In a Democracy, the Right to Protest must be sacred, it must be defended tooth and claw.
Any attempts by a government in a democratic country to reduce or restrict the right to protest must be resisted and fought.
Like it or not - the dangerous, ridiculous, foolish, deranged idiots who are protesting against lockdowns and vaccine mandates, are exercising their Democratic Rights.
It's a difficult thing to accept, but in fact: Democracy is nothing more than Mob Rule.
If the majority of the population were joining in those demonstrations, then by definition - they would be able to influence Government Policy and thereby also indirectly have the Laws changed to suit their demands. That is Democracy, because the Elected Representatives roles are literally to represent the will of the majority of people.
Eg.: if your friends want to jump off of a cliff, you don't have to join them. But in a Democracy, if the majority of people demand that we ALL jump off a cliff - then Democracy MUST obey.
It would be an error to think of this as a "flaw" of Democracy. It's not true that Democracy is the "best" type of Government, it's not true that Democracy is an "almost perfect" type of Government that regrettably has a few flaws.
The truth is that Democracy is deeply, fundamentally flawed.
The Inmates are already running the Asylum, and they always have been.
What is better than Democracy? I don't know. It seems that the world has not yet invented a better system.
But Democracy is very far from perfect.
If humanity and the Earth are to survive, we need to invent a better system of Government than Democracy.
I don't know what it would look like.
But it needs to look better than the sight of streets full of deranged idiots demanding that they be allowed to put everyone (including themselves) in serious danger.
@soundwave you clearly have no idea what the word majority means. All the majority need to do is to refuse, it would be a suicide for a government to persecute majority of the population. Only a minority would need to cause a ruckus or a disruption to achieve their goals. Right to peaceful demonstration is part of freedom of expression, and whatever imaginary utopia you are salivating over will either uphold that or remain utterly degenerate.
If you want to criticize the concept of majority rule, maybe talk about how there is not always a clear majority opinion in any given matter, which allows the few to manipulate the many, but I presume anything beyond dichotomy is impossible for you to reason about.
@namark
You seem to enjoy doing an awful lot of presuming and assuming that I am a simpleton.
You have demonstrated that your preferred means of rebuttal is to selectively attack only a small part of my thesis, which is only one of the supporting points of my argument (and I note that the particular part that you attack is never actually the concusion itself) and then you perform a classic Straw Man. This kind of schoolyard tactics is really not enticing me to invest much effort into properly engaging with you.
@soundwave your whole point is that democracy in concept is a mob rule, which according to you is what majority of people are collectively. I directly addressed this central thesis of your whole book series here that you keep repeating over and over again, so keep coping and while you are at it maybe look up the definitions of the words majority and minority.
Otherwise yes please enlighten me which other major points of yours did I miss, and where is my strawman, I really want to talk to him.
Your Straw Man's name was Dichotomy.
Nothing that I said had anything to do with a dichotomy.
You accused me of positing a dichotomy (which I did not) and then you insulted me for doing so. Strawman.
@soundwave so you just read the word and didn't bother to look at the context? I didn't claim that what you present is a dichotomy, I claimed that if you allowed yourself to look past dichotomy in context of resolution of any given matter of governing you might get at some real shortcoming of the concept of majority rule. I'm helping you to argue against democracy that you hate so much, and that was only a minor side note, my main point which was in the first paragraph.
OK, well, then, thanks, I suppose. Although, you have a strange way of helping.
From this side, it kind of feels like the opposite.
@soundwave I'm abrasive I admit, but what's the fun in an argument without a little bit flare? You were rather bold in your wording as well, so I didn't expect you to be too sensitive.
To further elaborate, when considering a dichotomy it is reasonable to expect a majority choice. I mean you can get a 50/50 split but oh well we can handle that somehow in the rare cases where it comes up. Simply make one step forward to an equivalence relation of 3 classes, and the possibility of getting a disagreement of 3 minorities becomes much more concerning. Go any further and said possibility turns into a certainty, given that the presented choices are meaningful. But you need to make it work so what do you do? Well you have to manipulate people into believing that every matter is a dichotomy. "You're either right or you're wrong, it's left or right question, so pick a side. Oh you wanted option C, but you see, everyone else, aka the mindless mob of idiots we all hate, are going to chose between B and A, so your choice will just go to waste unless you also pick the lesser evil between the two. I know this, because I will make this true. This is the voice of people speaking, yes." Thus, defeating any purpose the statistic could ever hope to have, the majority rule fails, not to be smart or right, but to exist. And god forbid there are matters that are not at all equivalence relations, we must not allow that to ever happen. If nothing else, at the very least we must have a total order that explains and decides absolutely everything, within which we will then define an equivalence relation, which we will also make sure to be a for all intents and purposes a dichotomy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_relation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order
