Leaving the remainder behind:

If someone of the same political stripe as myself commits an unequivocally illegal act, is it my place to defend that person and/or his actions?

Maybe. Some illegal acts are considered moral and ethical by some people. (For an historical example, freeing slaves in the US.) There are times when it is in fact our place to speak up against laws that are wrong, harmful, or otherwise need changing. Likewise, some laws seem fair and just (e.g., prohibitions against harming other people, ranging from assault to rape to murder), and those laws deserve our support.

(Okay, I can't quite leave this one behind. Personally, I hope it's not hot soup. I want to see him wind up in Nuremburg, or its equivalent. But hot soup's a good start :-)

Okay, make that illegal and immoral.

With that qualification, clearly not. IMO, I'm required to maintain my integrity, which means standing for those things I believe in; if someone who otherwise agrees with me violates something I believe in, then my obligation is to call them on it.

And I did think of adding "and after the waiter gets fired, it turns out he's owed a Really Big Favour by a prominent member of the Cosa Nostra or somebody," but I'm not a violent person and I don't support organised crime. But to be honest, with the number of people still willing to excuse him and let him go unmolested, I can't see Nuremburg, or the Hague, or anything in Bush's future apart from ever more money and privilege.



Edited at 2008-05-05 01:46 pm (UTC)

Only if it is also fattening.
:-)

But seriously, it depends on the severity of the act vs. the effect on your continued livelihood. As a private citizen, I have often protested illegal/immoral acts by my co-partisans, loudly. Were I a government official whose re-election depends on funds from a party, it would have to be an outrageous illegal/immoral act for me to raise my voice publicly against it. Something bad enough to make me switch parties.

I have never seen a democracy. Oh, I don't disagree with your description (except to note that it should be everyone who is equal, not only the rich and poor, but I think you were just focussing on that aspect). But I have never seen or heard of any system in any real country where all people, or even all voters, actually had an equal voice. There are always sections of the society who are left out, whether explicitly (because they are barred from voting at all, for instance) or effectively (because what "the majority" wants happens and hard luck to the "minority" -- and note that the split can be very close to 50:50).

The party system, however, and in particular the party 'whip', is one of the least democratic of systems which claim to be democratic. When 'representatives' aren't even allowed to vote freely most of the time (and it's big news when they are allowed a "free vote"), how can they be said to be representing anyone?

(I'm not sure who you would consider "the party of the rich" these days. It seems to me that the phrase describes all of the major parties and a lot of the small ones. Yes, there was a time within my memory when Labour was the "working man's party" (although even then few of the MPs were actually "working class", let alone 'common'), but now that distinction sems to have pretty much disappeared.)

That's certainly true here. I retain, and cherish, a faint scrap of hope that it isn't quite true in America.

A recent article was going on about the fuss a week or so back about American presidential hopeful Barack Obama being "elitist" (because of education etc.)

The article basically said "you're picking ONE PERSON to be in charge of the biggest superpower in the world, with the largest nuclear arsenal and the greatest economic strength, and you are complaining that one of the candidates is "elite"? That you think he's somehow better than the common person? If you're not picking the best person for the job, then don't vote!"

At some point we decided that career politicians were a good idea ... we pick them not to be us, but to act in our best interests (or so the idea of a Representative Democracy would insist), and so to deny us bread and circuses if it would be better to raise interest rates or increase taxes. However by making it a regular popularity contest we are undermining the very principles of a representative democracy.

If I want a plumber, then I am willing to pay more per hour than I earn (and I earn more per hour than many/most of my friends), ditto doctors, lawyers etc. In fact, any skilled profession we pay more than "ordinary working people" because we expect more from them ... more training, greater application, greater skill ... and we should expect the same from our politicians ... we should be hiring the best people possible to represent us, and so I'm fine with them being paid a large salary, provided they do a good job.

In a democracy every vote is equal, and if a party starts up that says they are going to represent the majority of people (whether those people are white, or working class, or male, or Christian) then that's the big failure in democracy, it's "mob rule". The 49% will always be at the mercy of the 51%. That *is* democracy. Of course if the election is dubious then it all goes out the window.

A recent article was going on about the fuss a week or so back about American presidential hopeful Barack Obama being "elitist" (because of education etc.)

The article basically said "you're picking ONE PERSON to be in charge of the biggest superpower in the world, with the largest nuclear arsenal and the greatest economic strength, and you are complaining that one of the candidates is "elite"? That you think he's somehow better than the common person? If you're not picking the best person for the job, then don't vote!"

Well, the thing is, it's all spindoctoring. It's to make people want to not vote for Obama because calling him elitist implies that he won't take seriously the interests of anyone he considers beneath his notice. It's not necessarily true, but that's how politics works in this country.

The article deliberately misconstrued the fuss, which was based around the idea (to which I don't subscribe) that Obama was, not "elite," but "elitist." That he thought he was somehow better than the common person. And if he did, I would say that would indeed be sufficient to disqualify him from representing said common person. But I don't think he does.

