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Sunday, November 29, 2009

Swiss Minaret Ban


The Swiss have made it official, no new minarets in our country thank you very much.

To the Swiss, the minaret is a symbol of Muslim based terrorism, essentially.

Now we could go on and on about the church spire or even the corporate skyscraper as symbols of this and that tyranny, but we won't.

But I will comment that this particular decision seems to reek of fear along with a healthy dose of completely absent self reflective awareness, AKA ignorance.

Yahoo: Projection: Swiss vote to ban new minarets

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe the US & other nations should follow Swiss style direct democracy?

The Swiss just voted to ban minarets on mosques and this is a great exercise of their unique form of direct democracy regardless of your views on the subject. But my question is why do the Swiss get to overrule their politicians and parliament and here in the US, we don’t have that right?

Let’s bring Swiss style direct democracy to the United States so Americans can vote on the Wall Street bailouts, government health care, whether to audit or abolish the FED, or require Congress declare war before we invade another country. Read why Switzerland is free and America is not and help restore citizen control over the US government and Congress currently under control of special interests. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/holland9.1.1.html

Jim Sande said...

Anonymous, you raise an interesting point, and certainly I like many hold democracy in sincere highest regard.

Let me play the role of devil's advocate with one of your points.

You write - "or require Congress declare war before we invade another country."

Recall that post 9-11 something in the order of 70% of Americans supported the move to war in Iraq. I personally believe that the vast expanse of that 70% support was based on a strategic media blitz of dis-information from the Bush-Cheney-neocon administration. We are learning more and more from even a source like the Chilcott inquiry that Bush was keen on Iraq even prior to 9-11. Certainly the neo-cons were interested in invading Iraq back in 1992 when they presented Clinton with the same carefully laid out plan when Clinton assumed office.

In this context, let's say people were given direct democratic control in regards to invading Iraq. Is this democracy? The people believed that Iraq had WMD and were responsible for 9-11. Both these things are not true. Yet they would have fully supported the invasion with a direct democratic voice.

I write this to point out that democracy is more than simply people having a voice. It is also people having access to the complete information, not the biased information that supports a particular political agenda.

Glynn Kalara said...

Direct Democracy would be a waste of time in this country. But certainly more democracy would help. If companies were more democratic and unions and schools and every other institution of life not just voting for whether u like minarets or such nonsense. We live in a largely authoritarian based society with little if any real democracy.