Oops, there's that prejudice creeping in again. And yes, have been there. For info about what really happened when Chavez "came to power", i.e. was elected, read the book by Richard Gott which contains some cracking information about how the right wing coup, assassination attempts, media manipulation, CIA involvement, and all that stuff went down. Certainly beats prejudice for a good read.

Back on track:

I should have been more clear. I had in mind that fact that candidates wouldn't campaign in underpopulated areas like they would in cities. Over time, they'd gear towards answering urban issues. For example, even as it is, national candidates rarely come to Hawaii - not because of population density, because no amount of campaigning either way is likely to sway the outcome.



Does the constitution party never win anything because their ideas aren't representative of enough of the populace or because they wouldn't win?

What are some of these issues that the Green party believes in that Democrats don't? Isn't it basically the same stuff only more extreme?

In Ireland some of the strongest campaigns are in rural areas. Local candidates campaign and win on local issues.

No. Throughout history the majority has always been wrong about everything. It's always been the mavericks, the outsiders, those on the fringe who moved humanity forward. People like Plato, Socrates, Copernicus, Galileo, just to name a few. People with the guts to challenge the established norms are the ones who were always right. Case in point. At one time the majority of people were convinced the Earth was flat and all stars revolved around it. People who said differently were often tortured and killed as heretics. In the end it was the ideas of those on the fringe that turned out to be correct and the ideas of the majority have always been wrong. This has been true in the past and continues to be true today.

I'll agree that the majority is often wrong. But that doesn't mean that everyone who disagrees with the majority must be right---which is what you seem to imply. The majority is going to be right more often than some arbitrary outliers. If you happen to pick the right people who disagree with the majority, then you have a point. But that's hard to do.

That wasn't my intention. The whole point of my rant was that majority has always been wrong. And if you have people who are wrong, usually about basic facts of life, they have no business to rule anybody.

Depends on the subject matter. Sometimes even the weirdest and most ridiculous specimens of Humanity get things right. But I understand what you're saying. Nothing is ever easy. Majority is always wrong, and of the fringe element only a small portion are right and have the skills and ability to be our leaders--and typically they have no desire to do so. I guess that's why more often than not whoever gets elected still has no business to be a political leader.

Ain't that the truth.

I don't agree that the majority was always wrong and I doubt Galileo and his companies were always right.

Maybe he was right that the earth was round, but that wasn't something new to that time. The Egyptians already knew it 5000 years ago, and the Arabian world new it the same time the catholic church burked evidence.

Imho your example is a good example that few people shouldn't have the right to rule. It was the christian elite, which decided to burn people for not believing the earth would have been flat.

The majority was the victim, terrorised by few.

Brush up on your history. Galileo was a heliocentrist, just a few years after Copernicus basically pointed out that heliocentrism was much nicer. Nobody was really doubting Earth's sphericity at that point.
Then again, it took the few elite Arabic scholars to question both geocentrism and the flat earth.But the majority did its share of terrorising, too. Remember the Peasants' War of 1524? 100,000 dead from the majority having its way.

ok, i mixed that up with galileo, still the christian elite did not want their world view to be reformed.

I don't think the peasants war is a argument against the right to rule of the majority. As yet again the Church, the christian elite caused it. It was not decided by the majority. The masses fought for their freedom.

On the other hand massacres by few (Roosevelt and his fellows) like the bombings of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed 1.2 million civilians. They did not even target military facilities.

Why would it? It was common knowledge for thousands of years. Every Child knew it.

I don't imagine the Church much cared either way. The backlash against Galileo was because he mocked the Pope in his Dialog.And killed 100,000 people along the way.Does that refute the 100,000 dead of the Peasants' War?

In case you think I'm arguing that few should rule, by the way, I'm not.

Flat Earth, certainly, and I'll retract that one. I don't know what I was thinking when I posted that, but heliocentrism most certainly was not common knowledge for thousands of years. It wasn't until the 700's with Al-Sadiq that geocentrism began to be really questioned in the Middle East.

Ok, I got you wrong then.

And I don't think everything a majority comes up with is right. I just think a ruling minority is easier compromised by power, this includes a republic.

People are lazy and don't want to think for themselves so they usually just vote for the representatives with the best ads or media coverage.

This results in countries with people having thousands of different political stances having only a few parties, and often they don't vote for the party they share their stances with but the biggest parties, sharing some percent of the same opinion.

We had this test here some time ago, with the 2008 candidates, and one guy was happy that he got ron paul, which he liked most, shared 60% of his views. That means he would vote for Ron Paul, although he'd probably wouldn't be the candidate he should vote. But it's the best choice for him, as the others had even less percent of accordance with him.

People shouldn't vote for "lesser evils" or for underdogs just because of the sake of it.

of course not, I just wanted to show that not only many can cause great harm.