We've had ample evidence over the years since we began paying our ministers more money than they needed (which was, I believe, relatively recently in historical terms) that they think they are better than the common person. Since this is not merely true of the ones who went to public school, there must be another common factor, and I'd say it was probably the money.

We have (or should have) skilled professionals, in the form of the Civil Service, to support and implement the decisions of government. The only skill required of a politician is (or should be) to represent us. Which largely involves turning up and sitting on a bench, something that seems to be beyond most of them for most of the time, from what I've seen.

At the absolute very least, I would say that the matter of their remuneration should not be something that they are empowered to decide for themselves. That alone sets them apart from most of the people they claim to represent (and they do claim to represent them).

And yes, democracy is basically mob rule. And no, it isn't, because a mass of people and a mob are two distinctly different things. I am part of the mass of people that constitutes the population of this country, but I am not currently participating in a mob. I don't even have a pitchfork.

Edited at 2008-05-05 01:34 pm (UTC)

I actually have some sympathy for the argument that Obama is "elitist", not because of my politics, but because of my relatives. My grandfather was a farmer in Southern Illinois, which meant that he was also a coal miner, because you couldn't make a living in Southern Illinois if all you could do was farming. He worked hard, he liked hunting, he liked his dogs, and he read his Bible.

That's exactly the sort of person that Obama was busily imputing motives to for his own happy political purposes. It's exactly the sort of person who Kerry insulted with his "Is this where I get me a hunting license?" question in 2004.

And while I may have certain problems with some of the things my relatives may say on occasion, they're my relatives and no yuppie politician has the privilege of dissing them.

And just to remind myself what was actually said (ganked from the Washington Post site):

'In remarks first reported on the Huffington Post Web site, Obama said, "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them.

"And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not," he went on. "And it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Obama's comments came at the end of a lengthy answer in which he rejected the notion that voters were passing him over simply for racial reasons, saying instead that his campaign of hope and change was having difficulty in "places where people feel most cynical about government."

"Everybody just ascribes it to 'white working-class . . . don't want to vote for the black guy,' " Obama said at the fundraiser.

"Here's how it is: In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism."

Obama then voiced the lines that his opponents have seized upon.'

Sounds like sympathy and understanding to me, but then I'm British, and we're all bitter over here.

Mm. Anyway. I take your point, and family is important...but the fact that your politics do run that way makes the distinction, when viewed from outside, largely irrelevant.

I've read the complete quote long since. What you may not understand is that Obama -- for all that he thinks he understands -- doesn't understand at all.

They aren't clinging to guns or clinging to religion -- they have these things because they love them, because they are a cherished (and either harmless or actively positive) part of their life. Obama no more understands these folks than I understand the motivations of a poor black mother living in the ghetto. Possibly less so, because I usually try to avoid blathering about things that I don't understand.

So the reason that this group of white folks are hesitant to vote for Obama is not because they're bitter -- they're hesitant to vote for him because he simply doesn't get it.

But "bitter" means it's not Obama's fault.

Maybe he's trying to understand. I certainly don't understand, and probably never will, how guns could be seen as "a harmless or actively positive part of their life," and as for religion, it sounds more like the kind of thing I would say (and be leapt on for).

So the people in these small towns don't feel bitter or betrayed by the economic failures and the broken promises of successive previous governments. That's certainly very decent of them. I would.

Perhaps we'd better accept that you're never going to convince me that Bush shouldn't be tried for war crimes, and I'm never going to convince you that Obama is an honest and well-intentioned man, and leave it at that.

I tell you one thing, though--I'd much rather vote in your elections than mine. Overcomplicated as they are.

I certainly don't understand, and probably never will, how guns could be seen as "a harmless or actively positive part of their life"
Easy to explain: This part of America was settled by people who needed to hunt in order to feed themselves. Many still do hunt to feed themselves, what with the economy in the toilet. They love their guns because their guns have kept them fed for centuries.

I'm never going to convince you that Obama is an honest and well-intentioned man
You won't convince me either. This is a man who was abandoned by his African father at age 5, raised by his white mother and white grandmother (who was a bank vice president) as a free-thinker. He was raised in Hawaii, Seattle, and Indonesia, all places where interracial marriages are common and not particularly frowned upon. Yet he decided as an adult, simply based on his looks, to move to Chicago, and become black, and Christian. Chicago's Democratic party is well known for corruption, and it is highly suspicious to me that a relatively unknown lawyer from out of town found a way to get on the ballot as the party's Senate candidate, let alone raise enough $$ to make a viable run for the Presidential nomination. Something stinks, IMHO. YMMV.

According to an article that I read -- here -- State Senate President Emil Jones took a bunch of bills that other people had sponsored before the Democrats took control of the Illinois legislature, dumped the original sponsors, and gave them to Obama to sponsor so that he would have them as part of his legislative record.

There was a statement in the article attributed to Jones: "I'm gonna make me a U.S. Senator".

And that article comes from a left-wing website, FYI.

While that would not surprise me, it also would have zero effect on Obama's chances of landing a US Senate nomination. The party does the nominating and campaign funding, and they don't really care what his bill sponsoring looks like - his voting record is far more important, and then only because it will come up in the elections on the League of Women Voters' web site.

