December 10, 2007 4:38 PM GMT
The view expressed isn't necessarily my own. Should anyone think I am some wild-eyed, anything goes libertarian or limp utopian fantasist, which may actually be true, but not in the context of this particular thread. History teaches us how dreams can fast become nightmares well beyond our imagination and entirely out of our control. Anarchism is of the heart. It's physical manifestation is nihilism. I'm no Fourier or Saint-Simon. My politics have been expressed here often enough. What I may wish for and what I believed can be achieved are two entirely different things. Government is a necessary evil, democratic Government exists to prevent a greater evil from emerging. What form that Government should take, its structure and how it operates however, is another matter. The top down authoritarianism, its hierarchy, the rule of its elites. In a democratic country as vast as the United States I can mention just a few names Kennedy, Roosevelt, Bush and now Clinton. Political family dynasties. In a true democracy this shouldn't be able to occur. But politics is dominated by party political machines bankrolled by vast corporations. If the political is machine is run in slavish devotion to these people then so to ultimately will be the Government. This is not what democracy is about, to quote, I hope correctly, Government of the people, for the people, by the people. If the Government fails in this its raison d'etre then its structures should be torn down and new ones created.
The question of boundaries is an interesting one because in the 'new' global economy with its rapidly evolving technology it is possible that the concept of the sovereign national state as we understand it could soon become if not unviable then certainly anachronistic. We already have a number of vast trading blocks. The European Union has already effectively imposed a constitution on its members. And a Federal Europe, despite all the wailing to the opposite, is an inevithability. Though they will probably call it something else.
December 10, 2007 6:08 PM GMT
Here in the states, there is ample evidence they are working on a North American Union with Canada, Mexico and the United States. Even a common monetary unit called the Amero. This scares me because you think you have huge government now, just wait till this proposal starts to happen. There is a move afoot for a gobal governement and this is just the beginning. Not one for giving up my sovereignty. The further away the top layer of government is, the less say you have in it.
December 10, 2007 7:51 PM GMT
interesting very interesting
for my two pennorth - it is not whether we need government per se but whether we need political parties
as they currently exist....hence porshas point about what has the labour govt done in ten years to fundementally alter peoples lives (with possible exception of the civil parntership act)nothing
it is precisely because there is in fact no idealism any more and that they(political parties)
are all in hock to big business dodgy donation and merely espouse what the latest focus group tells them rather than speak with any idealism or conviction that makes political parties and goverment in that sense seem increasingly redundant.
vikki climbs off soapbox
vikki xxx