"What people want"?

[Carl Remick]

Re Josh's: "Actually, that line is not inaccurate--except that 'properly
functioning democaracy' elides the whole argument of the book, which is
that a properly functioning democracy is a much more complicated thing
than it's made out to be."

As I thought more about NY Observer reviewer Adam Liptak's take on
Thomas Geoghegan's The Secret Lives of Citizens, it seemed preposterous
in one way, in particular.  To re-cite the Liptak quote I posted
yesterday:  "Mr. Geoghegan believes that in a properly operating
democracy working
people and their sympathizers would vote for better wages. This seems
wrong as theory and wrong as a description of what people, even working
people, want. They apparently want freedom, even at terrible social
cost, even at their own expense."

The contention that Americans "apparently want freedom" is embedded in
irony six feet thick.  Consider, for instance, Alexander Cockburn's
comment (in the current NY Press, concerning Kenneth Starr & Co.) about
the rise of the "proscecutorial state" in the USA:  "Judge Richard
Posner said in 1995 that the U.S. 'criminalizes more conduct than most,
many any, non-Islamic nations.'"

Carl Remick