Those who claim that the ruling is " system "or who are mysterious maneuvers behind every political setback have little to teach us. But the willingness to disagree, rejection or dissatisfaction, however irritating it can be when it is extreme-is the lifeblood of an open society. We need people who make a virtue of opposing the majority opinion. A permanent consensus democracy is not a democracy for a long time.
is tempting to do as everyone: community life is much easier when everyone seems to agree with each other and the disagreement is numbed for the sake of the conventions of commitment.
societies and communities where these are missing or broken will not thrive. But the agreement has a price. A closed circle of opinions and ideas which are never allowed or discontent or opposition, or only within circumscribed limits, stylized, loses the ability to respond with energy and imagination to new challenges.
United States is a country founded on small communities. As anyone who has lived for some time in one of those places, the natural instinct is always to impose a uniformity of regulation the public behavior of its members. In the United States, this provision is partly offset by the individualistic bias of the first settlers and the constitutional protection granted to individual and minority dissent. But this balance, Alexis de Tocqueville observed among many others, have long been inclined toward conformity. People are free to say whatever they want, but if their views contradicted those of the majority, are marginalized from society. At a minimum, the impact of his words is muted.
United States is a country founded on small communities. As anyone who has lived for some time in one of those places, the natural instinct is always to impose a uniformity of regulation the public behavior of its members. In the United States, this provision is partly offset by the individualistic bias of the first settlers and the constitutional protection granted to individual and minority dissent. But this balance, Alexis de Tocqueville observed among many others, have long been inclined toward conformity. People are free to say whatever they want, but if their views contradicted those of the majority, are marginalized from society. At a minimum, the impact of his words is muted.
Great Britain used to be different: a traditional monarchy ruled by a hereditary elite maintained its grip on power by allowing and even incorporating announcing his dissent and tolerance as a virtue. But the country has become less elitist and more populist vein nonconformist in public life has been a disqualification constant, as Tocqueville would have predicted. Currently, the strong disagreement with the conventional wisdom about everything from political correctness to the tax rate, is almost as rare in the United Kingdom and the United States.
There are many sources of disagreement. In religious societies, particularly those that have an established religion, Catholicism, Anglicanism, Islam, Judaism, the traditions of more effective and lasting disagreement is rooted in theological differences: it is no coincidence that the British Labour Party was born in 1906 in a coalition of organizations and movements in which Nonconformist congregations had a great role.
Class differences are also a breeding ground for discontent. In societies divided into classes (or, in some cases, caste-organized communities), those below usually have a strong motivation to challenge their status and, by extension, the social organization which perpetuates it.
In more recent decades, the disagreement has been closely associated with the intellectuals: a type of person who first identified the protests of the late XIX against abuse of power by the state, but in our time is best known for speaking and writing against the grain of public opinion.
Unfortunately, contemporary intellectuals have shown little interest in key areas of public policy, while it has intervened or protested defined ethical issues in which the choices appear clearer. This has left the discussion on how we govern ourselves in the hands of political experts and think tanks , in which rarely have room for unconventional views and the public is virtually excluded.
The problem is not whether we agree or not with a specific legislative act, but the way we discussed our common interests. To take an obvious example (being well known): United States, to any conversation on the subject of public expenditure and the advantages or disadvantages of an active government role is then applied two exclusion clauses. According to the first, all are in favor of taxes are as low as possible and that the least government interference in our affairs. The second, in fact, a variation of the first-demagogic claims that nobody wants that "socialism" replace our way of life and traditional government and efficient.
Europeans like to believe less conformist than Americans. Make them smile religious pens that many U.S. citizens are removed, thereby giving up the independence of mind to adopt the language of the group. They point out the perverse consequences of local referenda in California, where a well-financed popular legislative initiatives have destroyed the tax base of the seventh world economy.
However, in a recent referendum in Switzerland banned the building of minarets in a country where there are only four and where almost all Bosnian Muslim residents are refugees lay.
And the British have meekly accepted everything from cameras CCTV surveillance to more invasive of privacy, in what is now more authoritarian democracy "sobreinformada" of the world. In many respects, today's Europe is better than the contemporary United States, but far from perfect.
to intellectuals have bowed the knee. The Iraq war saw the vast majority of British and American commentators abandoned any semblance of independent thinking and lined with the Government. Criticism of the army and those who wield political authority, which is always more difficult in time of war, are marginalized and treated almost like a betrayal. The continental European intellectuals had more freedom to oppose the hasty campaign, but only because their leaders were ambivalent and societies were divided. (...)
