Unusual Political Quotes

 “Two very different ideas are usually confounded under the name democracy. The pure idea of democracy, according to its definition, is the government of the whole people by the whole people, equally represented. Democracy as commonly conceived and hitherto practised is the government of the whole people by a mere majority of the people, exclusively represented. The former is synonymous with the equality of all citizens; the latter, strangely confounded with it, is a government of privilege, in favour of the numerical majority, who alone possess practically any voice in the State. This is the inevitable consequence of the manner in which the votes are now taken, to the complete disfranchisement of minorities.”
--John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, 1861

“[P]olitical philosophers have long perceived electoral democracy itself as a partisan issue. [One] school of thought argues that every political government has partisans who are fundamentally against democratic values (in favor of property rights).” “[T]he movement towards capitalistic free markets and global economic integration require 'less' participatory government at the nation-state level... it's an economic reason, and a fundamental one.”

[They] “would also prefer 'limited government' - and thus would also tend to advocate the curtailment of democratic politics and the role of government.... Isn't this what the [U.S. Constitution's] Framers argued?”
--Edward Riquelme

Democratic control of the public sphere is necessitated by “market failures” including externalities (such as pollution), and abuse of natural monopolies (such as the computer operating system, or utility distribution grids of pipes and wires).

“Free market” implies free from regulation - just what the big monopolist wants. “Competitive market” is a better term for the efficient economy. “Open markets” make that competition possible through low “barriers to entry” for new companies. Government regulation can help reduce barriers, maintain a healthy number of competitors and so prevent corrupt monopolies and oligarchies.

Early Democracy and Mathematics

from Mathematics Teaching and Political Freedom: the unnoticed connection by Colin Hannaford

“Democracy can be understood as a science - fundamentally of mathematics; and also as philosophy or religion (depending on whether one sees that it has a spiritual basis of not) that acts not to separate people but to join them.

“The original purpose of mathematics teaching... is unknown to all but a handful of classical historians. They know that the style of argument on which mathematics depends was always intended to give more political freedom to ordinary people, to increase their confidence in democracy. Its purpose is to persuade people to accept logical truths freely and voluntarily, not to be bullied or oppressed by dogma or dogmatists to accept their ideas as absolute truths.

“This pattern of logic had also a definite beginning. It was developed spontaneously in early democratic Greece c. 500 BC to encourage ordinary people to take part in democracy, to help them to resist being over-awed and confused by the rich and their lawyers who were trained in the clever use of rhetoric. Rhetoric was certainly persuasive as well. But rather than logic it used imagery and drama, emotions and myth, and as its teachers proudly boasted it could be used to prove anything to anyone. The truth of this boast was destroying democracy.

“Mathematics was freed from its logical prison by the German Austrian Jew Kurt Gödel in 1931. Europe owes her freedom to him as much as to any figure in history. Gödel showed that mathematics can never be completed as a perfect system. Suddenly totalitarian politics lost their model, as well as their ultimate justification. As Humboldt once remarked, if freedom is to exist there must be diversity. Democracy is the only way to manage and benefit from diversity. This is why mathematics is itself democratic.”

Hannaford does not cite classical sources to prove this original purpose of mathematics. The Pythagoreans certainly were religious about math and relatively egalitarian regarding women.

Does a person's or population's math ability correlate with democratic relationships or tolerance of diversity? U.S. Women support diversity more than U.S. men do. Men do better than women at math in U.S. schools — perhaps the teaching style encourages rote not independent or critical thinking.

Many who research voting rules also teach mathematics. A notable example is the director of the Mathematics Olympiad Learning Centre, Arkadii Slinko, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at The University of Auckland (New Zealand)

Old and New Classics on
Authoritarian versus Egalitarian

Hannaford's assertion is one example of the many correlations writers have claimed to find between personality traits and support for democracy.

The Authoritarian Personality may be induced by an upbringing of rigid discipline and conditional affection. This 1950 book by Theodor Adorno and others developed a scale to measure “an estimate of fascist receptivity.” It is essential to understand that most authoritarians are not the top dogs. Instead, they are followers who support the hierarchy and its inherent suppression of freedom.

Born to Rebel by Dr. Frank Sulloway proves there is a better than average chance that someone who supports a revolution (in a scientific theory or a government) was a latter-born child.  But if someone supports change and uses violence, there is a better than average chance that they were firstborn.  Many firstborns learn to be more authoritarian than their younger siblings.  The oldest child is usually higher in the family's pecking order, enforces parental rules, and can physically dominate smaller children.  Latter-born children improve their chances of survival by other means.  Arguing for fair shares might be one.  Sulloway, a MacArthur Fellow, also co-authored a major review of research, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition in Psychological Bulletin, 2003, Vol. 129, No. 3.