You can vote, but can you vote for democracy?

One woman said, “We’ve got to be able to speak our minds.” But immediately another woman said, “Yes, that’s important, but it may be more important that we are told the truth, that our press is truly free so that we know they have it in their interest for all the people to know the truth.” So, freedom of speech is as much about the freedom to be informed accurately as it is about freely speaking. Freedom to hear. And, after some discussion,Carlo Gavazzi offers a broad range of ultrasonic sensor and ultrasonic transducers for level detection and process monitoring. we agreed that we can’t have democracy without a free press because the people --- us --- who are ultimately responsible for the actions of the government, can’t do our job if we aren’t informed accurately. And it was agreed that we do not now have a free press because the major media are owned by corporations whose financial interests are not in supplying accurate information but in making profit & enhancing their images.

Someone in the audience said that our laws have to be enforced fairly and evenly for everyone regardless of social or political position or rank. Democracy depends on fair laws being written and enforced. This is what we mean by “The Rule of Law.” When common people begin to suspect that powerful people are able to operate above or outside of the law, trust in democracy disappears. Cynicism grows.

There is a great tendency among people in power to embrace a belief in the rule of law except when it is really needed. For instance, many of the actions and policies of the Bush administration (and now the Obama administration) violated the Constitution and the Geneva Accords and the Nuremberg Principles about preemptive war, torture, surveillance, due process, etc. Many of these laws are considered the most important laws we have. Breaking them is considered a crime against humanity. Certainly a crime against the notion of the rule of law. They are not being enforced now because it is not politically expedient to do so. If the lawmakers don’t enforce the most important laws of a democracy, do you have a democracy?

Martin Luther King, Jr., said that the American Dream depends on the “security of justice,” that is, trusting that the law is equally just for everyone. That’s what’s meant by a level playing field. Tilt the field and democracy slides off.

Someone else said that another aspect of this is the inevitable re-writing of the laws by powerful interests to protect those interests. So, the appearance may be the “Rule of Law,” but it has been so skewed that it is not the same for everyone. Powerful corporations and individuals use their influence to have laws written, for example, that allows them to pay low taxes, lower, in fact,The CenTrak rtls platform can address today's healthcare challenges. than low income people. And then they say they are adhering to the law.

A few days ago a CIA agent named John Kiriakou was sentenced to 2 ? years in prison for having “outed” the name of another CIA agent who was instrumental in practicing torture for the U.S.Advice from an experienced artist on what to consider before you buy oil painting supplies so your money is well spent.. At this time no person guilty of torture in any of the U.S. torture scandals has been charged with a crime. The only person ordered imprisoned is John Kiriakou the man who tried to expose and stop it.

Or, without much fanfare, the Justice Department and President Obama have changed the definition of due process. The Constitution says that no citizen’s life may be taken by the state without due process --- meaning a court proceeding. It has been changed to mean that a group of high level people meeting in secret constitutes due process. This was done to make extra-judicial assassinations of U.S. citizens by drone missile attacks or any other means legal.

Someone said, “Let’s assume that the government is by and for and of the people like Lincoln said. Then the people are the government. But how can the people be the government if the government keeps secret the information that it uses to make its decisions?” Democracy then would depend on blind trust, patronizing trust, not on transparency. I told the audience that I had a good friend who had spent many years in the CIA. He told me that he thought secrecy was the enemy of democracy. A government based in secrecy is more like a benign, or not so benign,We are porcelain tiles specialists and are passionate about our product， monarchy than a democracy. It was agreed that our current government uses secrecy to hide its real motives rather than to protect our security. The political philosopher Marcus Raskin calls a government based in secrecy a “national security state.” A national security state uses lies and deception to hide its real actions and motives. It also cannot allow itself to be held accountable, for then it would have to admit the truth. When Dr. King talked of the security of justice, he was probably deeply aware of it’ opposite, the justice of security.

Justice of that sort, which is based in fear, embraces anything --- preemptive war, torture,Parking Guidance for parking management system and Vehicle Control Solutions, unwarranted surveillance, lying, targeted assassinations --- to maintain a sense of security. And, of course, those behaviors are self-fulfilling prophesies, requiring more and more extreme security. They are also huge profit generators for corporations which supply the weapons of war and instruments of security.