Autonemesis

Your president has made his preference clear:

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just
so long as I'm the dictator." - George W. Bush, December 18, 2000

Autonemesis

I picked dictatorship just to mess up your pointless poll. I guess that's a blow for - something.

KnightWhoSaysNi

Really? Can I form an opposition party and challenge Castro's leadership? Can I lead a demonstration or make public speeches to oppose communism? Can I start a newspaper that includes articles, political cartoons, and editorials that criticize Castro's regime and communist ideology? Can I write books or tracts that criticize communism in Cuba and freely publish and distribute them? Better yet, can I become an entrepreneur and start a small business instead of having the state taking care of me all of the time? Or would you could consider all these freedoms and the views espoused by groups like Amnesty International to be "bourgeousie permissiveness" or "harmful individualist tendencies"?

I have noticed a tendency among Marxist thinkers to think that the root of all evil is based on inequitable distribution of wealth, which I totally disagree with. "Freedom" to admirers of the former USSR or Cuba has a very different meaning it seems to how people in the western democracies think of it. I remember chatting with someone from China on the Tiannamen Square crackdown and he said that his people have a "different conception" of human rights.

Anyways, I obviously voted democratic, because an autocrat cannot be held accountable to the people in some way. The idea of Rule by consent of the governed came again during the Age of Enlightenment and I'd rather not return to the Dark Ages. I don't take my freedom for granted, and there are those (e.g. communists, fascist, and theocrats) who would like to take that freedom away. To those who prefer dictatorship in whatever form, I'll say that I'll use my vote and my freedom of expression to stop you from obtaining political power. Orwell's 1984 is not my idea of a utopia.

Jason

John K. Fitzpatrick

registered political parties in Cuba (I understand they are limited and are not allowed to run candidates):
http://www.georgetown.edu/pdba/Parti...Cuba/desc.html

the Cabinet positions:
http://www.georgetown.edu/pdba/Execu...a/cabinet.html

Cuban civil society:
http://www.georgetown.edu/pdba/Misc/...Cuba/cuba.html

official Cuban gov website:
http://www.cubagob.cu/ingles/default.htm

a Cuba FAQ (which looks excellent):
http://members.attcanada.ca/~dchris/CubaFAQ.html

"In addition to having the right to vote, every Cuban of voting age has an equal opportunity -- regardless of socioeconomic condition or political connections -- to nominate a candidate of their choice and to run for public office. Candidates for public office are not nominated by political parties or well-heeled politicos, but only by the people themselves or their democratically elected representatives at the grassroots level. And it costs nothing to run even for highest public office in Cuba. "

It's an unfamiliar system to us in the U.S., we might not call it democratic, but the *vast* majority of Cuban citizens do call it democracy and support it completely. The number of "pro-Capitalist dissidents" in Cuba is estimated at less than 2000 people.

- John

Beer God

Dictatorships tend to start out as being benevolent, but that old phrase, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, tends to kick in after a while.

Krieger

Excellent post.

Here is a lengthy article about US involvment in Cuba.

Ultron

I still don't have time to put in a lengthy reply yet. It's nice to see more people still voting. The bottom line is, I want to see how many people on these forums prefer a dictatorship to democracy. I'm seeing that happen here. It's interesting to see how many people here argue how a dictatorship is better than democracy. A little more than I expected but I knew a few of you would prefer dictatorships, by what I've seen in posts before here.

Gawdawful

Things like the Disney boycott carry virtually no weight on individual Southern Baptist members, no more than the "women should submit graciously to their husbands wishes" or "women should not be ministers" edicts of the 1998 Salt Lake City Southern Baptis Convention did. There wasn't a mass resignation of Southern Baptist women so they could stay at home. The national organization just doesn't have the clout with individual churches or members that some other churches' leadership does.

No, I don't think individual Southern Baptist members vote on the national leadership at all, but representatives to the annual Southern Baptist Convention do. Each member church usually sends at least one person to the annual convention.

Warren in Oklahoma

Ultron

And really you guys don't need me to tell you what the difference is between a democracy and dictatorship is. If you think you can find a strain of democracy that is worse than a form of dictatorship, just explain how specifically that democracy is worse than having an absolute ruler. Right now the poll is at 1/4 of all those polled prefer dictatorships to democracy, which is what I predicted. Earlier there were slightly more who advocated dictatorships, which suprised me. There's still a few more days left in the poll so it'll be interesting to see what other arguements we hear for dictatorships and what these people admire in them.

conkermaniac

Yes because dictators cannot be trusted to be benevolent. But when you do have a benevolent dictator, it's the best. A democracy has its own disadvantages, and a benevolent dictator knows how to use its positive aspects (freedom of speech, press, religion), as well as the positive aspects of a dictatorship (increased efficiency, stability, lawmaking).

Furthermore, my thread wasn't about democracy being the ultimate form of government. It was about how Western nations should allow other countries to evolve into a democracy rather than impose it on them. I found it rather peeving how it was turned into a thread about why democracy sucks.