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Hello, everyone! My name is Jeremy, and I come from the United Kingdom. I occasionally dabble in freelance journalism (albeit not too often these days, sadly) and photography, and like to consider myself a political philosopher of sorts.
Hello, everyone! My name is Jeremy, and I come from the United Kingdom. I occasionally dabble in freelance journalism (albeit not too often these days, sadly) and photography, and like to consider myself a political philosopher of sorts.
==Liberals are the price we pay for Democracy==
Imagine a land where no-one with Liberal viewpoints was allowed into power. Suppose there was just one group of Conservatives that had the right of getting into power, and you were only allowed to vote for the candidates from that party? Liberal viewpoints might even be punishable by violence, imprisonment, or death. How does that sound to you? Exhilarating, or terrifying? Well, hopefully the latter.
Let's face it, at one time or another we've probably all thought "How can Democracy be right, when it lets Liberals and other people with the "wrong" ideology into power?" We'd like to imagine that somehow we could remove any chance of Liberals getting into power while still keeping society a happy place. But that's not possible. If you block people from seeking power or disenfranchise voters, then you don't have Democracy any more. When you don't have a Democracy, then your leaders are no longer accountable for their actions, and you're on a slippery, inevitable slope to a Fascist dictatorship. Or you could reverse the Conservative and Liberal viewpoints here, and you'd eventually end up with a Communist/Socialist dictatorship; either way, it's a bad thing.
Yes, occasionally we'll end up with people we don't like in power - heck, over here we've had the wrong party in power for the best part of a decade (although the Conservatives must accept some blame for that due to their own ineptitude from about 1995-2003)! However, this risk is the price that we have to pay for being able to hold our leaders accountable for their actions - and no, being a Conservative doesn't make you automatically right about everything, although it definitely helps! - and preventing our society descending into tyranny and dictatorship. And quite frankly, I think that's a pretty good bargain!