[lit-ideas] Re: Reason and Politics
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 09:38:00 -0400
Alan Wolfe (Boston College) in Does American Democracy Still Work? offers
the opinion that American democracy is ebbing away. The electorate is
uninformed, emotional, and easily manipulated. Politicians hide behind
things like stem cell research, gay marriage, flag burning and other
'values' while avoiding issues such as the deficit, debt, Iraq, education,
health care. Where democracy is in peril is that the population goes along
with it. They think these are the issues and are manipulated by
politicians accordingly. It was the uninformed populace, aided and
abetted by the uninformed and biased press, who got us into this war.
Wolfe thinks that this election will be telling in determining whether
democracy is dead in this country by whether people vote out the current
set of do nothings. He also thinks there are now only two viewpoints in
the country, left and right, where there used to be three, left, right and
center. Center is now considered left (sound familiar?) (My opinion is
that even if the do nothings are voted out, it will be over Iraq. The
other messes like the economy people are too uninformed to care about.
What a sad state of affairs that Iraq had to get this bad before the meme
became apparent, and there are still those who think more of the same is
the way to go. 13% last I heard still support Iraq.)
> [Original Message]
> From: Steve Chilson <stevechilson@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 10/25/2006 12:40:58 AM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Reason and Politics
>
> Apologies for the lack of clarity Walter, having left too much to infer.
>
> By the "belief in democracy", I was referring to democratic theorists
> and the ideals which they appear to be attempting to export over this
> last decade in particular; that democracy is the miracle cure for any
> society's ills regardless of that society's culture and history.
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