The Final Frontier...

[negrito7]

I'm gonna get artsy on you guys in my next post, tying up the recounting of my trip to San Juan. But, before I go there, I wanted to post this amazing quote that I ran across in my friend Amy's senior thesis about wanderlust and the American myth of the frontier. In his acceptance of the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 1960, John F.

Comments

[icewinddragon]

A problem of democracy: doing anything that would bring real change and growth would make the majority of people uncomfortable, and thus be a sure way to exclude you and your party from getting votes in the next election. Sure, people might be grateful in ten or twenty years, but who is willing to wait that long?
So politicians stick to telling people what they want to hear, giving out free beer and cheap gifts to buy votes for election, an try to work in their own pockets in the mean time.

Pax vobiscum

IcewindDragon

[negrito7]

I 100% agree! It's just as Socrates said in Plato's Apology:

...you may be quite sure, men of Athens, that if I had undertaken to go into politics, I should have been put to death long ago and should have done no good to you or to myself. And do not be angry with me for speaking the truth; the fact is that no man will save his life who nobly opposes you or any other populace and prevents many unjust and illegal things from happening in the state.

A man who really fights for the right, if he is to preserve his life for even a little while, must be a private citizen, not a public man."

[icewinddragon]

In what is commonly referred to today as democracy - yes. Admittedly i find the idea of a Platonian Aristocracy quite appealing. I actually built a theoretical governmental concept based on it back when i was politically active - but by now i have realized, that even if that problem could be solved, the problem of exponential growth of our ressource useage remains. The only way i could think of now to counter that would be a rational world-government... and i really cannot see that happening.

Pax vobiscum

IcewindDragon