Our group continued the class discussion, at first, asking if anyone had broken any laws or rules in the name of civil disobedience. Although none of us have ever actually been to jail for civil disobedience, we all agreed that we would if the issue was important enough to us. We then moved on to one of Evan's DQ's, which asked whether or not, in a democracy, the laws dictated by the majority were more important than the minority who were more greatly effected by said laws. We all agreed that the U.S.'s form of representative democracy was fundamentally flawed, and that the legislator's making the laws should think more about what demographic the law would effect the most. Daniel stated that, due to the wording of the question, it essentially answered itself by saying that the minority was more greatly effected by the laws. We then moved on to the nature of democracies, saying that all true democracies have failed, with one exception. This exception is Switzerland. We then fangirled over Switzerland for a hot minute.
Phellow Philosoraptors, please comment and augment/correct any information that may be absent or misconstrued.
Since I am not an author (on Blogger) I am going to borrow your comment space. Lo siento y gracias :)
ReplyDeleteH01 Group 3 Discussion: Should leaders being above the law? Our obvious answer was no, leaders should be subject to laws just like citizens. Our next question was, is this practical? In a truly perfect system, you wouldn’t have any one above the law but historically, this has been less than accurate. Andrew Jackson was used as an example. Other than his crazy Whitehouse parties, he sent the indians away even after the supreme court ruled against it. FDR gave a speech on human rights such as a right to freedom. But how can you have a right to freedom? How can anyone know what that freedom entails? We also discussed how leaders with more power could preventing people like Hitler from rising to power. It was argued that this kind of system would not work since absolute power corrupts absolutely. But it is an interesting concept. If a more Machiavellian idea had been used, Hitler might not have been able to invade, Machiavelli would have suggested you retained a healthy suspicion despite Hitler’s open promises.
Your post was spot on, Austin. I think a truly democratic government is simply a pipe-dream; it will never exist. We can do our best, but someone will always be unhappy. I definitely think we would be better off if we modeled our government off of Switzerlands. I also think that we won't see a very large change in the topics the youth feels strongly about (the environment, gay marriage, and marijuana, for example) until we began to enter the government. The old Republican men aren't going to do much to change the system, so we "need to be the change we wish to see in the world." :)
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