Where was the Color at A16 in D.C.?

[Brad De Long]

>  >From the point of view of someone like Hannah Arendt, "meetings" that is,
>political action have particular value in that the individual breaks out of
>her subjectivity and the limits of that subjectivity and hears the views of
>perspectives of others.  "Reality" is constituted by this diversity of
>viewpoints, a  beneift that the "family" cannot provide in that the family
>is an extension of the individual.
>
>For Arendt, the individual gains a real pleasure in speaking and acting in
>public and debating issues of common concern.  The fact that most people
>now don't experience meeting as pleasurable is due a social circumstances
>that emphasizes privacy not publicity.

Even in classical Athens (the largest polity for which Aristotle 
thought democracy even *possible*, lousy as he thought that form of 
government was), you have 25,000 citizens absent from the Assembly, 
5,000 sitting around voting on decisions, and ten guys speaking.

Arendt is right: it's really great in the self-actualization 
sense--if you're one of the ten. But if you're one of the 25,000 you 
would much rather vote for a representative than be "virtually 
represented" by the 5,000 who show up for the assembly. And if you 
are one of the 5,000 you are not in any real sense making the laws 
that you then obey--instead you are just choosing on the spot to be 
represented by whichever of the ten speakers strikes you at that 
moment as most persuasive...