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Thank you for your patience. This issue is much delayed due to a number of factors, all of them ultimately my responsibility. I also beg the indulgence of my gracious contributors, who in addition to their boldness in approaching the topic displayed admirable patience during the delay.
Tony Gibart discusses how the word democracy is used to legitimize political regimes regardless of their respect for their constituents’ equality and unpacks the so-called democratic peace theory used as one justification for the war in Iraq.
Ben Klandrud, a captain in the U.S. Army and student of military history, reminds us to cherish the hard-fought freedoms of our democratic society and that the price of freedom is constant vigilance against many insidious tyrannies. He also laments the voter apathy of many Americans.
Michael LaForest, perennial third-party candidate who in 2010 is a write-in candidate for U.S. Senate, criticizes the two-party political system as a structural deficiency made possible and encouraged by our representative democracy. He suggests that democracy is a good idea but in practice it is flawed and co-opted by powerful minorities—the two major parties, moneyed corporations, and special-interests.
Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 2, so surely this is an appropriate time to reflect upon the nature of democracy.
Michael Timm
31October2010
P.S. The next issue will consider the topic of music as relates to the human experience. It will be published sometime in 2011. Contact me with your essay ideas at platypus [[dot]] found [[at]] yahoo [[dot]] com.
Also, if you're new to the site, please scroll down and read the many engaging essays from past topics. Thanks for reading.
Please also note that the name of this site may change in 2011--many of you have noted, and I agree, that the "anthropologist" part of the magazine title is a bit of a misnomer. It remains the case, however, that I'm interested in collecting diverse opinions about topics of human import and that interest in exploring what it means to be human can be considered anthropological in a loose sense.
2 comments:
As far as I am concerned, it is not mainly the form of a government but the kinds of people it grows that determine what it is a country has. And in Western civilization, increasingly over the last couple of millennia countries have tended to grow pathological populations -- ideologically crazed, materialistic, narcissistic, etc. The pace accelerated with the Enlightenment, and has become untenable over the last century or so -- and now we are seriously threatening the survival of the globe, with no sign of abatement of the threat. Democracy per se, education, etc., will not fix the messes; each generation seems to produce more pathological offspring, expectably. My solution? To delineate the problem – a bleak step.
Louis Berger
very nice buddy keep sharing :)
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