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Excerpt from medyanews.net
It is frighteningly clear – and not only with respect to Palestine – that liberal democracies have failed to produce governments that represent either the views or the interests of the general population. They give control to people who are generally from a small elite, and who – even if this was not their initial impulse – are driven by a lust for power. It is over 100 years since Mark Twain wrote “We have the best government that money can buy”, but it is still true that those with money have a grossly disproportionate influence on who gets elected and on what they focus on afterwards. This is especially true in America, where presidential candidates can spend over $100 million on their campaign, but it also applies in other liberal democracies. Meanwhile, most people are persuaded that their democratic role is limited to ticking a box every four or five years in order to put into power what is often seen as the least bad option.
As has been repeatedly demonstrated, significant reforms have only happened when elected politicians have come under major pressure from below. The anti-war movement that we have seen growing on American campuses could prove to be the beginning of such pressure, in a repeat of the movement that helped end the war in Vietnam. That historical precedent is no doubt in the minds of both the government and the protestors.
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