Real-world sensitivities and game names

[JimMorrison]

Because Jeff, of all of the Americans that I know (which is a lot! ), the only ones who think there is absolutely no problem with Democracy allowing Christians to run roughshod over the beliefs and ideals of the rest of the population - are Christians themselves.

To everyone else it amounts to nothing short of government facilitated conversion.


I will admit, I got a bit ahead of myself, as I feel very passionate about humankind plotting a course that is unfettered and unhindered by superstition and mythology. Do I believe that is all that religion is? Of course not, but it's the only part that gets forced upon others. You can't enforce true faith, you can't enforce virtue and harmony - you can only enforce dogmatic behavior.


And again, I will stop to clarify. I don't have a problem with religious people in general, and I think the majority of people who live their lives according to the tenets of a religious teaching, are decent people.

What I do have a problem with, a growing problem, probably because of the US involvement in the Middle East - is the people who think there really is some sort of war for souls going on in the world - who think that they are following the one true faith, and that all others are being misled by satanic forces. These people may be in the minority, but they are the problem, and they have enough sway in the world to still make terrible things happen, even in this modern age.

[Agema]

I am not a Christian, and did not say I was.

What I dispute is Jimi and Tifone talking about things like "real democracy" in terms of actually restricting or denying popular mandate, as to do so is patently anti-democratic. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, far from it.

Modern Western democracies can impose cultural values. The French and Turkish constitutions for instance are aggressively secular and restrict aspects of religious observance in ways the UK and US certainly don't. But you wouldn't call them less democratic countries (although Turkey is politically unstable and has periodic blips). A nation may wish to have an overarching *religious* constitution, rather than one based on secular views as is generally the case in the West. But why should that make them less democratic, if they use a free and fair system of voting just like the US or UK?

I'm just saying that frequently people in the West erroneously conflate a lot of our general secular Enlightenment values into "democracy", which actually have little or nothing to with democracy itself.

[llamabeast]

I think Agema was just talking about the concept of true democracy, i.e. a state where everything is decided by a majority. Obviously in such a state, distasteful things can happen. I think that was his point.

[dirtywick]

Even in a democracy there are a are recognized rights that all members of the society have that can't be violated by the majority.

A good counter example is if the majority wanted to dictate that the minority had no right to vote, well, denying that popular mandate certainly would be a lot more pro-democratic than allowing it to pass, wouldn't it?

If there are no restrictions on the power of the majority it's an ochlocracy not a democracy.

However, I think Agema is right in that you can still be a democratic state and mix religion and government.

[llamabeast]

Er, imagine my post came before Agema's. We must have been typing at the same time.

[Sombre]

Don't tell me what to imagine, thought police!

[llamabeast]

Imagine this, punk!

*clubs Sombre with baton*

[JimMorrison]

llamabeast said:
Er, imagine my post came before Agema's. We must have been typing at the same time.

And it took you over 2 hours to type yours?


I only made the guess that I did, because generally people tend to be more profuse with their examples in a case where they are illustrating their own point of view.


Now just to clarify further, I never said that the form of Democracy that we practice in America is -not- true, but rather the opposite, that in developing a form of true universal Democracy in this country, we are bringing to the forefront the failure of such a system.

That failure being that ultimately, the course of the nation (and the world to some extent, we are quite influential and all that) is being decided largely by uninformed and unqualified people. Not only that, but we are illustrating a certain constant, that "the larger the government gets, the less it should do". That is to say, while it may be perfectly alright for a town or community to mandate that there be no strip clubs in that community, it is a failing of modern universal Democracy that they can have ANY say one way or the other about whether or not strip clubs can exist in another town 3000 miles away.

Not that I am a huge fan of strip clubs. I am just saying, people should not have a vote on the restriction of other people's freedoms. Obviously if I say if one community votes against certain behaviors, a non-universal system allows people who disagree to move to another community - someone can argue that if under this system, 51% outlaw certain things, I can just move to another country if I disagree. However, one of the concepts that this nation was founded on, was that we all live differently, think differently, and believe differently - and impeding liberty and the pursuit of happiness is unacceptable.

So we need to retrace our steps, and define "liberty" in clear terms. Then we can determine what laws are even constitutional or feasible. I think most people on the right, and the left, would like a smaller government, especially if the fundamentalists realized that as large as they are, they are still another minority, and so if they create an environment of censure and oppression, they can prepare for that to come around to them eventually as well.

[Agema]

Largely I agree with you with a couple of caveats.

The trade-off made for decentralisation is one of cohesion. If too much room is left within a political entity for localised people to apply differing laws, it can cause atomisation, people start to wonder about the relevance of the whole and increasingly fail to identify with others. To me, the US seems to have a pretty good balance of the federal state imposing several standards from the top, but leaving decent room for individual states to manoeuver under that.

It can be beneficial to restrict liberty. I agree it is appropriate to define liberty in order to make appropriate judgements. But society as a whole may have the rights to choose on something that affects all, like gun ownership/control, whereas something based around the individuals concerned like pornography can be better left to individual control.

[JimMorrison]

Agema said:
It can be beneficial to restrict liberty.

I'm going to have to disagree entirely on you there.

Gun control is a great subject for you to bring up, because it is such a hard issue. The best answer that I can offer you, is that twice as many people die in motor vehicle accidents, as die from violence in all forms (in the US itself). We do not ban motor vehicles, because we believe we can teach people to be better drivers, and regulate where and how they drive in ways to keep them from becoming dangerous. The same can apply to the use and ownership of firearms. A wise man once stated "laws don't keep guns away from criminals". Which is true, and can be extrapolated to the point of prohibition - as illustrated with our prohibition of alcohol in the last century, as well as the current "war on drugs" which is about as effective as our "war on terror" - we see that much misery comes from the oppression of people.

As long as populations continue to develop and exploit interconnectivity through the internet, and other forms of interactive media, we will continue to only grow closer to other people, not farther apart. Implementing superfluous or detrimental laws which restrict personal freedoms, will in fact be what continues to drive people apart, this schism between those who willingly follow unjust laws, and those who refuse to and thus are forced to live as criminals in "the land of the free".

<3