Umm, I think you can the democrats a little more credit than
that. The idea is not, doing what's popular will lead to the best
results, in objective terms, but doing what's pop is *morally*
correct. And it will lead to the minimum of unrest in the
population.
>That's the foundation of a "true democracy," not government in general.
>Indeed (and I can only speak of the US government here, thanks to
>Norteamericanocentric education) that's explicitly *not* the basis of
the
>US government. Our government was set up with the notion that we would
vote
>for people who would be expected to represent us -- not represent us in
the
>sense of "doing what we told them," but in the sense of ruling for us.
They
>were expected to know the issues better than we did, generally
speaking.
That's representative democracy, and it's the only sort that's
been tried on a large scale as far as I know (which isn't far).
Robin