Politicians
should pursue common ground and reasonable consensus rather than elusive
ideals.
Write a response in which you discuss
the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain
your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your
position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation
would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your
position.
The commonsense view of the role of politicians
in democratic communities is for these actors to serve as representations of
the consensus reached in and through public debate. The main duty of politicians for this
commonsense view is to write, advocate for, and enact legislation. However, nothing can be further from the
truth than this common sense view of the role of politicians in democratic
communities. Politicians are in fact not
representatives of public consensus.
They are, instead, guardians of the founding ideals of a state. In order to understand this profound
difference, it is best to pursue the recommendation that politicians should
pursue common ground and reasonable consensus to its very absurd conclusion.
Consider what happens when there is a
split in public opinion regarding some significant issue. Imagine that a politician stands on a stage,
and asks that the community gather themselves into groups standing on either
side of the significant issue. One way
to determine whether or not consensus is in favor of or against the issue is to
count the members standing on either side.
The most votes wins. If this was
exactly how public debate occurred, than there would be no issue and no problem
for the common sense view. However,
public debate is less ideal than this picture.
Public debate results in sections of
the community opposed to one another for the very reason that the results of
debate are open to interpretation.
For instance, if the results of public
debate are open to interpretation., then the actors responsible for
representing these result must by necessity make decisions regarding how best
to convey and portray the consensus.
The results of public debate are
closed to interpretation.
The grounds on which an interpretation
of the results of public debate are based are themselves open to debate.
In reality politicians must serve as
mediators between public debates and as guardians of the founding ideals of a
state.
FAILED
No comments:
Post a Comment