I wouldn't completely discount the possibility that Bush will face criminal charges once he's out of office and can no longer stonewall evidence with the State Secrets privilege. (But I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to happen, either.)

Isn't there something which protects presidents from being prosecuted once they've left office for something they did while in office? I seem to remember someone using it.

Not that I can think of (other than their connections). Remember that Gerald Ford issued Nixon a plenary pardon after Nixon resigned. Nixon could have been prosecuted otherwise.

It's rumored that Nixon called Ford and said, "Pardon me, boy, this is the chap who knew to choose you."

Edited at 2008-05-05 02:53 pm (UTC)

Yes. Presidential pardon - Gerald Ford pre-pardoned Richard Nixon before anyone was able to file charges. That act should have gotten Ford impeached...

Edited at 2008-05-05 07:25 pm (UTC)

From Zander:

"At the absolute very least, I would say that the matter of their remuneration should not be something that they are empowered to decide for themselves. That alone sets them apart from most of the people they claim to represent (and they do claim to represent them)."

There's certainly a strong case for adopting the rule written into the American Constitution that no increase in the remuneration of the representatives should go into effect until after the next election. That is to say that the public gets to say if this chap is worth getting the pay increase he voted for or someone else should enjoy it.

And if you can show me a way to get our MPs to support such a system I'll believe you can also turn lead into gold...

Michael Cule
Showing off his Constitutional Scholarship

Interestingly, that particular rule was a Constitutional amendment that was first proposed as part of our Bill of Rights. It wasn't ratified at the time, but it also lacked a sunset provision that would have taken it out of play if it weren't ratified by a certain date. When many, many people were irritated with Congress in the 1980s, it picked up steam again and was eventually ratified in 1992, more than two hundred years after it was proposed. :)

At the Pearly Gates, rich and poor are of equal status. In a democracy, the poor are represented with an elected by majority official who decides "in their best interest" whether or not it's actually what they want.
Bush got a second term in this way because the Florida and Ohio recounts along with the litigation filed by the Gore party would take too long to decide who was the real winner by majority vote.

This worries me because it sets a precedent for this up and coming election, and apathy is at an all time high as it is.

Edited at 2008-05-05 06:02 pm (UTC)

So long as elections are held on cue, a plutocracy might call itself a democracy for a long time before people realise that policy changes have drifted a culture away from people power towards wealth power.

In a democracy, rich and poor are of equal status. That is one of the main raisons d'être of democracy as we know it. Therefore, if a two-party system evolves in which one party becomes known to be "the party of the rich," that party system is undemocratic and should be dissolved.

Nope, not buying it, for two reasons. First, the labels that get stuck on parties are rarely all that accurate, so what a party becomes known as may bear little resemblance to what that party is actually about, and may or may not track how it changes over time.

Second, you can play this game with any pair of opposites, and any two-party system will (rightly or wrongly) distinguish the parties through one or more pairs of (notional) opposites. One of those parties will win an election, and the interests of its opposites will not get as much support, whether they be rich or poor, white or black, tall or short, or whatever.

A lot of people fall into the trap of thinking that Democracy means getting their way. If they aren't part of the majority, they're emphatically wrong. We've done a lot of bolting bits onto the side of pure democracy over the centuries so that the will of the majority doesn't ride rough-shod of the will of the minority, but this sort of divide is inevitable in any (perceived) two-party system.

Well, then I suppose our system is about as democratic as it gets now, given that both our main parties are "the party of the rich." And I mean by that that they both pander to large corporations who give them large donations, to the detriment of their service to the people. Andersen Consulting. EDS. Capita. Various PFI swindles. And so on.

"Any pair of opposites" doesn't cut it. Rich people have an innate advantage over poor people when it comes to getting their way. While this may still be true to an extent of white people over non-whites, it's not quite as universally true as it used to be, and even Catholics are almost on a level playing field with Protestants in these enlightened times...but money will always trump no money, and I maintain that the point and purpose of there being a democracy at all is to counteract that. Which it is patently not doing if the party in power is in the collective pocket of the wealthy.

An interesting assumption that's come up in this discussion is that a true democracy is necessarily this binary thing, majority/minority, one wins and the other grins and puts up with it. Where a question to be decided has two mutually exclusive answers, that's always going to be true...but there are lots of questions that don't fit that pattern.

But, as long as the will of one particular minority continues to ride roughshod over the will of its corresponding majority, short of armed insurrection we're probably stuck with the system we have now.

An interesting assumption that's come up in this discussion is that a true democracy is necessarily this binary thing, majority/minority, one wins and the other grins and puts up with it.

It's somewhat explicit in your question. In reality, it's somewhat implicit in the First Past The Post voting system we're "blessed" with, which rewards parties that can successfully get the message across that it's actually a two horse race and only they can beat whichever other party is most hated. In countries that have a more proportional voting system -- even Scotland! -- getting elected isn't so dependent on this sort of manipulation of public perceptions. Instead you end up with the compromises of coalition, which at least prevent the most extreme policies from being implemented.