But at least the war, racism, offers clear moral choices. Even today, most people know what you think about military action or racial prejudice. But in the realm of economic policy, citizens contemporary democracies we have become too modest. We have been advised to leave these issues to the experts: the economy and its political implications are far beyond the understanding of common man or woman, what is responsible for the increasingly arcane language and mathematical discipline.
is unlikely that many "laymen" to oppose the finance minister or his advisers. If they did, they would say, like a medieval priest could have advised his flock, which are things that were not their fault. The liturgy is celebrated in a dark tongue, which is accessible only to initiates. For all others, just faith.
But faith was not enough. The emperors of economic policy in Britain and the United States, not to mention his acolytes and admirers around the world from Tallinn to Tbilisi, they are naked. However, as most observers share a long his sartorial tastes, they are unable to say anything. We have to relearn how to criticize those who govern us. But to do so with credibility we have to get rid of the circle under which they and we are trapped.
Liberation is an act of will. Sorry we can not rebuild our public conversation, as well as our crumbling physical infrastructure, if we are not sufficiently outraged by our present condition. No democratic state should be able to launch an illegal war supported by a deliberate lie and not have to answer for it. The shameful silence surrounding the Bush Administration's response to Hurricane Katrina reveals a depressing cynicism toward the responsibilities and powers of the state: indeed, we hope that Washington will match. The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited spending by companies in the electoral candidates, and the scandal of the "diet" in the British Parliament, illustrates the role uncontrolled money in politics today. (...)
Meanwhile, the dramatic loss of support of President Obama, largely due to his awkward defense of health reform has contributed to even further alienation of the new generation. It would be easy to retreat to a skeptical disgust at the incompetence (and worse) from those that currently govern mandated.
But if we leave the challenge of radical political renewal to the existing political class, the Blairs, Browns, Sarkozys, Clintons and Bushes and (I fear) Obama, "just end up more disappointed.
Disagreement and dissent are mostly youth work. It is no coincidence that men and women who started the French Revolution, as well as reformers and planners New Deal and postwar Europe, were substantially younger than those who preceded them. Faced with a problem, it is more likely that young people cope and require a solution, rather than resign. But also more likely than their elders to fall in the apolitical, as the policy is so degraded, we walk away from it. (...)
Therefore, the first thing that happens to a young man who wants to "engage" is to join Greenpeace or Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch or Doctors Without Borders. The moral impulse is beyond reproach. But the republics and democracies exist only under the commitment of its citizens in managing public affairs.
If active or concerned citizens to renounce the policy, are leaving the company to its most mediocre, venal officials. The House of Commons currently offers a sad spectacle: a haven of plugged, yes-and-professional ball at least as unfortunate as in 1832, the last time he was assaulted and their "representatives" expelled from his sinecure. The U.S. Senate on the last bastion of constitutional republicanism has become a parody pretentious and dysfunctional of its original character. The French National Assembly even aspires to the approval of the president, that ignores when he wants.
During the long century of constitutional liberalism of Lyndon B. Gladstone Johnson, Western democracies were led by upper class men. Whatever their political affiliations, Léon Blum and Winston Churchill, Luigi Einaudi and Willy Brandt, David Lloyd George and Franklin Roosevelt represented a political class profoundly sensitive to moral and social responsibilities. It is debatable whether they were the circumstances that led to politicians or the culture of the times led men of this caliber to engage in politics. Politically, ours is an age of pygmies.
However, it is all we have. Parliament elections, the Senate and National Assembly are still our only means of turning public opinion in collective action within the law. So young people should not lose faith in our public institutions. (...)
democratic failure transcends national boundaries. The embarrassing fiasco of the UN climate summit in Copenhagen in December 2009 and is being translated into cynicism and despair among young people: what will become of them if we do not take seriously the implications of global warming? The health disaster in the U.S. and the financial crisis has heightened the sense of powerlessness among voters even more willingly. We must act guided by our intuition of imminent catastrophe. (...)
Most critics of our present condition begin with institutions. Direct their attention to parliaments, senates, presidents, elections and pressure groups, and point to ways that have deteriorated or have abused the authority entrusted to them. Any reform, they conclude, must begin there. We need new laws, different electoral systems, restrictions on lobbyists and party financing, we should give more (or less) the executive authority and find ways that the authorities, elected or not, listen and respond to those who are its base and get paid: us.
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