China..the country with the recent election of the emperor for life...the triad run place?
That uses Canada as its DOPE sales money laundering operation and has bought all the federal politicians and backroom boys that matter?
...and tosssed the ones like Brown that weren't keen on going with that plan?
China's even worse. But when we consider the trials of revolution, we want to know that those trials will be worthwhile. If what we no have in the west is what we're offering, most Chinese will probably view our societies as being not superior enough to warrant such revolution.
Yeah. I've been giving a lot of thought to the failings of democracy of late, and how it got that way. What came first, our lower attention spans, or media catering to our lower attention spans?
A century ago when a candidate gave a speech it would be reprinted in the paper, every damn word. And people would read it! Now if a politician gives a two hours speech maybe a sentence or two will be repeated in the paper and on TV, and then a bit more will be paraphrased by the reporter, and then on to the story of the dancing duck.
It should be illegal to lie during an election. And we, the people, ought to hold politicians to account when they fail to enact their promises, especially when they clearly COULD have but choose not to. Remember McGuinty's famous "I won't cut your taxes, but I won't raise them either?" line? Then he raised taxes right after getting in office. Did he get punished? Nope. Got re-elected. Trudeau promised an end to FPTP. He changed his mind. Is he gonna be punished? Nope. He promised open government, more individual freedom for MPs and committees and parliament. But his MPs are barking seals and his own information commissioner says his government is even more secretive than the tories were. Are his supporters bothered by that? Nope. Wynne promised surpluses and now she's giving us big deficits. And she doesn't have a hint of shame about it either. She certainly has no fears people will call her a damn liar and vote against her for it.
I do believe that a balance exists between democracy and authoritarianism. Some people, whether due to trauma, addiction, or other mental-health problems, cannot handle excess liberty. I think a country like Singapore might have found something close to the right balance. A free market but still circumscribed by very strict rules. When a society becomes too liberal, people will turn to authoritarianism. Just read the following site to see how far some people will go to have rules imposed on themselves:
https://theincline.com/2017/03/10/g...al-state-rep-wants-them-to-get-treatment-too/
That a person would willingly and voluntarily put his name on a list to make entering a casino a criminal offense for himself shows just how far some people will go to abandon their freedoms. I've read of stories of drug addicts asking to be incarcerated. I've read stories of convicted sex offenders requesting castration. I've read stories of adult internet, online gambling, and online porn addicts installing parental apps on their own phones. These are just some examples. If we want to protect freedom in a society, then we must also ensure that those who cannot handle that freedom are protected from it. For example, Ontario's self-exclusion list is a joke. Any gambler can bypass the facial-recognition cameras. These same people could end up voting for ever more authoritarian candidates over time out of desperation if liberal governments fail to protect them from themselves.
A person should be allowed to put himself on a self-exclusion list that would make it a criminal offence for him to drink or gamble for example, and we should require sellers of alcohol and gambling to scan IDs at the door and ban businesses from selling to those on these lists. The technology exists for that already. Gambling advertising needs to be restricted to certain sites and people need to be able to block their access to them.
Liberals now want to legalize marijuana. Some want to decriminalize all drugs for personal use. Liberals shouldn't be surprised when the growing number of drug addicts themselves start to vote for ever more conservative parties the more society decriminalizes everything unless the Liberals could find a way to protect the vulnerable from these vices. It might seem counter-intuitive, but to give those who cannot handle freedom too much freedom could make those very same people turn ever more to conservative parties.
If we want our societies to function, we do need to find the right balance between freedom and authoritarianism and not demonize authoritarianism so much. Authoritarianism does possess virtues of its own.
