The statement is engineered to delay the actual agenda until the punch, and to be unclear enough that even radical opponents may not easily counter with rational arguments. These are not virtues in a debate, only in stand-up comedy and in the art of Spin.

I strongly agree with the literal statement, that universal suffrage is a metric for democracy, as are respect for human rights. Other stepping stones to a free democracy include free human property, human welfare, human safety, human health, human education.

Interestingly, most people would agree that slavery is incompatible with our perception of democracy. I can’t lock up my gardener or my carpenter, even though it would be very convenient for me.

Most people would agree that I can’t chase off competing buyers in the supermarket, just so I can buy all the carrots. Nor can I insist that I have a right to pay less for carrots than the supermarket wishes to sell.

*** Some fundamental rights are premises without which all talk of democracy is obviously absurd ***

I would argue that a few fundamentals are missing in US and many other countries:
- Universal suffrage includes prison inmates. You cannot exclude Jews or blacks or Irish or gays or convicts.
- Constitutional rights include occupied or dominated territories.
- Humans are free to migrate regardless of local rules. Just like nobody can stop me from moving from Dallas to Seattle, nobody has the right to prevent somebody from moving from Madras to Copenhagen, or from Lebanon to Jerusalem.
- Universal suffrage includes long term residents. You cannot arbitrarily define a group without voting rights.
- Universal suffrage does not include non-residents. Fair terms of residency are very complicated. Tourists and soldiers on short missions should keep the right to vote at home, maybe

/Uffe

For much the same reasons, poetry has always been a subject of fascination of mine. Poetry (particularly in a language like Arabic) transcends grace. It is an art of communication, and was at one time the language of debate. So when you said

“fits an enormous amount into very few words”

it rang a few bells. A couple of verses can constitute an argument otherwise spanned by volumes. This is not always because the reader is on the same grounds as the author. It is not a partition of bits of information. The reader simply has the capability to arrive at the meaning being conveyed, even though he may be virulently opposed to it. So the finest poetry, in the domain of debate, is that which convinces the opponent with information he *already* possesses.

It’s almost like the original paragraph of prejudice is a ciphertext, from which the truth can be deciphered, with the right key.

Sean, next time you are in one of the eastern cantons of Switzerland, ask a Swiss citizen what his experience of democracy is. Almost all the important legislation in Switzerland is carried by direct popular vote or plebiscites. The people have real power over the laws that govern them, not just in a Tweedle-dee Tweedle-dum election of their rulers. It is an Orwellian irony that the plutocratic oligarchies under which we live are styled “liberal democracies” without scare quotes. There are some very interesting 1780′s letters between Gov Morris and Hamilton and others about daring to call the American Republic a democracy, when plainly it was not. Gov Morris says it does not matter, the common people are not too bright and they will swallow this fraud. It seems he was prescient. I am sorry if these facts complicate your thesis about a link between science and democracy, but perhaps you should give some thought to defining what is a democracy in the modern context. The term is much abused and debased.

Going back another century, the French Revolution did huge damage to French science; it took a generation to recover.

—A law standing in Texas until 1918 regulating who could not vote

Certainly not the US, in which the right to vote is denied to prisoners, illegal immigrants, and minors.

Seriously, let’s not play word games. Should a two-year-old have the right to vote? Give me a break! Prisoners, OK, that is debatable. (In some countries, a possible punishment is having one’s right to vote taken away for a period of time, without imprisonment.) Illegal immigrants? They are, errmm, illegal. The right to vote is the main thing which distinguishes citizens from non-citizens. (This is not to say that I don’t have sympathy with some illegal immigrants, but one should either send them back or make them legal. Keeping them illegal but giving them rights which otherwise citizens have is neither fish nor fowl. And I won’t even touch on the hypocrisy of the US economy depending on illegal immigrants.)

Of course PR is a much better system. However, what you write is full of non-sequiturs. Yes, the “hung parliament” left no party in overall charge. However, the reason that PR might be coming is that the LibDems want it, and now are in a position to force it. (Labour had promised a referendum during the last government but broke its promise.) Also, one of the problems with lack of PR was, as you say, one party in overall charge even though they had much less than an absolute majority of the popular vote. In most (but not all) cases, PR leads to a coalition government, with no party in overall charge, but that is a good thing.