: SDF: Not necessarily. Ending business competition need not result in the creation of other, equally destructive forms of competition. Furthermore, democracy need not mean the abrogation of any rights, and is in fact only conceived as an abrogation of rights by those who believe in natural rights, who think that rights are granted us by God or the Easter Bunny or some other such imaginary friend.You mean to say the Easter Bunny isn't responsible! Anyway, what 51% think of as rights my b very wrong for the 49%. Its just 'might is right' any way its cut. The idea of us all being "of a nurturant nature" (human nature?) and "a co-operative society." are very attractive - but what we have now isnt the oppressed masses - its defacto what the majority want.
: SDF: It's obvious that "might makes right" is the slogan inscribed on the banner of the mighty. "Peaceful coexistence" might be a good slogan for those who had come to the realization that peaceful coexistence required democratic life.
The principle that might makes right, whether its accepted as a pragmatic relaity or as a moral absolute both leave lots of room for the kinds of terror people all over the world turn TV channels to avoid - partly, IMO, so as not to face the logic of what 'might makes right' may mean for them.
: SDF: Please reserve Stoller's definition of the word "utopian" for discussions with Stoller. Utopian dreaming is a necessary concept within practical thinking. Authoritarian realism is a sucker ploy. "You can't have the reality you want, so here's this dictatorship, it's the next best thing." Magic, on the other hand, doesn't work, and reality is constrained thusly.
Utopian thinking therefore walks a thin line between whats possible and what relaity will fling back in its face.
: SDF: Real participants in democracy know democratic power as an EXPANSION of individual freedoms, as society's power to make the wealth and consequent freedom produced BY all, accessible TO all.
This contradicts. To expand individual freedom by having them exist at the behest of every other individual is a contradiction (although, see last paragraph)
: Our obligation is to free democracy from money and all other dominative forms of life, to make our world more securer, and thus more free.
Where that security obliges people to act to 'secure it' then that obligation in turn requires enforcement to see it met. That requires authority and punishment - unless ofcourse that great majority of people do all these things with enthusiastic voluntareerism, in which case it will turn out fine.
