Tag Archives: democracy

There have been windows in history when the people have had enough abuse and so rise up in revolt. The American and French revolutions come to mind as does 1848. Perhaps we are experiencing something like that at the present time, a revolt against the pressure to conform to globalist values that have been embraced to their benefit by the elites and the establishment in much of the world. It could well become a hard fought and sometimes bloody conflict but its outcome will shape the next...

A new study reveals how the wealthy engage in ‘stealth politics’: quietly advancing unpopular, inequality-exacerbating, highly conservative policies... How can this be so? If it is true, why aren’t voters aware and angry about it?The answer is simple: billionaires who favor unpopular, ultraconservative economic policies, and work actively to advance them (that is, most politically active billionaires) stay almost entirely silent about those issues in public. This is a deliberate choice....

When elections don't go the way the US wants. On Monday, the United States called the election of leaders and parliamentarians in the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk a “farce,” according to a spokeswoman for the US State Department, Heather Nauert. On Sunday the two self-proclaimed people’s republics held elections for leaders and parliamentarians. Turnout in Donetsk reached 80.1% of voters, while in Lugansk the number was 77%, according to the central...

The thing that almost all of the framers really agreed on is that a broad franchise for electing representatives makes things too responsive to the popular will; and that even where the franchise is appropriately, in their view, restricted to white men with sufficient property, with even more property required for standing for office, a legislature unchecked by a more elite upper house still makes things too responsive. New ideas were out there. They urged not direct democracy but access to...

SRW come up with a conclusion similar to Aristotle's. Democracy can only work if it has stochastic basis that can't be gamed.InterfluidityContinuous electionsSteve Randy Waldman

Frank Li begins up many interesting points and, in my view, gets a lot right in this post. It is worth considering in that it is comparison of systems by a person that knows both the Chinese and American. But Li omits some of the key Western thinking about the philosophical basis of liberalism, which distinguishes individuality from personhood.  A dilemma arises between individuality and personhood. On one hand, individuality is unique and varied and all individuals are clearly not...

Is there a Deep State in our western liberal democracies? If so, is it a conspiracy or something more ‘interesting’ than that? These are questions that the Left has been traditionally engaged with, especially when facing undercover campaigns to prevent progressives from winning power or, on occasion, to unseat or destabilise left-wing governments. However, more recently, the Alt-Right has begun waging a war of words against the Deep State, with Donald Trump and his supporters doing so most...

Increasingly, however, academics and development practitioners are looking at a less visible and tangible obstacle – the capture of the State by economic and political elites. The extreme concentration of economic and political power reinforces the ability to unduly co-opt, corrupt and divert the democratic process, and influence the role of the State, perpetuating measures that reinforce privilege on the one hand and inequality and exclusion on the other. This elite capture is manifested...

In examining the implications for an exit from a currency union, one of the issues that arises is the proportion of public debt that is issued under foreign law. This is a separate issue to the implications of foreign-currency denominated debt. Both issues are problematic and compromise a government’s capacity to remain solvent. I covered the former issue to some extent in my 2015 book – Eurozone Dystopia: Groupthink and Denial on a Grand Scale – when I was considering different strategies...

Reflections with which I agree.Comments on Global Political EconomySome thoughts on liberal democracy as a deceptive term Jim O'ReillySee alsoIn my view, Dugin gets this right, too, as opposed to bourgeois liberalism's, "My way, or the highway." The third totalitarianism is transnational corporate totalitarianism under the control of international capital, which happens to be mostly in Western "liberal" hands.Geopolitika The 'Third Totalitarianism' From The West Alexander Dugin