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CB: Popular sovereignty is not the whole story , but all any talk about democracy, including yours, is meaningless, unless you derive the answers to the questions about rights and democratic procedures from that first principle. For example, what do you mean by "democratic" procedures ?
I mean stuff in the Bill of Rights, elections of political leaders, political parties, etc. LThe kind of thing one observes often in the advanced capitalist nations but hardly ever in the PRC and similar countries.
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So your example of Lord High Muckety is meant be a criticism of U.S. and
British "democracy" I take it.
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No, as you well know. We don't have elections every 20 years for a single head of state, for instance.
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Of course, there can be distorted versions of what is democracy , so what
? What are your principles of democracy and why are they meaningful ?
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See above as to what. As to why, let's just say for the sake of brevity that I hold those truths to be self-evident. ________
CB: Well, we can do that if you are forthright and simply admit that democracy has been sacrificed by the U.S. , then we can compare the PRC and U.S.
There is no comparison on democratic grounds. The only game is to contract economic progress for the masses in the PRC to freedom in the U.S., an exercise we have all gone through before and which no longer does the PRC much credit, IMO.
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I mean afterall, the U.S. Constitutional principle of popular sovereignty
is meaningless according to you. And surely on the questions of rights and
procedures , the U.S. is not democratic. Money rules. CB
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There is much more in the Constitution than that. Money dominates, but it does not rule in the absolutist you imply, as you know. If it did, you and I would be selling shoes instead of having some space to make trouble.
mbs