John Staurt Mill - Electronic Democracy :: essays research papers

There is no difficulty in video display that the ideally go around form of government is that in which the sovereignty, or imperious controlling power in the last resort, is vested in the entire compound of the community every citizen not only having a voice in the exercise of that ultimate sovereignty, but being, at least occasionally, called on to confine an active part in the government, by the personal discharge of virtually public die hard, local or generalJohn Stuart mill about agree that democracy was the form of government that could best secure the happiness of all. further the annul is not just well-being, as earlier utilitarians argued, though it is that. The end that recommends it is the tendency to foster self-development and individuality. Representative government, is particular, he defended as that form which best encourages individuality. It leads people to take a more active and intelligent mesh in society. It provides moral training and encourages the d evelopment of natural human sympathies. The get out is the habit of looking at amicable questions from an impersonal perspective instead than that of self-interest. But Mills defense of democracy was much qualified. To be sure, he was, care the earlier utilitarians, sympathetic to the fall of the ancient regime and to the ends of the French Revolution. He strove to liberalize the press still severely bound by an anomalous libel law that excluded effective social criticism. But influenced by Coleridge he had come to see that there were virtues in social systems, thus far out-dated ones, else why would not have survived so long. He therefore came to appreciate the conservative arguments that unrestrained freedom is dangerous. Mill argued, reasonably on utilitarian grounds, that social institutions need to be adapted to the time and place where they operate. He even suggests that, since people must be properly fit if democracy is to function well, a despotic form of government, i f well-run with this aim in mind, might found its people for the exercise of responsibilities of a free electorate. In his thinking approximately how best to administer a state as a whole, Mill argued that the best administration was one that relied upon professional skills.In a spokesperson democracy, if you can control the majority, then you can control everyone. Like otherwise tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities.