Fidel Castro dead

There's also a more fundamental point. Democracy isn't important because people generally have a full understanding of political issues and know precisely what they want the government to do; it's important because the consent of the governed is the only justifiable legitimacy for an organisation that claims the right to make laws and issue orders. Even if you accept the possibility of a genuinely benevolent dictatorship (that is, one that is genuinely benevolent towards everyone), and the possibility of that dictatorship more often making decisions that look good in hindsight compared with a democratic government, it still has no business being a government unless the people want to keep it around.
Rhodesia under the 1961 constitution was a democracy, one with education and money requirements, but a democracy nonetheless. While it was dominated by white in terms of electors eventually it would have most likely moved to a state where most electors would have been black without changing any laws as the black population became educated and wealthy enough to gain suffrage.
 
The meaning of 'democracy' is a little loose, but I think most of us would find the idea of a 'democracy with money requirements' to be a contradiction - particularly if that de facto excluded the vast majority of the population, or gave a tiny minority massively disproportionate power, as it did in Rhodesia.
 
Rhodesia under the 1961 constitution was a democracy, one with education and money requirements, but a democracy nonetheless. While it was dominated by white in terms of electors eventually it would have most likely moved to a state where most electors would have been black without changing any laws as the black population became educated and wealthy enough to gain suffrage.


If the majority of adults are banned from participation in the government, then they are under no obligation to accept the legitimacy of the government.
 
it took 90 years, but fidel finally became a good communist.....burn in hell scum


JAJAJAJAJAJAJAA!!!!!!
 
If the majority of adults are banned from participation in the government, then they are under no obligation to accept the legitimacy of the government.

So the United States government had no legitimacy prior to the adaption of the 19th amendment?
 
The meaning of 'democracy' is a little loose, but I think most of us would find the idea of a 'democracy with money requirements' to be a contradiction - particularly if that de facto excluded the vast majority of the population, or gave a tiny minority massively disproportionate power, as it did in Rhodesia.
Tell me, how does an illiterate person make informed decisions on who to vote for?
 
Tell me, how does an illiterate person make informed decisions on who to vote for?
Illiterate people are still able to make decisions for themselves and judge what candidates or people they respect are saying. I mean, I should hardly need point out the terrible ways "intelligence tests" have been abused and inevitably are abused in determining suffrage.
 
Tell me, how does an illiterate person make informed decisions on who to vote for?
Literacy is actually not a requirement to vote in Canada. If a person is not able to read, due to blindness or not being literate in English or French, that person is allowed to have someone to read the ballot and instructions to him/her. The helper is required to take the Oath of Friend of Incapacitated Elector, which is basically a promise to mark the ballot as the incapacitated (for this purpose, an illiterate person would be considered "incapacitated") elector directs. Both of them go to an empty station where the elector tells the helper how to mark the ballot. Of course there's no way to verify whether the helper actually does this or uses it as a sneaky way to vote for someone else, but the fact remains that illiteracy or other reason for not being able to read the ballot is not a valid reason to deny a citizen their right to vote.

Illiteracy doesn't prevent a person from watching TV, listening to the radio, or talking to people. Of course they don't get as much information as a literate person does, but they're not completely out of the loop.
 
Literacy is actually not a requirement to vote in Canada. If a person is not able to read, due to blindness or not being literate in English or French, that person is allowed to have someone to read the ballot and instructions to him/her. The helper is required to take the Oath of Friend of Incapacitated Elector, which is basically a promise to mark the ballot as the incapacitated (for this purpose, an illiterate person would be considered "incapacitated") elector directs. Both of them go to an empty station where the elector tells the helper how to mark the ballot. Of course there's no way to verify whether the helper actually does this or uses it as a sneaky way to vote for someone else, but the fact remains that illiteracy or other reason for not being able to read the ballot is not a valid reason to deny a citizen their right to vote.

Illiteracy doesn't prevent a person from watching TV, listening to the radio, or talking to people. Of course they don't get as much information as a literate person does, but they're not completely out of the loop.

