More on Democracy

[deckardcanine]

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb
Voting on what to have for lunch,”
Said Benjamin Franklin? No, that’s a sham;
He never beat Gary Strand to the punch.
In any event, I no longer agree
With the sentiment that the speaker implied.
The alternatives to democracy
Would logically show an uglier side:
A wolf could outvote any number of sheep,
As often occurs in the natural realm.
I have to conclude that it’s better to keep
The largest number of folks at the helm.

Comments

[nefaria.livejournal.com]

I think the point of the original quote ("Two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner") is to indicate that majority rule in a vacuum is a dangerous thing. It needs to be mitigated with a list of rights or a Constitution that places limits on how much power the majority can wield. I admire how the US Constitution was designed to prohibit the government from certain activities, allow itself to be edited in the future if the need arises, but also make such editing very difficult to achieve, so that a very large portion of the country must agree before the edits take effect.

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

You're right. And I have come to recognize the merit of compromising democracy: It gives minority views a fighting chance. But I don't like how people use the quotation/paraphrase, let alone how they misattribute it. ("Lunch" wasn't even a word in Franklin's lifetime.)

[nefaria.livejournal.com]

The country really does work best when the majority party and minority party work together. Reagan with a Democratic Congress and Clinton with a Republican Congress were relatively good times. The majority got most of what they wanted, the minority got some of what they wanted, and both sides avoided what the other party hated the most. Fast-forward to modern times where the minority party gets nothing, so they can only resort to obstruction, and the majority party pushes the envelope on what's constitutional to scrape together as much as they can without assistance from the minority.