A thought for the day

Representative Democracy (Photo credit: Travis S.)

"[T]he need for representative democracy --- which makes it possible for a large number of people to live together in some measure of agreement while retaining a degree of control over their collective fate--- is also the best argument for the traditional state.  Indeed, the two are fated to live or die together.  Political choices will always be made because politics... is the proper form in which different collective preferences are expressed in open societies.  And because the state is the only forum in which politics can be practiced... it is imprudent as well as unrealistic to seek to reduce or bypass the state.  It is because the free flow of capital threatens the sovereign authority of democratic states that we need to strengthen these, not surrender them to the siren song of international markets, global society, or transnational communities." ---Tony Judt, Reappraisals (2008) at page 424.