Democracy
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Here's three similar and important thoughts on democratic organization from three disparate figures across the 19th century.
“Where every man is a sharer in the direction of his ward-republic, or of some of the higher ones, and feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs not merely at an election, one day in the year, but every day; when there shall not be a man in the state who will not be a member of some one of it’s councils, great or small, he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte. As Cato then concluded every speech with the words Carthago delenda est, so do I every opinion with the injunction ‘divide the counties into wards.’” - Thomas Jefferson, 1816
“Is there a man whose soul is so mean as to wish to depend on the whims of a single member of his community rather than to obey the laws he himself has helped to establish, that is if he thinks his nation exhibits the virtues necessary to make a proper use of liberty? I do not think such a man exists. Even despots accept the excellence of liberty. The simple truth is they wish to keep it for themselves and promote the idea that no one else is at all worthy of it. Thus, our opinion of liberty does not reveal our differences but the relative value which we place on our fellow man. We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.” - Alexis de Tocqueville, 1845
A Possible Future – Is it impossible for us to imagine a social state in which the criminal will publicly denounce himself and dictate his own punishment, in the proud feeling that he is thus honoring the law which he himself has made, that he is exercising his power, the power of a lawmaker, in thus punishing himself? He may offend for once, but by his own voluntary punishment he raises himself above his offense, and not only expiates it by his frankness, greatness, and calmness, but adds to it a public benefit. — Friedrich Nietzsche, 1881
None of our present institutions facilitate the participatory governance advocated by all three. Our politics are completely devoid of the notion of participation, at this point even in the barest sense of making educated choices. The politics of the 21st century require rethinking just to create meaning.