Comments | quietliban: I have been thinking...

quietliban

I have been thinking...

Mar 24, 2010 19:09

and these are just my thoughts and my opinions, and notice how much I want to disclaim this because I'm terrified that someone is going to take this the wrong way and I'm going to end up being flamed. So ( Read more... )

thoughts! omg i do have them!, this is my opinion, the world and all its glory

Comments 4

(The comment has been removed)

quietliban March 24 2010, 23:22:11 UTC

Yeah, me too regarding unions. Some of them have seriously lost their way.

::sigh::

magic_at_mungos March 24 2010, 17:50:35 UTC

I always say that if someone didn't vote then they have no right to complain about the decisions of the government of the day.

emei March 25 2010, 21:02:25 UTC

I won't go all academic on you here, but there's so much theory and political philosophy about these questions that I'm a little bit tempted. :) Anyway, it's interesting - should democracy been seen primarily as based on rights or based on duties? It's varied across time and space - I think I'd agree that it seems to have gone more towards a focus of democracy as a set of rights lately, and I wonder why. Maybe because in established democracies people are so used to it that they take it for granted, or maybe because the system is mostly so stable they don't see the actual consequences of their political actions. Probably a general individualistic trend plays a part, too.

Mostly I agree with you - taking responsibility really is the basis for any functioning political system or to make social change happen. Thanks for the intresting post.

quietliban March 25 2010, 22:28:39 UTC

This is most definitely not my academic strength being a scientist. So I probably would have just boggled at it. :)

And yes, I think it does depend on what's happening at the time, but what prompted this was the whinging from people that on one hand the government is imposing a 'nanny state' and on the other hand the government isn't doing enough (sometimes these complaints are on related issues and sometimes on unrelated issues... to make things even more confusing. And I get that society is a complex multi-faceted beast, but I don't understand why the most illogical voices are the loudest), and I feel like they haven't actually thought about government at all. ie. about how government works and why we have one in the first place.

or maybe because the system is mostly so stable they don't see the actual consequences of their political actions. I think this is such a large part of it, especially in my age group where we had the same PM for most of our lives and people are so clueless as to how the system actually works. There's been ( ... )