Democracy - tough piece

[midcan5]

What If It's Just Us? The Hard Question

By David Ker Thomson

"But the hard questions about Hitler would, at the least, include hard questions about ourselves. Why was our side so happy to go kill Germans in 1914? Why did we choose to brutalize their side at the Treaty of Versailles? What did we think was the plan for the world when Germans after the first war were so poor that they had to bring a wheelbarrow of money to the baker to buy a loaf of bread?

How hard is that?

What we find too hard is to criticize our biggest fetish.

Democracy is our biggest fetish. It’s a brutal system, conceived in slave nations like Greece and 18th-century America, wonderfully synchronous with whatever form of corporate savagery is in style (right now it’s globalization), glorifies the movement of power away from the individual and the neighborhood in a process called “representation” which would be a travesty even if it worked. Perhaps especially if it worked. It enables people to invert the most significant dynamic in their lives, stability versus radicalism, by pretending that the radicals are the gentle folk who like to sit on their stoops and get their food locally and ride bikes and so on while the conservative and stable people are the ones who send young men and women off to torture and rape and murder in foreign adventures (or to foment such activities repeatedly, as has Barrack Obama, who comes from the only nuclear power to use nuclear bombs against large cities, and projects this brutality on to Iran). The strongest democracies have the biggest prison systems for keeping blacks and males ‘out’ of trouble."

David Ker Thomson: The Hard Question

 

[editec]

We live in a shamocracy, of that there can be very little doubt.

2.4 million people in prison in the land of the free and the brave?

Nuf said.

 

[LordBrownTrout]

We live in a shamocracy, of that there can be very little doubt.

2.4 million people in prison in the land of the free and the brave?

Nuf said.

You'd just let all those criminals go free? They're in there for a reason. They blew their chance at freedom when they raped, murdered, robbed, carjacked, and other crimes that left some innocent citizens without much of a life for the rest of their life.

 

[Annie]

We live in a shamocracy, of that there can be very little doubt.

2.4 million people in prison in the land of the free and the brave?

Nuf said.

Interesting, I was just reading this yesterday. There are links at site:

The Volokh Conspiracy - -

James Q. Wilson, guest-blogging, June 9, 2008 at 12:01pm] Trackbacks
What Do We Get From Prison?

We are frequently told that America should be ashamed of having sent so many people to prison. We are compared unfavorably to most of Europe. But these complaints rarely ask what benefits flow from prison.

The best scholars have estimated that between 25 and 30 percent of the recent decline in crime rates is the result of imprisonment. A comparison with England is helpful. At one time it imprisoned a higher fraction of offenders than did the US, but in the 1980s it changed by imprisoning fewer people. As a result (I think), the British crime rate soared while ours fell.

Between 1980 and 1985 the American prison population increased by more than half and between 1985 and 1990 it again increased by half. But from 1987 to 1992, the British prison population dropped by about five thousand inmates despite a sharp rise in the crime rate.

These different responses did not happen by accident. Americans, voting for district attorneys, mayors, and governors, chose people who would take crime seriously. In England hardly any of these offices are filled by local election; instead, the Parliament and the Home Office decide on crime policies.

Those decisions included a bill that urged judges not to send offenders to prison unless the crime was very serious, and in determining seriousness the judges were asked to ignore the prior record of the offenders.

In short, American policies were driven by public opinion while British ones were shaped by elite preferences. As a result, victim surveys show that by the late 1990s the British robbery rate was one-quarter higher and the burglary and assault rates twice as high as those in this country.

This raises the interesting question of why elite views should be so different from popular ones. Some possible explanations: Elites can more easily protect themselves from criminal attacks; elites tend to have a therapeutic rather than punitive view of crime; elites in parliamentary regimes are protected against sharp swings in public moods.

There are a lot of criticisms one can make of prisons, but sending offenders there, provided it is done correctly and without abuse, is an eminently democratic strategy: We deprive guilty people of liberty to make innocent people safer.
​

Here's another from this morning:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080609/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/fbi_crime

FBI: Violent and property crime dropped in 2007

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press WriterMon Jun 9, 5:14 PM ET

Both violent and property crimes declined in 2007 from the previous year, the FBI reported Monday. But one expert warned the figures could mask rising murder rates among young black men.

In preliminary figures for crimes reported to police, the bureau said the number of violent crimes declined by 1.4 percent from 2006, reversing two years of rising violent crime numbers. Violent crime had climbed 1.9 percent in 2006 and 2.3 percent in 2005, alarming federal and local officials.

Property crimes were down 2.1 percent last year, the largest drop in the last four years.

The largest declines were in vehicle theft, down 8.9 percent and in rape, down 4.3 percent and murder, down 2.7 percent.

...

 

[editec]

But these complaints rarely ask what benefits flow from prison.

I'm all for locking up white and black collared criminals.

Now about the other million or so people we have in prison or jail for minor offenses?

Waste of money and of human capital, too.

 

[Ravi]

I'm all for locking up white and black collared criminals.

Now about the other million or so people we have in prison or jail for minor offenses?

Waste of money and of human capital, too.

Not to mention that there's a bit of evidence that once you're in the prison system, no matter how minor the crime, you become part of the culture. It'd be great if we reformed things so the punishment actually did fit the crime.

 

[jillian]

Not to mention that there's a bit of evidence that once you're in the prison system, no matter how minor the crime, you become part of the culture. It'd be great if we reformed things so the punishment actually did fit the crime.

We'd have to start off by decriminalizing drugs

 

[midcan5]

No one defended democracy?

 

[SingingMongoose]

I'll defend democracy.

I think the biggest beef I have with the world right now is capitalism. Capitalism and democracy are not at all the same thing (thus the term "democratic socialists"). Democracies are bound to be corrupt, sure, but as cliche as it is, I don't see any value in any other system of government.

I'm not sure what David Ker is getting at exactly.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

There is no need to defend it. Compared to every other type of Government we have ever had in the world, I will stick with what WE have. You like socialism so much? Move to a country that practices it.

 

[LordBrownTrout]

Our experiment, founded by great men, is quite possibly the greatest that the world has ever seen. Nothing is perfect though, man is imperfect. Greed, disrespect towards your fellow man, hate have failed many a nation through the annals of history.

 

[midcan5]

RGS's usual ad hominem non answer.

Actually ours is a republic, consider if we were a true democracy, Gore would have been president and the ideologues in the supreme court wouldn't have picked a man who has caused so much sorrow.

 

[editec]

No one defended democracy?

How can any of us defend something that we've NEVER SEEN?

We do NOT live in a democracy.

We live in a Republic.

The difference between those two systems of governance is rather vast.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

How can any of us defend something that we've NEVER SEEN?

We do NOT live in a democracy.

We live in a Republic.

The difference between those two systems of governance is rather vast.

LOL, you two are hilarious. Of Course we live in a DEMOCRATIC Republic. Claiming we do not know what democracy is, is well a hoot. Like I said Midcan, you want socialism go move where it is practiced, get back to us on how well that worked for ya.

The difference between pure democracy and our republican form is that the mob does not rule. You want to see the idiocy of that? Check out California and the problems they have because they allow any and everything to be voted on by the mob.

As for Editec, learn some reality.

A pure democracy can not work on the scale of a Country. Just like in small communities Socialism can work well and even Anarchy, Democracy in its pure form will only work on a small scale.

But then that would require intelligence and wisdom and some common sense to exist to understand the concept.