I think there are two main things that demonstrate that the USA, with their virtues and defects, are an advanced democracy.On the one hand, I think it's really important the fact that someone who has voted for a Party (even he has supported its campaign or has taken part of a government) can change his vote in the next election. The best example is Colin Powell, who was the Secretary of State with George Bush and has said he'll vote Barack Obama. I think it reflects a great citizen responsibility. And it's really inconceivable in Spain.
Besides, every member of both cameras of the Congress is supposed to defend his own principles. He's not subject to the Party's discipline because he has done his individual campaign and he has been elected because of his own ideas. The most recent example is the voting of the plain against the financial crisis, where a lot of members of the Republican Party have voted no to the plain that has suggested his "leader".
On the other hand, I really like the fact that both main Parties discuss the most important reforms. Although one of them has the power to approve the laws without the support of the other, they try to reach an agreement before. So, they make sure the main laws won't be changed in the next session.
It doesn't happen in Spain, where every change of government means the destruction of the work that the last government has done. For example, last government was working last years in an education reform. When it was prepared to be voted, they lose the election an the new government threw away it and made another one completely different. It wouldn't happen if they had discussed it before.
As opposed to Spain, in the United Kingdom, where there is a democracy as advanced as it is in the USA, the ex-leader of the Labour Party Tony Blair went on with some of the policies of the conservative Margaret Thatcher. If something worked, why did they have to change it? Only to get some votes? No, they knew the nation is more important than the fact of win the election, something that Spanish politicians have forgotten time ago.
James Wilkinson
4 comments:
Professor Alexsander Tyler (1747-1813) wrote about democracy as follows: ... A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship...
I don't share this opinion. The candidate who pormises the most money from the Exchequer to everybody is, after all, who drops taxes. And it will cause the production increases.
I think (as Aristotle did) Democracy is the best of the regimes because, when it becomes corrupted (and we're not able to guarantee it won't become corrupted), it's the least bad.
I'm not talking about opinions but about facts. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage tu spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage... always as per Alexander Tyler words.
I'm confused because before I woke up the Republicans were the party to the left and the democrats didn't exist, but now everything is os different!
Our constitution first words are crucial "We the people..." But who are "we the people", an elite? a selected group? the people meaning everyone?
And how democratic is a country in which you must register to vote, has a two-party system implemented, and leaves all the power to Congress (in theory) but then nobody in Congress in enough strong to contradict the president... I do not know, I am too old to think.
Carpe Noctum
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