from interview with John Ralston Saul

[handmade34]

"...if we are a democracy, how is it that we've highly structured our lives so that every free minute of our day is accounted for working, holidays, breaks, etc. and that the only time left over is the time to go home and have dinner with our families, go to bed, make love, get up, go to the bathroom, and go back to work — go back to the structured system. We have to sit back and say, "Wait a minute, we live in a democracy." We have structured everything in there — sick leave, pregnancy leave — but we haven't structured one minute in for citizen participation. The only way a citizen can participate is voluntarily, which means giving up going to the bathroom, give up making love, give up sleep, give up eating dinner with your family. In other words, we have structured citizen participation out of our society. For me, this is the simplest and most complete proof that we don't live in a democracy — that we live in a corporatist society..."

http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/saul.html

[handmade34]

1. quote E.H. Carr

"To speak today of the defense of democracy as if we were defending something as if we knew and had possessed for many decades or many centuries is self-deception...we should be nearer the mark, and should have a far more convincing slogan, if we spoke of the need, not to defend democracy, but to create it."