> at least we don't have a bunch of clerics vetting
> candidates for office. ... at least in theory anyone here can run for office.
> So this sort of sneer is really preposterous.
I dunno, Doug. Theory is one thing, practice is another.
No way to quantify these things of course, but it doesn't seem at all obvious that our official party duopoly and Electoral College and bicameral legislature, and, and, and, add up to a lesser inhibition of "democracy" -- however we understand that term -- than the guardian council's. The difference is that the mechanisms here are more diffuse and less obvious, and have a better proceduralist appearance of neutrality. And of course we have civics teachers to explain how all these institutions are the love-children of Bentham and Kant, of optimal utility and pure reason -- the gods we worship instead of Allah.
Our lower turnouts would seem to suggest that we have more people who have concluded that the electoral exercise is content-free. Are we stupid? Or are they?
Actually, there's something to be said for making the restrictions explicit instead of mystifying them under the rubric of institutional necessity. Candor is always better than humbug.
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Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org