| Chapter 1. | The Diminishing Democracy | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The American politician, four time elected governor of N.Y. state, A. E. Smith summarized the problems of democracy and their possible solution:
These words were said approx. 80 years ago. Despite of the efforts of Gov. Smith and the many politicians after him trying to improve democracy nothing has changed. Instead the ‘evils' worsened, and democracy is slowly diminishing. The two basic reasons for this development are:
First of all one has to distinguish between the concept of democracy and the functional means which bring this concept to life. In the western democracies it is the multiple political party system which forms democracy. This system goes back to the horse and buggy age which did not have any telephones, railroads, cars, computers, etc. While the whole world has adapted to and evolved with modern technology, the political party system is still in the distant past. This makes it subject to one of nature's basic laws which is: Anything on our earth that doesn't adapt or evolve is bound for extinction. The party system shows all the signs of senility, deterioration and self-destructiveness. Today; whoever has the most money wins the election. This political power play based on money is one of the reasons why we have today elected oligarchies, and elections merely exchange one oligarchy with another. But what is next, a dictatorship? One should never forget what happened in Germany in the Nineteen-twenties and thirties. It was the political party system which gave Hitler the opportunity to reach the top political power and consequently destroyed the democracy of Germany. Unless the political party system changes and reforms itself substantially it will drag democracy itself along to distinction. It is time to think about another system which does away with the ‘evils' of democracy and creates ‘more democracy'. This can mean only one thing:
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