RE: Democracy?

[Greg Peisert <gpeisert@jamesgregory.com>]

So, what would you advocate as an alternative?

--Greg P.

On Thursday, February 04, 1999 8:10 AM, Margaret Tarbet [SMTP:tarbet@swaa.com] wrote:
> "But what about voting and elections? Civil disobedience-we don't
> need that much of it, we are told, because we can go through the
> electoral system. And by now we should have learned, but maybe we
> haven't, for we grew up with the notion that the voting booth is a
> sacred place, almost like a confessional. You walk into the voting
> booth and you come out and they snap your picture and then put it in
> the papers with a beatific smile on your face. You've just voted;
> that is democracy. But if you even read what the political
> scientists say-although who can?-about the voting process, you find
> that the voting process is a sham. Totalitarian states love voting.
> You get people to the polls and they register their approval. I know
> there is a difference-they have one party and we have two parties.
> We have one more party than they have, you see. "
> 
> -- Howard Zinn, teacher
> "Civil Obedience"
> http://www.infoasis.com/people/stevetwt/Zinn/
> 
> 
> Zinn strikes right to the heart of our privacy problems, i think:
> we expect our 'elected representatives' to take care of our needs
> for things like privacy, but they don't.   They take care of other
> people's desires to invade and exploit our privacy, because those
> other people count (money, generally) and we don't.