The extended navel analogy puts me on my guard, Sock Ratteez (curious spelling); I have two navel brothers and a brother in law, including a submariner, whose patriotic zeal disturbs me. I side with Gore Vidal who, differing with Samuel Johnson, said that patriotism was the "first" refuge of a scoundrel.
The sad truth is that no human can be trusted. The human heart, or helm, is finally answerable to default drives, it seems; ethics and morals are impositions, like nylon restraints. AO's signify nothing but charming (and dangerous) naivety. Democracy is run by default, if you take my meaning.
What we need is a god, or perhaps a computer programme that spells out appropriate ethics. These are then observed by default. Democratic action, via the electorate "and" its representatives (which would, and does, amount to the same thing) would then be a matter of fine tuning, the fundamentals being in place.
We have to stop blaming our parliaments--their members represent their constituents with great felicity.
I am all for anti-democratic behaviour since democracy, in its current condition, signifies a popular doctrine of corrupted self-interest.
Care for a Socratic dialectic?

By all means. I didn't mean the naval analogy in the literal sense but the psychological, where we need to satisfy all sorts of diverse world views with the actions of someone who represents our political interests. I've never felt represented in Australia. When I was in France under Mitterand, I felt represented, even if a lot of stuff came out on him that wasn't very encouraging.

The essential problem is that there are a lot of scared people who want protection, forming two camps - poor and rich - and a minority of idiots who say they can deliver, also divided into two camps. I say we don't need the protection. We can organise our affairs without the fear the way the Quakers do, by reaching an agreement, not barely one-third of one, the way we do in our pretend 'democracy'. Quakers don't open the doors of the hall till everyone has has exhausted their argument and seen what the others were on about. A feeling of the meeting is what prevails as law.

That's democracy, not the never-ending series of bun-fights and catastrophes we wallow in. But I think we err in seeing the world as a problem to be fixed. It's not the problem to be fixed. We are that problem, and we are the only fixers we can count on to solve our problem, using the world as a foil. That's not recognised, which is why we're advancing backwards.

Sorry so long replying Sock Ratteez.
What you say sounds interesting, but just off the top of my head the problem appears to me to be that communitarianism is untenable in the overwhelming global context of market capitalism. It's an illusion to think that any group, state or nation can be self-determining. Given the prevailing economic winds, all cultures and countries must trim their sails to their best advantage. It's a charming illusion to think we can take democracy back to Athens when it's no longer the determining force behind policy. National policies are determined more or less automatically, by pragmatic realism. Domestic policies are the endless civil renegotiations that fulfil the fantasy for citizens that their mores and institutions mean something. They don't. Democratic values, work ethics, humanism, indeed belief systems generally, are tolerated, nay encouraged, because they incite the vast majority to police themselves and thus form a highly efficient engine of wealth. Meanwhile all governments abuse their cultures' ostensible values as a matter of course during global negotiations. They are slaves to Mammon, not ideals. Ideals are observed in the breach and patronised during elections.
The electorate is mostly the same, however each member may rationalise matters; thus I say our politicians precisely mirror us.
So, we can have a go at running things ourselves--shifting the furniture--we might even change a few things; all to the good, if that's what it takes to keep us orderly and in harness!

I agree we need a civilian think tank; but how would it be set up? And how do you prevent it becoming a discordant rabble? That's the beauty of libertarianism; it discourages organised thought in favour of naive egotism!

That's alright. I got sent off for excessive possession of the ball, so it didn't matter. Literal communitarianism in the old Quaker or Jeffersonian style can't be revived as a solo act, but its principles can be transposed into new media, indeed will have to be. Horse and buggy market Capitalism lingers because we have no imagination, hate change and remain convinced that greed is good even if it will kill us. Will we go for broke?

When things look hopeless enough, the change will come, maybe without us even feeling violated (as in 'revoluted' if there's such a word). Unfortunately, it'll see a lot of casualties. The current 'determining force/s behind policy' will be irrelevant in the new conditions we've created on our Capitalistic romp in the china shop.

The people I know who think Marx was wrong haven't read him. Marx described the alienation of man from himself that would bring him undone. In Australia, those who don't know are given higher status and greater influence than those who do. It's a nice leveller, you see. Keeps the smart-alecs at bay, and lets the serious, practical types do all the moving and shaking unhindered. The practice comes at a terrible price. The 'don't knows' have done their thing, and we'll reap what they've sown for us.

I can't speak for the present reality you refer to. It's deck-chairs on the Titanic to me, alas: interesting, but hollow, souless and mindless. Our condition is not one we can fix with mere good intentions. We fear material poverty (which can be sustained with few problems as so many of us prove daily) like the plague while tolerating (indeed mindlessly celebrating) our (psychic, or psychological) poverty that verges on spiritual bankruptcy.

What doth it profith a man/society to have abundant moolah in an asylum we inaptly call 'civilisation'? Therein lies the problem: we don't know what makes us civilised anymore. We've forgotten. I worked in a university and saw the wisdom (the humanities) being junked to make way for "real subjects" like marketing and management.

A sombre tune, Sock Ratteezz, as was mine. I'm doing a PhD very much on this topic, on the vestiges of Marxism as seen through the eyes of a few scattered survivors: Eagleton, Jameson, Critchley, Zizek and others, so these issues we're alluding to are of great interest--and genuine concern. I'm presenting at a conference later this year on the subject "Thinking the World in the 21st Century"--though I haven't written the paper yet--maybe I can address some of these issues we've raised. We shall have to compare notes some time.

Sock,

not a bad rave but not a lot of new or solutions either.
I would suggest that the main flaw I see in schools of thought is that none seem to take much account of human nature, "one size fits no-one"
so to speak. Likewise, pragmatism has tends to be the leaving an open window. through which the Vandals climb through and trash the best of interiors leaving a hollow, worthless shell.
Neither can they predict outcomes with reliability.... kinda like an intellectual economics.

What is missing is contingency tree i.e. if this happens then go to a. if that happens go to b. scenario rather than the rigidity of one size fits no one.

BTW my experience as an attender the 'friends'(Quakers) don't do it quite as you explained.

As Ms A. Roy put it, choice of Leader(party) is little like choosing a detergent (in side the flashy package they tend to be the same the flaw is "the system".

I also contend that your intelligentsia depiction is fraught with problems in that it ignores several pertinent points. The first that people fall into a continuoum not two classes that is a flaw in Marx. Statistics show fairly convincingly that an distribution is a bell curve with 2/3 within two std. devs from the mean.
"The great hopeless unwashed" are about 30% of the whole.

I also agree that communitarianism is doomed in that it would encourage tribalism which doesn't go well for thinking of the whole as does altruistic humanism. However the latter has its own set of issues. this tends to confirm my original assertion about schools.