(April 23, 2015 at 10:11 am)Hatshepsut Wrote:(April 22, 2015 at 11:33 pm)francismjenkins Wrote: But it's not a strict choice between the status quo and anarchy...
True. And I don't know much about the folks on the "Circle-A" ranch. I've never seen any real proposals on how to govern from them. I don't blame 'em too much for that. Coming up with workable policy platforms is tough.
One problem is, how do you limit authoritarianism? Government is all about people with weapons telling everyone else to do stuff they don't want to do. It seems the only ways are to have potential rivals who might command armed followings as counterweights, or to have a taught tradition of pluralism and separation of powers, or both. The USA doesn't have a military dictator because no one fella controls the entire military and most military brass keep traditions of loyalty to the pres and the flag. It's fragile, though. It only takes breaking tradition once for it to come down like a white Christmas.
In many countries, police don't carry guns, women are far more likely to serve in parliament, and the culture is much more egalitarian. We see changes all the time, some good some bad, but change is not only possible, it's inevitable. The only question is, how will we change. There's nothing inevitable about authoritarianism, no immutable law of nature that tells us its impossible to reduce authoritarianism.