Fintan O'Toole on democracy

oscarBravo

It seems I'm not alone in my wariness over blind faith in democracy: Fintan O'Toole has an interesting op-ed piece in today's Irish Times.

...the awkward thing about this democratic deficit is that, to say the great unsayable, it has actually been rather a good thing. When democracy is dysfunctional, it makes sense to set limits to the potential folly of governments and to force them to think about the future.

sink

Yeah I read it earlier. I have to agree with him. When the government did anything on it's own initiative it seemed to **** it up rightly. I don't have any faith in them to handle anything the EU or social partnership contribute to our country.

Kama

I remember reading his piece just prior to Lisbon, advising a Yes for similar reasons; better the EU run the show than our homegrown politicos, and I've a lot of sympathy with the argument. Yet it dovetails conveniently with the Eurosceptic 'oh noes they be stealin' our powers' position; I'm not convinced that people agree with or want this situation, or that imposing it 'for their own good' is a healthy trend for a unification project.

Whether its 'better for us', perhaps; tbh I don't think thats provable without a time machine. I'm still enough of a 'fundamentalist', I guess, that doing something against popular consent sticks in my craw.

kevteljeur

I'm stating what is probably very obvious and old, but complete democracy isn't necessarily a good thing. Ireland, with it's complex system of proportional representation, is often a slave to many disparate interests which can mean that 'doing the right thing' (frequently, it's also initially the unpopular thing) often plays second fiddle to 'making everyone happy'. It really does help sometimes to simply be told what to do, and get on with implementing it.

I do feel that this has given the Government more confidence in implementing it's own legislation which is unpopular beforehand, but comes with social benefits which become clearer over time. On the other hand, they're still free to lower income tax with every election, and this is an unfortunate thing about a free democracy; it has a price, and can be bought.

ChocolateSauce

The man is genius and by far my favourite journalist.

I remember thinking he'd hit the nail on the head when I read that piece. The idea of relying on our own politicians is enough to make me think of emigrating...

djpbarry

theozster wrote: »

The idea of relying on our own politicians is enough to make me think of emigrating...

I doubt you'd be the only one, but then that doesn’t really matter to the secessionists; economic wellbeing is secondary to patriotism, sovereignty, national purity, blah blah blah...