Frances Kendall, on Denis' Facebook page: Some people are born to evangelize - I feel the same way about the libertarian "utopians" - why keep pushing for a system you have no chance of achieving? But then the world needs non-pragmatists who never give up.
Accelerating the inevitable
Denis replies:
Ah, Frances -- so straight, so sharp, so direct; love it! Just ever so slightly wrong in one tiny respect. If you adjust “that you have no chance of achieving” to “that is inevitably upcoming anyway” you’d make sense.
Dealing first with “inevitably upcoming”. It sounds arrogant, I suppose. “Inevitably” is a bit of a categorical word. But some features of the future are inevitable. You know there’ll be more breaching of gender/ethnic boundaries, not less; more agnosticism/atheism, not less; more sense of animal rights, not less, etcetera. Just as obviously there’ll be more democracy, not less.
As to what form “more democracy” might take, I can’t envisage a form that doesn’t encompass the cruxes of D2. For one, it has to find fuller minority rights within fuller majority rule (a target I’ve never seen sought, except by D2). For another, isn’t it bound to make space between a deliberate vote and an accidental vote? Someone who earnestly wishes to wear a burqa should have more say than someone who casually says “we’d better ban burqas, to keep up with the French.”
Dealing second with “you have no chance”. You may be right that I have no chance. The theme may take a long while yet. But I must try; pragmatically. My kids are the third generation to wave excessive goodbyes to friends who say “you guys are up the creek, we’ll go watch from Perth/ Leeds/ Seattle”. Three generations is enough. I’ve heard enough wails and accusations about white wickedness (choice bit at Bioscope, Fox Street, last night: “Robespierre was right, guillotines clean things up”). Above all I’ve seen enough decent people stuffed up by wrong circs.
So… on we go. Thanks again, Frances. Be extremely appreciated for all the engaging, all the echoes, all the klaps, you’ll ever want to give.
And PS: a better word may be “inexorable”. Lots is inexorable in D2.
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