Re Democracy's barque

To: Retort
From: GS

[Geoff really doesn't like the direction this is going - the Badiovian, much less the Nietzschean, suspicion of "democracy". IB]

Gee, I have an idea. Why not call yourselves bastard satanic pedophiles, redefining those terms, of course, so that they accord with your utopian formula for correctness?
 
The point of political language is not the achievement of some abstract analytical formalism, it is, first and foremost, to persuade. Even the North Koreans and the old East Germans had the sense to call themselves democratic. Because democracy, even in seed or remnant, is essential. Chomsky doesn't celebrate democracy, he simply has no clue about it, and is unable to differentiate the democratic and antidemocratic aspects of a given situation (why Hugo Chavez loves his books). If you want a celebration of democracy, try Walt Whitman:
 
"We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet I cannot too often repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawaken’d, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted. It is, in some sort, younger brother of another great and often-used word, Nature, whose history also waits unwritten."
 
GS