Monday, November 2, 2015

IV (inclusive voting) is WALK of the talk

Like all of the world's Anglo Saxon democracies, Canadian citizens talk a lot of talk about how their nation is a very inclusive society.

But I have been monitoring the comments under news stories about the new Canadian government's promise to end FPTP voting in time for the next election and I don't believe their talk.

Rather I do believe their talk - it is their walk that I don't believe.

Mere lip service, I think people call it.

The gist of most thoughtful comments can be summed up by this paraphrase :

"It is very unfair that 2/3 of all Canadians after every election are denied a voice in parliament for their vote.
But we must be practical, if all parties above a 4% vote count got seats in parliament, we won't have a majority government to make tough decisions and no legislative action would ever get done quickly."

To students of WWII, it all sounds very familiar.

For in late 1940, the leaders of the de facto Allied superpowers, Britain and America, said the war would only end quickly and with minimum loss of life, if FDR & Churchill's circle made all the decisions for the allied coalition and non-occupied world.

But WWII lasted six years and with 75 million lives cut short by its consequences.

That was about 5 years longer than anybody in the Allied, Axis and Neutral thought it would - and about 74 million more lives lost than anyone thought thought possible.

Yes indeed, dictatorial -non-inclusive- governments or coalitions can issue quick orders.

Orders that generally go nowhere fast, because there is no genuine united consensus buying into them.

But while inclusive governments and coalitions make decisions much slower, those decisions also tend to gain real traction (orders become actions), as a result of everyone buying in.

If inclusion merely means 'we won't kill you or send you to jail unfairly but we hold all the power and make all the decisions', then that is hardly whole hearted, warm hearted, inclusion-creating behavior (Agape behavior).

Not inclusion as Jesus and many other religious leaders would understood it.

The truth that Canadians are about to learn anew is that fully successful systems of inclusive voting are created more by theologians than by mathematicians....

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