory
Peck in the movie To Kill a Mocking Bird. One could say of him that
he was too good to be true, that’s precisely what we would need for
the President of the World – someone too good to be true.
Can terrorism destroy democracy?
If terrorists can, because of the threat they inspire, induce democratic governments to adopt undemocratic methods then terrorism can indeed estroy democracy, whether or not it occurs on the battlefield. In fact, you could even say that if democracy were to defeat terrorism on the battlefield, but did so by turning themselves into terrorists by their activities, terrorism would have won over democracy.
Who rules the world?
In the sense that since capitalism, by definition, doesn’t respect any
national boundaries or any local concerns, it’s very likely that if
it were to be given free sway it would finally colonise the entire
world. So, if democracy of the American/ British kind ever rules the
world, it will be because of economic forces rather than the force of
the democratic ideal as a philosophical goal.
Why bother to vote?
The larger the democratic process participation is, the less likely that
the results will be good and wise. Although most Americans nostalgically look to the New England town meeting as the ideal form
of government, a more republican, representative democracy can be a better form. A system in which a few persons are elected by virtue of their merit enables politicians to make informed decisions for the
rest of us as opposed to having us all make every decision.
Are women more democratic than men?
I would say quite the reverse. I think that democracy, with the idea of the individual’s rights at its centre, is in fact a male form of
thinking. Women are thought to be more communitarian in their
behaviour and attitudes than men, more insistent on cooperation and compromise. So I would say that women are less inclined to be
democratic than men because democracy is itself a form of rigidity if
it is adhered to and women are in general not as rigid as men.
Is God democratic?
By definition God is not democratic. God rules and created the world,
and those who believe in him must first determine his will and then
follow it. They are not in any instance allowed to follow their own
inclinations rather the will of God. Democracy is a form of government which one might say canonises the natural inclinations or choices of individual men, so democracy is the form of government least suited to God.
Is democracy good for everyone?
If you think of democracy in a kind of Darwinian fashion, as the goal to which all political evolution has been tending, then it is good for
everyone. Some people do think of it this way, certainly members of
the present Bush administration. But it depends whether or not you
believe that individual rights are the things that a government
should most protect. If you do, then democracy will be the form of
government for you. But if you believe that the implementation of
religious truth is more important then it won’t.
What would make you start a revolution?
At my age no issue could move me to revolution. With old age fast
approaching, if there were an issue that so distressed me that I
could not even bear to think about it I would try to find a quiet
place where I didn’t have to and ride it out.
Can democracy solve climate change?
No.
Democracy cannot solve climate change because climate change is a
technological problem. That is, it’s a problem that if it is to be
solved, it is to be solved by the amassing of data and the emerging
of new techniques and perhaps politically by the enforcing of laws
designed to prohibit activities that are found to contribute to
global warming. No particular form of government seems to me to be either particularly able or unable to do the technological work that
will be necessary if the problems of climate change are to be met.
What is the biggest threat to democracy?
The biggest threat to democracy is democracy, for a reason that was given by the great American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes who famously said if my fellow citizens want to go to hell in a hand basket, it’s my job to help them get there’. What he meant by that is that democracy by its nature is not tied to any substantive end, so that even if the citizens of the country legally pass laws which someone like Holmes would think would eventually be disastrous, it is his duty as a supreme court justice to enforce and protect the laws they have passed whether or not he thinks them good or absolutely insane.
Another way to put this is that democracy is the only form of
government which at least theoretically contemplates its own demise
with equanimity. Because it’s always possible if you take the
principals of democracy seriously that a democratically elected
government will in fact be itself anti-democratic. That it, one must
distinguish between the procedures by which a group is democratically elected and the commitment, if any, of that party to democracy. The United States is always being bedevilled by this problem and I’m sure other western democracies are when they see democratically elected officials especially in Latin America and occasionally in the Middle East turn out then to institute policies which are inherently undemocratic. There is then a great puzzle posed to the diplomatic cores is democratic countries.
On the one hand you could say they elected these fellows democratically and since we’re democratically inclined ourselves we have to let them do it, or you find a reason to decide that this democratically elected government cannot be allowed stand. It’s a very uncomfortable position for democracies because if a democracy is going to take its own principles seriously, it must allow and in fact welcome the election of persons or parties who in the end are going to undermine everything that goes under the name of democracy.
How easy is it to define a limit where democratic principles stop being democratic?
It’s quite easy if what you’re concerned with is the principle rather
than the outcome. Another thing that marks liberal democracy is that it is more concerned with the principal than the outcome. But at the moment that we might call the crunch moment, people always say ‘but if we allow this to happen then…’. In the current context of
let’s say Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, some Americans both inside and
outside the government are saying ‘yes, we under democratic
principles but if these people are not forced to give up the
information they may have, everything that we call democracy may
expire. That’s the risk that democracy takes. Democracy is a bet.
It’s a hazard that in the end men and women will respond to the
invocation of values like freedom and respect for others. If that is
a good bet then you can allow undemocratic forces to have their sway in the full confidence that men and women will finally not accept them.
As I’ve said many times in my writings, the only argument
against the general faith some democracies have in the ultimate
appeal of their philosophy is the entirety of human history which
shows no indication of favouring democracy over other forms of
government.
If a democratically elected body such as the US Congress is capable of acting very undemocratically to the point where the system stops
being a democracy, at what point can we say that we no longer
function in a democratic society?
You may know the American novel later made into two movies called All the Kings Men which is about a populist politician in the south who runs on a series of populist themes and the promise to do things for the people, rather than for the political powers and corporate powers but when he gets into office and is supported by the people, what the people support him in doing is entirely undemocratic and turns out to be a monument to his own ego which is very quickly corrupted.
There is no way within democratic principles to stop that, except by voting him out of office or, as in the case of Huey Long, by assassinating him which is a most undemocratic thing to do. So it seems that when the crisis comes and democracy is in danger that more often than not what is called on to save it is violence, perhaps the same kind of violence, which enabled the democracy to begin and that is certainly the case with the democracy of the United States which was born in the violence of the revolutionary war.
So it’s almost as if the values we associate with democracy are more powerful than the actual system?
The philosophy of democracy assumes the rationality of the electorate. Give the electorate time and space to cast free votes and the result will be good. What happens when the electorate has the time and space to cast free votes and the results are bad, and in fact the bad results continue to be welcomed by the same the electorate? There’s no way out of that conundrum unless you want to turn your back on democracy in order to save democracy, but that is a somewhat quixotic conclusion.
As terrorism is at least perceved to endanger democracy, but of courts he reality is that in the course of fighting for freedom, e have to do some thigns that are very unseemly. In World Wr Two, That
now seems to us in 2007 to be a lost world
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