anotherneil
Well-Known Member
There are those out there who say that we're a democracy, yet policy is determined by political party platforms and lobbyists.
I don't see how lobbyists have any business existing at all, because legislators are supposed to be setting policy based on their constituents who put them in office, which is not compatible or consistent with the concept of lobbying; before they're even elected to public office, they should already have their goals/mission/agenda or whatever you want to call it established.
By even entertaining the idea of taking lobbyists' interests into consideration, they're already deciding that rather than listening to their constituents, they're going to listen to special interest groups instead. Lobbyists are thus the adversaries of democracy.
Political parties are also adversaries of democracy; the reason I say this is because when a politician belongs to a political party, they've established that their loyalty is to the political party rather than their constituents. Political parties are inherently dominated by their vanguards, which means that loyalty to a political party is loyalty to its vanguards, and loyalty to political parties conflicts with loyalty to constituents.
There is one potential practical advantage to having a two-party system, which is that serves as a means of process of elimination, as long as there aren't popular enough spoiler 3rd candidates in a general election, but I'm not referring to that & it's beside the point.
The point is that when politicians are part of a political party, their loyalty isn't to their constituents; it's to the political party itself and its vanguards, and that isn't democracy.
I don't see how lobbyists have any business existing at all, because legislators are supposed to be setting policy based on their constituents who put them in office, which is not compatible or consistent with the concept of lobbying; before they're even elected to public office, they should already have their goals/mission/agenda or whatever you want to call it established.
By even entertaining the idea of taking lobbyists' interests into consideration, they're already deciding that rather than listening to their constituents, they're going to listen to special interest groups instead. Lobbyists are thus the adversaries of democracy.
Political parties are also adversaries of democracy; the reason I say this is because when a politician belongs to a political party, they've established that their loyalty is to the political party rather than their constituents. Political parties are inherently dominated by their vanguards, which means that loyalty to a political party is loyalty to its vanguards, and loyalty to political parties conflicts with loyalty to constituents.
There is one potential practical advantage to having a two-party system, which is that serves as a means of process of elimination, as long as there aren't popular enough spoiler 3rd candidates in a general election, but I'm not referring to that & it's beside the point.
The point is that when politicians are part of a political party, their loyalty isn't to their constituents; it's to the political party itself and its vanguards, and that isn't democracy.
