Den Post Demokratiske tidsalder 2

Dette er en opfølgning på en tidligere post om den post demokratiske tidsalder, baseret på hvad handels kommissær, Peter Mandelson, angiveligt har sagt:

"The age of democracy is over. We are now in the post-democratic age".

Allerede i mine unge SF dage, var jeg skeptisk over for EU. Det lugtede langt væk af afskaffelsen af demokrati, hvor meget subsidiaritetsprincip de end snakkede.

Peter Mandelson citatet er måske fake? Men at vi lever i en post demokratisk tidsalder er ikke og dette citat er mig bekendt ikke fake, men betegnende for EUs aktivitet, fra en artikel af Fjordman:

Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxemburg’s prime minister, once described the EU’s “system” in this way: “We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens,” he explained. “If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don’t understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back.”

Så det er vigtigt, to kick up a fuss, sparke lidt til støvet i blandt, omend man højst kan forvente i recirkulering af præcis samme idé, sneget uden om demokratiske beslutningsprocesser som Lissabon traktaten:

Og som denne herre fra The Economist, columnist Charlemagne [Gideon Rachman] har beskrevet:

“What Mr Juncker and those who think like him are trying to do is, in essence, to drown opposition to European federation in a mass of technical detail, to bore people into submission. As a strategy, it has gone a long way.

Er det noget man kan genkende? Well hold selv øjnene åbne, som en lille interaktiv oplevelse, prøv som eksempel at slå "gummiparagraffen" op på google, er det noget du har hørt om før?

Hvilket bringer mig til denne her tekst, jeg lige fundet, som jeg ikke er enig med alt i, men smid endelig ikke barnet ud med badevandet:

“The X-Files is about one of the most important philosophical problems of our everyday political lives—publicity. The secrecy of contemporary governments is destroying democracy by undermining one of the pre-conditions without which democracy is not possible. Democracy requires that citizens make informed decisions about public policy; that cannot be done without publicity. If political leaders are making decisions in secret, those decisions are outside the scope of public discussion and argument. They are undemocratic. ”

Informeret debat er en komplet nødvendighed i udfoldelsen af demokratiet. Denne debat forsøger EU så vidt muligt at forbi passere, uden selv at sparke støv op, på listefødder.

Manglen på informeret debat, informerede beslutninger, hemmelige beslutninger, eller åbenlyse hvis konsekvenser og detaljer bestemmes absolut af en domstol. Alt er skadeligt for demokratiet, og det er hvad EU i høj grad har betjent sig af. Dermed bliver det også hvad EU faktisk primært står for.

Til medierne:

There is a free press in the USA, but it is caught up with being respectable and conventional. It trusts conventional sources and conventional evidence.

The writers of 200 plus years ago such as Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham and Thomas Jefferson and even John Stuart Mill assumed that a constitutionally free press guaranteed that the truth would come out. In our own time we have discovered that a comfortable, establishment mass media monopolizing most of the normal ways people get their information can have problems truth-telling and truth-seeking.

One of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century said, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” That’s an exaggeration, of course, but only a slight one, and only slightly less of one than saying that politics is also a series of footnotes to Plato. In the interest of social stability and absolute loyalty Plato thought it was not just permissible but necessary for the rulers to lie to their subjects. These lies are Noble because instead of trying to advance their personal wealth or status, the rulers are trying to advance the interests of the citizens. In our recent political history Watergate is the most widely discussed example of the Noble Lie. President Nixon, and the other members of his administration, was engaging in deception on several levels, but while he was drowning, Nixon claimed that no one intended to profit from the deceptions; they had the interests of the citizens in mind.

Beyond this ethical reason for democracy there are some good practical reasons for it. Democracy generates consent: People make the rules and they have ways to change the rules using their political institutions. You don’t have to have a bloodbath to get rid of a bad ruler like Claudius in Hamlet. Leak it to the newspapers, haul him into court, have an election. There’s less drama, but there’s much more order because people can go about their business. They are “represented” by the whole design of democracy. (Sure, plenty of people are overrepresented and underrepresented in the real democracies we all know including the USA, but the solution isn’t less democracy, but more.)8

In Spheres of Justice, Michael Walzer characterizes democracy this way: “The citizens must govern themselves. ‘Democracy’ is the name of this government, but the word doesn’t describe anything like a simple system; nor is democracy the same thing as simple equality. Indeed, government can never be simply egalitarian, for at any given moment, someone or some group must decide this or that issue and then enforce the decision, and someone else or some other group must accept the decision and endure the enforcement. Democracy is a way of allocating power and legitimating its use…. What counts is argument among the citizens.” Argument among the citizens is essential to democracy and that argument cannot be legitimate unless it is informed. By its nature argument is rational, and the citizens cannot be informed without publicity, enabling public scrutiny. Leaders must make public the information that citizens need to make rational policy decisions.
Since those in power are conspiring to deceive, there is ample room for conspiracy theories

Personligt tror jeg der er to musts, for at genskabe demokratiet, om nødvendigt kun i Danmark med ryggen til EU, hvis de ikke selv kan finde ud af sætte grænser for deres magt.

1. Vi skal have retten til at udskrive og afholde bindende folkeafsteminger som folk, efter Schweizisk eksempel, som DF ønsker det.

2. Vi skal som supplement til DR have et offentligt støttet, så der er råd til at researche grundigt, debat magasin eller avis, med absolut pligt! til at gå så kritisk til værks i forhold til alle emner i Politik og samfundet. naturligvis saglig kritik, men pligt til hård kritik, til at skabe debat og til at have en omfattende debat sektion, altså blive et kerneforum for politisk debat i Danmark. Nyhederne kan man så overlade til de almindelige aviser.

At demokratiet bliver udvandet, og aviserne efterhånden fungerer som nutidens "brød og skue", er et tegn på at ikke bare har vi en post demokratisk tidsalder, med kontraktpolitiske smuler til befolkningen og symbolpolitik. Den har stadig lettere vilkår.