Thursday, July 05, 2012

Why Democratic Processes Matter

We love to disagree. We love to put each other down for status, fight, and desecrate each others graves.

There's probably an evolutionary reason for it. Pretty sure it might be part of the reason why the neanderthals and the rest of our hominid cousins live on only in museums and textbooks, and that only in the non-creationist magical thinking parts of the world

We've done a lot of fighting. it's driven a lot of innovation and forced us to evolve systems of government to, well, govern, our baser instincts.

Of the three big ones - dictatorship, oligarchy and democracy, democracy is probably the one that maximizes our ability to disagree while still facing our problems with some degree of efficiency.



To be able to disagree as much as possible, to maximize our individual and collective freedoms, requires some minimum amounts of agreeing. We have to agree to disagree, and then agree to rules to do so as efficiently and productively as possible.

And that's why when any political party starts undermining the processes of democracy, and while to my mind that's definitely the Conservatives under Stephen Harper but let's all remember how he came up under the reign of Papa, erm, Jean Chretien - that's why when the processes of democracy start to be undermined, it's in the interests of Canadians of all political stripes to call foul and stop the rot. Because while it is easy to overlook the excesses of our Dear Leaders when our tribal, I mean political affiliation holds the reins of power, soon enough that corruption leads to a backlash, and we're a lot less happy when it's the other guys turn.

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