csteele,
so my disenchantment is akin to that of Arab dictatorships?
Oh well, that's the usual payment I get for trying to move debate beyond, in this case national, self-aggrandisment.

Now that I know your jingoism is impervious to and resentful of criticism--as patriotism tends to be--I shan't dampen your party spirits with anything taxing in future.
Conceit dislikes to have its foibles told.

Dear csteele,

Billions of people on this earth, I am pretty sure, did not have a dream, similar to mine. They didn't wake up and see the news of the World Towers in rubble and say, "My dream last night had nothing to do with the destruction of the WTC." Mine was related because I related it. The dream could have had some unrelated cause. I certainly would not ascribe a coincidence to the supernatural.

David

Dear Squeers,

The first chance at OLO for a few days so you will have to forgive my writing on the fly. I have been reading some pretty inspiring and exciting blogs from citizen activists in Egypt and Libya. Perhaps a little too enthusiastic.

Just to be clear I was comparing you to the activists rather than the dictators.

I apologise if I have caused offence. Nor do I take any at being referred to as conceited, self-aggrandising, jingoistic, patriot.

Our differences on this topic do appear to be rather irreconcilable but that shouldn't be a reason for taking any skin off.

I feel it comes down to perspective (or to be a little Hume about it we have different perception bundles). To me your position is that we are being led by and ultimately failed by our institutions, further we are too 'pigheaded' to do anything about it. It is not an unreasonable stance however my take has us, through our democracy, as the ultimate future setters, though prepared to give up a degree of control for a stable system of governance.

I am prepared to say there were undoubtedly times in both Egypt and Libya as well as Syria, Iraq and Iran where the stability brought by their dictators was probably welcomed by the majority of the populace. Our system has a more benign head of state but one it is taking us a long while to agree to dispense with.

Perhaps our institutions serve as the repositories of our sense of reason, free to a degree from being a 'slave to our passions'.

Hume was certainly a conservative, especially when it came to changing our institutions. Perhaps I am more like him than I care to think. Must be my Scottish ancestry.

Dear davidf,

My father worked as a diver. I have a very vivid memory of my mother at the kitchen sink suddenly stop and say “Something's happened to your father”, then bundling all us children into the car for a speedy drive to the wharf when he was working. An accident had seen him very nearly drown and he had been thinking of us as he passed out convinced his time was up.

My grandmother was quite matter-of-fact about the episode saying many Scottish women from our clan were 'fey'.

When one does not have a decent explanation that doesn't offend ones sensibilities it is better to 'shrug the shoulders' and let some things pass to the keeper.

csteele,

perhaps I did overreact a bit, or at least I accept your distinction between activists and dictatorships. In complementary fashion, my criticisms were more of institutional invulnerability to criticism and our subjective complicity, though there was an element of hitting back. Thank you for your graciousness in reply. Hume btw recognised that we all have the same "bundles", but that "reason" was idiosyncratically prey to internal impressions, “our passions, emotions, desires and aversions”. Human reason, unconstrained by empirical evidence, was prone to eccentricity.
Advanced market democracies are dominated by vested interests possessed of highly refined technologies designed to manipulate and exploit Hume's "internal impressions". Institutions serve to constrain these idiosyncratic resources within manageable and, importantly, "predictable" bounds. Is this not self-evident? If it's not, that's because we are simultaneously tutored to grow self-esteem, the more exaggerated the better, in the process of being cultivated for harvest. Thus we have solid investments--material, ideological and self-affirming--in the farm, putting it above criticism, which becomes tantamount to blasphemy. Hence Johnson's "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel". It's ironic, a system built on egotism that's utterly compliant. This is not a conspiracy theory; the system evolved. Evolution is nothing if not opportunistic and ruthless.
Thus I'd thought I'd made a compelling case for recognising some of the inherent weaknesses of representative democracy and especially its institutional obstinacy. Popular democracy is highly admirable, all things being equal, but all things are not equal and its institutional conservatism is a definite weakness when agility is called for in response to less tangible, home-grown threats like AGW. If an aggressive neighbour threatened, action would be swift, but we're much less inclined to be self-critical.
I'm inclined, then, to agree with davidf that a benign oligarchy would be preferable, especially if its court was amenable to specialised appeal and responsive to internal degeneracy as well as external threats.
Devolution into tyranny is of course the worry, but perhaps this could be avoided if the oligarchical membership was temporary, and privilege was honorary rather than material.
Humility and devotion is precisely what Peoples' Governments lack.

Dear Squeers,

There are a few things I might get you to expand on if you have the time.

You say “Popular democracy is highly admirable, all things being equal,” then continue with “a benign oligarchy would be preferable,” particularly if “privilege was honorary rather than material” since “Humility and devotion is precisely what Peoples' Governments lack.”

Just some quick thoughts. I suppose one way of making our institutions more reactive to the will of the general populace would be to follow the States by having our law enforcement chiefs popularly elected along with our district attorneys. Why not elect judges?

But the separation of our courts from our parliament continues to largely remain in place in Australia. We as a society prefer it that way, perhaps intuitively keeping passions at bay from the servants of our reason.

In some ways we had achieved a measure of benign oligarchy in this country when the public service was at its most powerful. Frank and fearless advice and all that. Keating then Howard have put paid to it.

Further while I'm sure you don't want a bunch of Ghandi clones as our ruling class the sentiment you have expressed about humility and devotion is precisely why countries that have thrown of corrupt, venal dictatorships often react by installing the religious classes and their laws as their preferred rulers.