h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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Now Apple, I thought we'd decided that there was probably no issue on which we'd agree! I'm with you on this one. Muhammad Ali choosing to go to prison and forfeit his boxing world championship, rather than allowing himself to be drafted and wind up in Viet Nam would be one example. I loved his reasoning, too... "No Vietnamese ever called me nXggXr."

Another person, with nowhere near that level of fame, once said to me "You've got to fight for your cause, even if you know it's a lost cause. If for no other reason, fight for your cause so nobody will ever mistake you for one of the bXstXrds causing the problem in the first place."

Makes a bit of sense to me.

NBY

We agree? That's ! I hope it does happen again, occasionally...

I'm not sure I agree though
For a non-celebrity its nots so easy
I've registered my disagreement with the present governments policies through rallies, marches, petitions etc
From past experience during the Thatcher years I don't expect them to have much effect
Are they meaningful in that event?(or just more of a social event since I'm virtually garanteed to meet old friends on them)

regardless of the effectiveness, having registered your disagreement in the ways you think best, do you feel absolved of any responsibility for those actions taken on your behalf that you disagree with?

Theorectically at least, a democracratic government consists of representatives elected to represent the views of their electors.

This great responsibility does not confer a right on the representative to excercise their individual will against the wishes of their electors. Note, the electorate consists of not just those who voted for a particular candidate, but also those who voted for the losers.

It is therefore the responsibility of the representative to meet with their electors, including those who didn't vote for them, during their term in office to ensure that they continue to represent the fair opinion of their electors.

If the electors representatives do engage with their electors and continue to accurately reflect the views of their electors, then I would suggest that the in the example given, the electors could and should be held accountable for the actions of the state.

Where the representatives do not engage with their electors and do not accurately reflect their views, choosing instead to follow their own agenda, then the electors would do well to recognise their democratic power to remove the representative(s) from office.

But it's nowhere near that simple. Suppose the electrate favors not going to war. And they also favor cheaper, lets say, banannas.

If the only way to reduce the price of banannas was to go to war with a perticular bananna-rich country which action follows the elctrates edicts?

And no I don't belive there are enough people in any given country who recognise that often in order to improve in one area you need to sacrafice in another that you could get a sensible balanced opinion out of them.

"It is therefore the responsibility of the representative to meet with their electors, including those who didn't vote for them, during their term in office to ensure that they continue to represent the fair opinion of their electors."

This is a two way exchange. It has to be. The representative is still free to advocate a particular position and providing he can persaude his/her electors to support that position, then they have a mandate to act.

I'm not saying that the outcome of this process is right or wrong, only that IMO, a nation's population can only be held responsible for the actions of their government if there is informed consent.

Consent can be explicit, but it can also be implicit, i.e. by not replacing a particular representative, his/her electors endorse that particular representative's past actions.

So for example, if the people of the US re-elect a president for a second term, I believe that collectively they have endorsed his actions during his first term of office. Therefore I would consider the US population as a whole to be responsible for the actions of the President between 2000 and 2004, since they had the chance to kick him out and hold him to account and didn't.

Even those who voted against him?

Yep, that's democracy - "the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried" - W Churchill.

"Even those who voted against him?"

That comes back to my original post.
Those people who voted against a certain action, or person who then commits that action, have done what they can to change their society.

Therefore, although the newly elected person has a (legal? theoretical?) obligation to represent all the peoples of their country, they are actually far more likely to only try to keep those who are already on side happy, and then try and maybe convince some of the undecideds as well.

So what you end up with is a govt. that leads with only a percentage of the population behind them, and although they represent the whole country, they don;t actually care about the opinions and beliefs of the minority (or majority - sorry, couldn;t resist it) who voted for someone else.

As such, those who voted for the someone else are effectively cut off from having any sort of decent say in how their country is run and what actions it takes. Even if they make a big noise, when it comes to the powerbase and who gets to have influence, then obviously those who are 'for' the new leadership are going to have most of the say.

So does this make a clear case for those who have been shunted to the sidelines by the nation's leadership being not culpable in the least since they followed the the correct route to try and put someone else in power?

Or should it be seen as apathy or lack of dedication on the side of the dissenters for not better organising their campaign?

How far does a nations leadership have to go before it is allowable for a member of that nation to take matters into their own hands and attempt to oust the current leadership by other means?

Indeed, as we are assuming that a majority of the population are behind whoever is the current leader, is it ever allowable since it would lead to a minority impossing their will on the majority?

(cynicism turned off for this post )

>>Those people who voted against a certain action, or person who then commits that action, have done what they can to change their society.

I'd say, those peole have done the minimum possible that they can do to change their society. I recently posted an Eldridge Cleaver quotation in another thread. I thinks it fits into the context of the discussion as well. "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem."

What is "enough" action to change a society depends on how strongly one feels about what that society is doing.

From A715060...

According to the Oxford Companion to American Military History:

"The American movement against the Vietnam War was the most successful antiwar movement in US history. During the Johnson administration, it played a significant role in constraining the war and was a major factor in the administration's policy reversal in 1968. During the Nixon years, it hastened US troop withdrawals, continued to restrain the war, fed the deterioration in US troop morale and discipline (which provided additional impetus to US troop withdrawals), and promoted congressional legislation that severed US funds for the war. The movement also fostered aspects of the Watergate scandal, which ultimately played a significant role in ending the war by undermining Nixon's authority in Congress and thus his ability to continue the war. It gave rise to the infamous 'Huston Plan'; inspired Daniel Ellsberg, whose release of the Pentagon Papers led to the formation of the Plumbers; and fed the Nixon administration's paranoia about its political enemies, which played a major part in concocting the Watergate break-in itself."

Based on that, one of the lessons to be learned as a result of the experience of the United States in Vietnam would seem to be that popular opinion can, in fact, change policy at the highest levels of power. Enough people, saying 'This is wrong', loudly enough and long enough, can make a difference.

<< Enough people, saying 'This is wrong', loudly enough and long enough, can make a difference.>>

Yes, if they are loud enough!

replying to post #30

>>How far does a nations leadership have to go before it is allowable for a member of that nation to take matters into their own hands and attempt to oust the current leadership by other means?<<

Well to take some recent examples, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan - it was the scandal of election rigging*, corruption and other illegal practices (poisoning, murder etc.) that drove rebellion into riot into coup.

(*that might be a difficult point for me to proove since I suppose the rebels were the new majority ousting a recalcitrant minority.)

Now I'm out on a limb here, so excuse any slight inaccuracies - but wasn't it a similar case which Chavez, deposed then reinstated as President? Also to a greater or lesser extent with Pakistahn and General Musharraf which was a bloodless coup, albeit where the military seized power.

Typically, and I don't want to sound like a certain economic materialst who in a bad light looks a bit like Pappa Smurf (), but is it econmoic factors that drive people to consider a governemnt intolerable to the point of rebelion? The poor get poorer and the elite get richer - or is that too simplistic a model? Indeed my first two examples specifically follwed from denial of democratic representation (owing to corruption).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/country_profiles/1102303.stm (Ukraine)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1296485.stm (Kyrgyzstan)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/country_profiles/1229345.stm#leaders (Chavez)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/country_profiles/1157960.stm (Pakistan)

You could add Lebannon to that list I suppose..

however - from my point of view - "If you didn't vote for the party in charge, you've probably done all that is reasonable" - more than that I have regularly declared my dis-satisfaction - in writing - therefore its not my fault.