Governance Reform

Fri - November 11, 2005

Pundita's Parting Shots on Democracy

My friend, foreign policy blogger Pundita, is hanging up her keyboard. :-( Well, maybe not complete retirement, but certainly moving away from a daily format, for reasons I completely understand.

Before she left, though, she was kind enough to reply to my thoughts on "glopism" with an essay on the truly anti-Confucian villainy driving China's military dictatorship, which distinguishes it from those governments which are merely corrupt.

However -- perhaps more importantly -- Pundita leaves us with at least one ray of hope, inspired by a poor woman's word to her village in India:

We cannot all be great people but no matter how small we are, we can all do great things."

And, from someone who can come across as somewhat cynical about Grand New Initiatives, her quiet confidence is striking:

The age of democracy is here. It's been such a long time coming. It has gathered a force that cannot be stopped.

I do not romanticize "the people" or the democratic process. I see them as the only workable solution to a central problem that government has never faced until the rise of megapopulations

People in megasocieties have to see evidence that at the end of the road, their efforts are going toward problem solution, as versus keeping in power an elite whose only idea of problem solving is keeping themselves in power.

It's all over for them; I know it might be hard to believe at this moment but we're in the mop-up period. No matter how ruthless the military commander, no matter how silver-tongued the demagogue, huge problems rippling in falling-domino effect through a megasociety are a force more powerful than guns and rhetoric.

Populations today are simply too large to hope that a vast bureaucracy laboring under an emperor or oligarchy can fill the bill. Thus, democracy is no longer an option; it's the only edge humanity has against the downsides of our success as a race, which is measured in our great number.

Amen. Thank you, Pundita. I don't know whether you consider yourself great or small, but you have certainly done great things. We have been blessed by your presence in the Blogosphere. May your circle of influence and joy continue to expand, whatever you do and wherever you go. God bless you.

Posted at 12:13 PM

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