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2009/6/16 Tom Potts <tompotts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>: > I've always felt party politics is inherently undemocratic - you are > effectively forced to choose a party that has the best matching subset of > your ideals. This is a fundamental problem in representation - that no one person can have a set of ideals that completely coincide with your own. Democracy doesn't seem such a good idea to me, anyway, in these times when people's opinions are usually almost entirely not their own*. Give me a constitutionally protected republic any day! * "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. … We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. … In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons … who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind" -- Edward Bernays, Propaganda [I made a study of propaganda and mind control over years, back when I was into Noam Chomsky :P ] http://noblelie.com/quotes/ > I believe that, if I want to, I should be allowed to be a member > of as many political parties as I want - its arrogant to assume that your > party and only your party has the people and the ideas to benefit society. > I cant see how a party that claims to be libertarian can deny me the right to > seek knowledge where I choose. Then you'd probably like the LP's policy of adopting the Single Transferable Vote system :) http://lpuk.org/pages/manifesto/constitutional.php Seriously, though, where's the meat? What organisation would you, evidently an intelligent and liberty-loving man, want to join whose objectives are incompatible with those of the LP? > Similarly, if, by some miracle, MS produced a piece of software that I thought > was genuinly beneficial to humanity I might be tempted to use it and > recommend others do to! I'd be tempted, in the absence of an existing project, to reproduce its benefit in free software ;) -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html