Thread: Attack on democracy

Well in good old russia the wining party often got 80-85% of the votes.

The point I was trying to make is that in every democratic country, the eventual winner of an election has less than 50% support of the country.
Not sayin I disagree with any political system, was just raising the point.

In the Netherlands the winning party is the party with most seats in the senate. Mostly less then 50% of the country and usually less then 50% of the seats in the senate. The parties with most seats in the senate are in the government, so the government represents the votes of more than 50% of the country. Usually three or four parties are in the government. The others are at the opposition.

But it is not the government which makes the decisions. It is the senate which does, and the senate is choosen by the country. It is a representation of the ideals of the country. The government executes the decisions of the senate.

Since the structure of the senate is a direct representation of the votes, the whole country finds itself in the senate. I think that in this way, the senate represents more than 50% of the country.

Your right I missed the sarcasm tags. I actually agree with everything you said. The American election is a joke with the electorial collage. I much prefere the way most Europeen countries do it (majority vote) Although the two partisan deal in England have to be questionable.(Or is there more parties?) It is scary that not more people care about there right to vote. And Russians...We have them here to...same deal.

i live with russian immigrants, too, and they side towards democracy.

now, my rant :
Democracy isn't just about voting for people. Even if it was possible to make the people have full power of everything, they wouldn't make good decisions. (imho) Democracy, in America anyway, the government was purposely obfuscated and divided to make it fairer. The government does nothing unless there is a fairly high majority of support within the government. It's what checks and balances are about. Ditto with separation of powers.

Originally posted by Shiro

In a democracy you can have very different opinions, but the debate should be the instrument to win.

Shiro, you are forgeting that when intelligent people get together they discuss. However, many do not feel this way. There needs to be communication in the world, but there is very little. Why do you think that Osama and his network of people hate the US so much? They have different views than the Americans, yet we Americans insist that our views are the correct ones. If Americans and Arabs discussed their differences, each side might be more understanding of the other. Sad thing is, this is not the case and probably never will be true.

Your missing the point, democracy is a flawed concept.
how can a country be democratic when such a small percentage of the people of that country have all the power, money etc?

That's not a democracy then. That's a republic. I don't know of any democracies in the world, but there are plenty of republics that claim to be democracies.

>Why do you think that Osama and his network of people hate
>the US so much?

One can wonder if Osama really hates US. Perhaps it is his hunger for power. I guess he hates it that the American have so much power and he knows about the anti-American feelings in the Arabic countries. He tells the Arabs he wants to fight the bad Americans and gets support. I think that's how the Al Quaeda network was formed.

>If Americans and Arabs discussed their differences, each side
>might be more understanding of the other. Sad thing is, this is
>not the case and probably never will be true.

That is partly true. But don't forget that the opinion of the Arabs is made by their leaders and press. The information the Arab people get from their leaders and the press, which is I think strongly influenced by those leaders, is one point of view.

I recently saw a TV-program on TV where some Jewish and Palestine young people were together. They talked about their friendship and they explained how talking with eachother brought them together. A very important point was that they accepted and respected eachother's cultures and tradition. A very nice thing a Palestine man said: A purpose of religion is not to seperate people, but to unite people. The people didn't agree at several points with regard to religion, but when it came to political points like peace, democracy etc. they agreed at most points.

Didn't Chirac have like 80%?

that's why bin laden is angry... al queda is a different matter.

how'd we get from the netherlands back to bin laden?