Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Giving Thought to Words

Giving thought to words

I have always felt that for all the warts, a collective (democratic) sort of government is superior to an autocratic one.

The Greeks, who invented Democracy, thought it was terribly inefficient, but bad as it is the process is better than the second best alternative. The Greeks were always looking for the philosopher King…That is a smart guy who would know best and have the authority to make people do it. They thought they found him in Alexander the Great but he fizzled out.

Most “Great” men do… the job gets to be too much and they start chasing skirts or worse, they aren’t very bright to begin with… Often Charismatic but dumb as a box of rocks. I won’t go into that… history is replete with examples from ancient times right up to the present.

So forget about a philosopher king for a political leader…. It is almost a certainty that any country will wind up with a dumb-ass for president, however in a Democracy the power is distributed over an array of semi-smart dumb asses… and these guys and gals, when they get to arguing, often stumble onto the optimal solution… Now pay attention… this doesn’t happen in an autocratic regime but it does in nations having collective forms of governance… In the debate a “Best Answer” will often percolate to the top and the elected leaders are often bright enough to know it when they see it…. Not think it up mind you, but see the truth when it smacks them in the face like a wet fish.

So I am writing this blog hoping to convince people that a preemptive strike to take out Iran’s nuclear capability is a bad idea. The whole world order is predicated on a card castle of sovereign nations… These nations can do essentially whatever they want inside their borders as long as they don’t bother their neighbors… I am talking about physical bother and not rhetorical bother. Clearly some really bad things that take place inside a nation’s borders, just as they do inside some people’s homes, however that is the rule of thumb and how the fragile world order operates.

Perhaps you have heard the term “Real Politic.” What it essentially means is that there is no analogy between a nation state’s moral behavior and a human beings moral behavior. That Nation States are “Amoral” and don’t operate by the same rules of behavior that you and I do. Guess where this idea came from… I doubt you’ll be surprised, but it has become a commonly accepted premise in the world at large.

Sorry I have to push the soap box under the desk… My wife is pointing out the really big fish I need to start frying.