That is actually a very interesting point, not that I think people should be illiterate. But one could argue that now days people gather very little information from reading in the first place, its been largely relegated to function(Reading street signs and such).
 
But one could argue that now days people gather very little information from reading in the first place, its been largely relegated to function(Reading street signs and such).
You don't think people read newspapers, news sites, other online articles, and books?
 
You don't think people read newspapers, news sites, other online articles, and books?

That was poor wording on my part. I should have clarified in terms of politics. According to American Press Americans get 85% of there news from television, which isn't to say there isn't reading involved, but it is a primarily visual medium.
 
That was poor wording on my part. I should have clarified in terms of politics. According to American Press Americans get 85% of there news from television, which isn't to say there isn't reading involved, but it is a primarily visual medium.
That may be true of Americans (I have no idea), but I'm Canadian, and I would venture to say that most voters here get their information from both TV and written sources.
 
That may be true of Americans (I have no idea), but I'm Canadian, and I would venture to say that most voters here get their information from both TV and written sources.

Apparently here you do not have to be to vote, although I cant find the legislation for what exactly happens if you are illiterate and want to vote. Or other circumstances such as blindness.
 
Easy, alt-Castro could have pocketed the money spent building hospitals and schools into Swiss Bank Accounts for his cronies and chartering Concordes for shopping trips to Paris. By default, the Castro government not plundering the country for the benefit of Concorde chartering and Parisian shopping trips made Cuba better off than the collection of cryptofascists and mafiosos that were the other -and more or less remain- options for Cuba.
Actually, Cuba before Castro was by far the richest and most socially advanced country in Latin America (and indeed with social indicators such as literacy, life expectancy and etc. above the average of Europe or Japan), while now it is one of the poorest. Some social indicators are still OK-ish, but in relative terms they are far worse than they were before the communist coup.

Castro didn't do anything positive for Cuba. He was a bloody tyrant, a murderer, and an inapt ruler who caused mass poverty and emigration.

The one good thing Castro achieved was to de-legitimize the Latin American left, which posed as democratic when opposing the military dictatorships but never took the Castro / Guevara posters out of their walls. And now they are getting their butts kicked democratically throughout the continent - indeed, the "Pink tide" will be buried with Castro. Good riddance! Never again!
 
 
A surprisingly lucid analysis by Zizek (at least until he begun making references to psychoanalysis mumb-jumbo, at which point I stopped watching). But he's spot-on: Cuba is stagnated and decadent. It hasn't produced anything new. To admire such an experiment is rather depressing.
 
Tell me, how does an illiterate person make informed decisions on who to vote for?

Leaving aside the very valid posts between yours and this one, no democracy has ever honestly tried to restrict voting to those able to make 'informed decisions'. If it did, people would be asked at the polling booth to give the policies of the parties on the ballot, or some other measure. More importantly, as I said in my last post, the whole point of democracy is that you have no right to call yourself a legitimate government unless the people you govern consent to having you in charge. The only defence for claiming the right to make law, negotiate treaties and declare war on behalf of a group of people is that you are accountable to those people. People don't lose the right to hold their leaders to account because they can't read.
 
Actually, Cuba before Castro was by far the richest and most socially advanced country in Latin America (and indeed with social indicators such as literacy, life expectancy and etc. above the average of Europe or Japan), while now it is one of the poorest. Some social indicators are still OK-ish, but in relative terms they are far worse than they were before the communist coup.

I don't know what alternate reality you're living in, but I certainly don't recognize it
 
I don't know what alternate reality you're living in, but I certainly don't recognize it
Of course, because you don't look beyond what your ideological buddies show you. Not exactly a free thinker.

Do some research on UN numbers regarding literacy, life expectancy, doctors per 1,000 inhabitants and per capita income in Cuba before the Castrist coup. If you don't find anything, I'll provide it to you. But try doing it yourself as an exercise of looking beyond PSOL-approved sources.
 
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