{"id":580,"date":"2007-10-09T09:39:31","date_gmt":"2007-10-09T16:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/?p=580"},"modified":"2007-10-09T09:39:31","modified_gmt":"2007-10-09T16:39:31","slug":"on-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/09\/on-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"On Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/fish.blogs.nytimes.com\/\">Stanley Fish<\/a> was asked 10 questions about democracy by the BBC.  Two questions are related to one another: \u201cWhat is the biggest threat to democracy?\u201d and \u201cCan terrorism destroy democracy?\u201d and I thought I would share his responses I  thought they were not only insightful and sum up how I feel:<br \/>\nThe answers depend on what you think democracy is. I tend to resist romantic definitions that feature phrases like \u201cnoble ideal\u201d and opt instead for something more analytic: democracy is a form of government that is not attached to any pre-given political or ideological ends, but allows ends to be chosen by the majority vote of free citizens.<br \/>\nWhat this means is that democracy is the only form of government that, at least theoretically, contemplates its own demise with equanimity. Democratic elections do not guarantee that the victors will be democratically inclined, and it is always possible that those who gain control of the legislative process will pass laws that erode or even repeal the rights \u2013 of property, free expression and free movement \u2013 that distinguish democracies from theocracies and monarchies. (Some would say that this is exactly what has been happening in the past six years.) Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes captured the fragility of a form of government that can alter itself beyond the point of recognition when he said that if his fellow citizens want to go to hell in a handbasket, it was his job to help them, even if he deplored the consequences. Democracy, then, can be said to be its own biggest threat.<br \/>\nTerrorism presents a parallel threat from the outside. The danger is not so much that terrorists will defeat democracies by force as it is that, in resisting terrorists, democracies will forgo the procedural safeguards (against warrantless detention, censorship and secret surveillance) that make a democracy what it is. (Again, some would say that is already happening today.) If terrorists can maneuver democracies into employing tactics indistinguishable from theirs, it could be argued that they have won no matter what the outcome on the battlefield.<br \/>\nFor more on this topic, check out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whydemocracy.net\">www.whydemocracy.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stanley Fish was asked 10 questions about democracy by the BBC. Two questions are related to one another: \u201cWhat is the biggest threat to democracy?\u201d and \u201cCan terrorism destroy democracy?\u201d and I thought I would share his responses I thought they were not only insightful and sum up how I feel: The answers depend on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[165,500],"class_list":["post-580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-democracy","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}