The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #122449   Message #2687619
Posted By: Little Hawk
26-Jul-09 - 06:32 PM
Thread Name: BS: So why has the BNP gained votes?
Subject: RE: BS: So why has the BNP gained votes?
I think Peace was making a rather good satirical point by arbitrarily blaming "rabbits" for all the world's troubles. He was demonstrating just how silly it is when a political movement starts demonizing some particular minority group of people for its own political gains. It could be the Jews or the Gyspies or the Hispanics or the Hindus or the Muslims...or the rabbits.

That's the satirical point, isn't it? The point is the innate irrationality and unfairness of blaming some whole group of people for your problems, whatever you think those problems are.

But don't complain that your democracy allows a BNP member to get elected in some riding. If it didn't allow some particular category of political candidate to get elected...provided he or she got enough votes to get elected...then it simply wouldn't BE a democracy. It would be something else just pretending to be a democracy. It would be a controlled oligarchy of officially sanctioned viewpoints, not a democracy.

You cannot found a true democracy upon the exclusion of those viewpoints you don't happen to like or agree with. If you have a message which you think is better than theirs, then my suggestion is: get your own message out there. Don't waste your energy attacking them. Promote what is positive in your own message. I get tired of hearing people attack other people when they could be presenting positive ideas of their own instead.

That's why Mother Teresa once refused an invitation to attend an "anti-war" demonstration, but she said she would be happy to attend any "peace" demonstration.

The first is based upon angrily attacking someone else's agenda. The second is based on resolutely presenting a positive agenda of your own. There's a vital difference in psychology there. It's the difference Obama kept trying to articulate in the past USA election (not that I think Obama is perfect in that respect...he's not...but he did at least try to stick to positives instead of constantly attacking other people).