Comments on: The War on ‘Democracy’

By: Adrian Oter

Adrian Oter — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 06:24:39 +0000

Your review is bad from the outset. It made the rest extremely hard going. Your early remarks pertaining to the author’s definition of democracy confuses participatory events like elections as being the whole enchalata. Let me explain. Power in a democracy always resides in the electorate or at least it should in a more improved version of what we have right now. Going to vote to get some bloke a job in Canberra is not how “most people” would define a 200 year old democratic nation. As the authors of the book judiciously show democracy is not a given thing, taken from some centralised source which can be located and then exchanged for capital. By the people, for the people. Elected representatives do just that, they represent, they are not the thing itself. Read the damn book again.

By: procrustes

procrustes — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 00:05:06 +0000

Sinclair said it all. And without using multiple exclamation marks and serial question marks.

By: Sinclair Davidson

Sinclair Davidson — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 20:40:58 +0000

Yes, Glen - as Andrew said ‘Humpty-Dumpty’.

By: Andrew Norton

Andrew Norton — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 20:40:06 +0000

A few points:

* I don’t claim to speak for the ‘people’, indeed other commenters think I am an elitist, but I think I know the conventional meaning of ‘democracy’. While the idea can be extended, I don’t see the value in doing so, especially as it means that this book has to argue that various columnists are waging a ‘war’ (what an overworked metaphor) on a concept that they may not have even thought about. Lucy and Mickler could have argued that they were indifferent to social equality without using this awkward intellectual organising principle.
* Team America was a gross but very funny movie. Incidentally, this is one point where I am closer to Lucy and Mickler than you. They say ‘As a political satire, it doesn’t get much sharper than Team America’.
* I meant that the p.58 point undermined the whole point about Henderson, not the whole argument of the book. It should have been reasonably obvious from the context, but I have changed it to remove the ambiguity.

By: glen

glen — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:09:36 +0000

Note: This comment has been edited to comply with the civility policy. You can read the original abuse at Fuller’s blog.

(Crossposted to my blog and LP comments)

He is my list of [my objections] derived from your blog post:

1) a) Lucy and Mickler define democracy as an

By: Club Troppo » The Controversy Game

Club Troppo » The Controversy Game — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 11:46:33 +0000

[...] Update: Andrew Norton has posted a short review of The War on Democracy. Some commenters have taken this as an invitation to discuss Latvian history. [...]

By: Mark Bahnisch

Mark Bahnisch — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:57:24 +0000

Trackback.

By: Bring Back The Currency Lad's blog

Bring Back The Currency Lad's blog — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:13:47 +0000

For pete’s sake these people who like to give other people a touch up get all thinned skinned when silly people write about them.

By: Lyn

Lyn — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 07:19:41 +0000

Slim’s right. Pearson’s response started with generalisations about Maoists and Trotskyites, which is as bad as generalisations about conservatives and Howard huggers.

Lucy, Mickler and Pearson all share an interest in promoting the interests of gays but they’re too busy bickering over their big P political and abstract philosophical loyalties to notice.

Waste of brains all round.

By: Andrew Norton

Andrew Norton — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 00:51:25 +0000

This ‘evolution’ of the discussion had all the hallmarks of the rambling digressions of interest to only a few people that I am trying to avoid. Case closed.