Joe,
your sanctimonious speech about democracy and free speech conveniently avoids the real import of what I was saying; that democrcay was a failure.
If 95% of our generals and experts on all things military showed evidence we were about to be invaded, do you think the sheep would be so easily dissuaded of purpose? But supposing a majority was dissuaded, do you think you'd be defending the democratic freedom of speech of those few whose prevarications undermined the resolve of the country?
You be as self-righteous as you like; my point stands.

Hi Squeers,

Being sanctimonious, or unctuous, self-righteous, or pompous can be great fun. Just ask any Green.

So, if it were true that democracy had failed, what do you recommend to replace it ? Rule by our betters, public intellectuals, people who know what is best for us ? And that independent opinion just complicates their good work ?

Your hypothetical juxtaposes the right to rule of knowledgeable elites, versus the failed democracy of letting sheep have any influence over policy. Thanks for that, it's good to know how soi-disant knowledgeable elites see the issues.

Apart from that, I don't really understand the thrust of your questions: are you saying that, even given the considered opinion of military experts, the press and other agents of opinion-shaping would be able to persuade the 'sheople' to the contrary ? That people are so manipulable that they would go along solely with a newspaper's take on what was happening ? Has this actually ever happened anywhere ?

As the electorate becomes more educated, and more able to follow events overseas, is this scenario becoming more, or less, likely ? After Iraq and Afghanistan ? And can you attribute that hypothetical gullibility to the extremes of freedoms of speech and of the press ?

Have you read Huxley's 'Brave New World' by the way ?

Cheers,

Joe

Joe,

"As the electorate becomes more educated, and more able to follow events overseas..."

It depends what you consider is 'education", which in contemporary Western society isn't geared towards producing citizens who, as Squeers points out, are capable of "critical and self-relexive thought". More likely that the final product of the education system is overwhelmingly people who wait for someone else to tell them what to think - all the better if they can grab a sound bite from a shock-jock or commercial news.

What were the educated class able to do about Australia's deployment in Iraq, despite the protests? No, it all just went ahead as the Howard government kept in step with the U.S. and Britain. People who doubted the veracity and the motives of the U.S. still read the news,(funnily enough, sheople still think if something is "in print", that it's eminently believable) absorbed the hype and sat glued to the screen with "embedded reporters as the curtain rose on the Iraqi invasion.

Joe,
your smart-arse leading questions and answers are no doubt very satisfying to you and your smug fraternity, but you're just blowing smoke rings.
"Just ask any Green", for instance, is a good instance of the depth of minimifidianist critique and their unwholesome influence; anybody who gives a rats about the environment is laughingly dismissed. Thanks to populist minimifidianism, to be green is to be an object of ridicule!
I've been all over your other questions on OLO, much to the sheep's amusement I'm sure.
Democracy and capitalism are non sequitur.
Representative democracy is a sham--like a test match in India.
I'd support an inclusive democracy based on civil duty, but egotists don't believe in civil society.
I do not support the rights of "elites to rule", but the sheep can't be expected to act responsibly--leave their pasture--on matters about which they're ignorant.
Are you implying that the sheople (the hegemonic centre) are refusing to back action on AGW for empirical reasons?
Ironically, you're probably correct; after all the sheople haven't noticed any appreciable change, so it must all be part of nature's cycles eh? Oh yes, and the communists!
I haven't said the sheople are manipulated purely by newspapers. They're disposed to be persuaded. It's confirmation bias, not wanting to give-up their rich pastures, and has nothing to do with science. Who needs science? Anyone with eyes and half a brain can see what we're doing to the planet, and ultimately to ourselves. Minimifidianists don't only ignore the experts (would they ignore 98 doctors in 100 who opined they had liver disease and ought to adobt a healthier lifestyle?), they ignore the evidence of their own (modest) faculties!
I, btw, have also criticised "action" on climate change--that is the sick joke that we can fix it passively, by taxing consumption--you'd think any moron could see through that; but no, turns out I'm a savant! But then, I actually thought it through. Nor do my conclusions validate my plump position in the scheme of things; they insist in fact that I must change my ways.
Unfortunately, I'm the black sheep!

bonny says about CO2:

"CO2 can both lead, and lag, a temperature change. It can be both a dependent and independent variable."

Bonny doesn't know what he/she is talking about. The alarmists try to prove CO2 causes temperature to increase by establishing a correlation between them. Not only that but they claim to be able to predict temperature movement from CO2; the statistical method of doing this is the coefficient of determination, r2; unfortunately CO2 cannot give the proportion of the variance (fluctuation) of temperature that is predictable from variance in CO2 over any period. Which is to say over any period the relationship can be +ve, high or low, or -ve, high or low, or neutral.

Bonny is saying the absence of a consistent r2 relationship between CO2/and temperature means CO2 is both an independent and dependent variable.

The only thing absent from this statement is reality

Poirot & Squeers,

With respect, your perceptions of ordinary people and their ability to make their own choices are somewhat determinist.

And elitist: Squeers, you can't write

"I do not support the rights of "elites to rule","

and then contradict yourself by adding:

" ... but the sheep can't be expected to act responsibly--leave their pasture--on matters about which they're ignorant."

The problem with our forms of democracy, defective as they almost certainly may be, is that that's what you have to run with - the will of the people, no matter how manipulated you might think they have been. Messy, but far superior to whatever comes second.

After all, what's your alternative to messy democracy other than some form of elitism, sliding into authoritarianism, if not something worse ?

We may not have completed the long struggle for democracy, but it's the best we've got so far. As a a one-time socialist, a former communist, I wish there were better forms of government, but I don't believe that any workable forms have yet been proposed, not socialism or any other bullsh!t Utopia - those all have degenerated into tarted-up forms of fascism and I wouldn't lift a finger to ever promote such phony systems again.

Your Platonic solution, rule by the Men of Gold, the keepers, the elders, the wise men, over the dumb masses too easily duped for their own good, has a long and dishonourable history. I suggest you go back to your books and keep looking.

Cheers,

Joe