Nowellian Thoughts on Party and Knowledge

[John Gelles <jjgelles@xxxxxxxx>]

	While I appreciate Nowell's thought that a party
	might represent my interest and have the ability
	to research facts and organize around sound
	opinion, I see no examples of success anywhere
	in the world in the past fifty years of such
	parties. American parties may even be better
	than all the rest -- if we go by the evidence
	of their success.

	If knowledge is part of the problem, certainly
	members of this list are not starved for facts,
	opinion, alternatives, etc., -- yet there is no
	more coherence or solidarity here than in other
	places where people discuss current events.
	problems, solutions and gripes.

	This leads me to believe that although better
	laws are needed to improve mass media, after we
	frame and enact them things will not get better
	much faster.  Part of the problem is the problem:

	     It is extremely hard to do better than
	many of the great nations are presently doing.
	Nothing justifies their error; but fixing
	them is harder than I think.  If Churchill is
	credited with, "No government is worse than
	democracy, except every other form we have
	tried,"  he was putting his finger on what
	we have been discussing.

	     Democracy has come close to establishing
	equality before the law.  Equality at the bank,
	-- where none of us would have less money than
	we wanted, -- would seem to be the objective
	of PKT critics of our parties, our media, and
	our ideas.  I'm for that.  But it may take a
	long time before we make substantial progress
	toward such equality.

	John Gelles