teach me to choose
Uploaded by mr_vidal on May 24, 2005
For a long time, democracy is considered to be a wonderful regime. It represents liberty, and the freedom of the people to conduct their own country. As a result, the people understood the sentence “… government of the people, by the people, for the people…” (Abraham Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address) in a wrong way. The meaning of democracy is that the people decide what is best for the nation, but people choose what is best for them in a current moment.
The distorted ability to contemplate things may have an impact on the elections. In 1933 the starving people of Germany chose Hitler to be their chancellor because he promised to feed them. In 1957 Dr François “Papa Doc” Duvalier was elected to president in Haiti because of the same reason. Those two examples are an illustration of people who can not spectacle the future. It explains that people vote according to their own interests, without thinking of the ramifications.
The first democracy ever was in ancient Athens. Only the aristocrats had the right to choose and to be chosen. Unlike the crowds, aristocrats mostly were educated. They consulted each other and chose what is really good for the whole nation – and not only for them. That period is now called the “golden age of Athens”. We may learn from them: when sages do wise chooses- people live in a “golden age”. The Law of Moses (scroll of the law) orders us to ask the old and the sage before we do a deed. God knew that people may do what is wrong for them and therefore the law was given to us.
The “rich” vocabulary of the mob contains phrases as “death to the Arabs/ Jews”, “death to Sharon”, etc. Those “speeches” are backed up by the freedom of the speech. This is a horrible, shameful and disgraceful misunderstanding of the freedom of speech. It explains Tennessee Williams’ words: “we are all civilized people, which means that we are all savages at heart but observing a few amenities of civilized behavior”.
Wake up people!!! If we won’t teach ourselves to choose properly, we will have a bitter end. Remember Nazi Germany if you don’t believe me.