Mehr Demokratie =============== Friday 4 September 2009 22:54 It was supposed to be about Volksentscheid ins Grundgesetz but other interesting things turned up as well. Interesting was the political landscape. Bernhard Müller seemed tormented, like a distinguished tourist in a place where people from his country are known for misbehaving. His point was that the behavior of other political parties are ruining it for everyone, and the CDU illustrated that perfectly tonight. Katja Suding was business as usual, but probably not happy with the black part of a future Schwartz-Gelb. Katharina Fegebank seemed very interested in keeping the focus as far away from Hamburg as possible, so the connection between GAL and CDU wouldn't come up. Ingo Egloff was busy fending off some Wandsbek NIMBY posse or something. Robert Heinemann (CDU) was the only one listed as against more democracy, and he didn't convince. Every point against Volksentscheid ins Grundgesetz could also be made against democracy in general: It gets in the way of the people in power trying to do their job, it can be abused by populist forces, subjects can be to complicated for most people to be able to properly judge them, etc. Those are the same arguments leaders in less democratic states use to try to stay in power. Given enough spin a powerful dictatorship can be presented as an extremely efficient democracy. Like death is able to cure any disease. by Roland van Ipenburg http://www.xs4all.nl/~ipenburg/blog/posts/play/2009/09/04/mehr-demokratie/