The comments that people have been leaving for yesterday’s post have brought up some interesting questions and ideas, and one thing that’s come up several times is Shariah. I’m all for it, btw. Why? Man’s proven that he’s a loser, that the he doesn’t know best, and that the systems he invents are flawed. Just look at Communism, at Socialism, at Dictatorship (waves in the direction Parliament building). Read up on Anarchy, Monarchy, Plutocracy, Oligarchy and all the other crazy systems that man has tried to govern society with. They all have their pros, and they all have cons too, and some of them have holes in their logic that you could drive a semi through. Take, for example, my favorite form of government. I call it Populocracy.

In Populocracy, the laws of society are not decided by the society’s educated or qualified, or by people of understanding, they are decided on according to popular support. What this means is that if 80% of the common citizens were in favor of legalizing something like, say…child molestation, it would happen. In countries where Populocracy is practiced, child-murder (abortion), pornography and homosexuality are already legal, and it’s assumed that drugs will soon be too. After all, anything with enough popular support goes, regardless of whether it’s a benefit or a detriment to the society. Similarly, a law that is of obvious benefit to a society, like many conservation and environmental acts, will go unpassed simply due to lack of popular support. There is no right or wrong, there is only popular and unpopular.



Leaders in the populocratic system are picked very much the same way. Instead of putting the question of leadership to who is most qualified, or most experienced, or brilliant enough to be in a position of office, it is put to who is most popular. In some populocratic countries, actors and actresses with no previous experience in civil administration or even leadership are put into positions of power and great responsibility. Just this year, an actor, Arnold Schwarzenegar, was elected to govern millions of people in the fifth largest economy in the world, California.

It’s interesting that populocratic principles apply not only to law, but to justice as well. Innocence or guilt in a populocratic court are not decided by a panel of judges trained in criminology and judicial proceedings, rather, the trial is decided by a group of the defendant’s peers, while a single judge plays the role of referee. Regardless of whether these peers have any knowledge of pathology, or criminal psychology, or any field of knowledge that would help them make the best decision possible, they are still given the task of deciding a defendant’s guilt. In their uninformed, inexperienced hands, they hold the power of life and death. Cases have shown that results can vary when a single case is given two trials (OJ Simpson: Acquitted in a criminal court and guilty in a civil court), and sometimes, the group of peers can be emotionally swayed to make decisions that go against evidence, and sometimes against the very grain of logic. It’s interesting to note that this panel of peers is picked at random, and ones with any prior knowledge of the case are exempted from taking in part of it.

What country of fools, you would ask, what kind of morons would put their country into the hands of mob mentality when popular opinion is by no means a valid indicator of the rightness or wrongness of an action or a law? Were Jim-Crow laws in the southern US not put in place by popular opinion? Never mind that the enlightened, the brilliant, the men of understanding of the time knew that racial discrimination and segregation were baseless and inexcusable, because they had no power. In a Populocracy, there is no power except in numbers, and the might of these superior numbers means right.

It is often minorities who suffer the most in a Populocracy, because they simply lack the numbers it would take to swing laws in their favor. In some populocratic countries, religious groups are marginalized and their religious practices banned by a hostile majority, regardless of the fact that religious discrimination of any sort is inexcusable. There have been instances in populocratic history where ethnic and religious minorities have lost their properties, their civil rights, even their human rights legally and with the government’s blessing, because popular opinion at the time was in favor of such laws and the government acted accordingly.



And you know what’s sad? This illogical system is one of the most popular in the world, and there are people and governments who are currently in the process of waging war and placing embargoes on non-populocratic countries simply because they refuse to implement Populocracy. And this isn’t the first time, in the 1960’s a militant Populocracy invaded Vietnam for the sole purpose of installing a populocratic government to prevent the spread of Communism, a system highly opposed to Populocracy while simultaneously being just as foolish. This same country also staged a failed invasion of Cuba and a half-takeover in Korea that has split the country between populocratic and non-populocratic governments in a bloody civil war, solely for the purpose of spreading Populocracy in the world, even if by force.




In case no one’s noticed yet, Democr- err, Populocracy is nothing but mob mentality loosely housed within an administrative structure. And people wonder why I, born, raised, and college-educated in a populocratic country (though currently living in a dictatorship) am so in favor of Shariah.

posted by Abez @ 12/19/2003 09:51:00 PM