He who shouts the loudest.

I've read that the ancient Spartans decided issues in their councils according to who shouted the loudest. When I first heard that I thought it was quite a ridiculous way to run things. Our way was so obviously better, what with our ideas of free speech and open debate. Honest and intelligent people can differ in there understandings. Humans aren't endowed with perfect knowledge. We only have very dim inklings of how our plans will work out. But plan we must. We must ry to foresee eventualities, we must try to calculate the effects of our actions. Even at the most personal level of who to marry, what livelihood to pursue, where to build a home we are faced with choices we must weigh and try to do what's good for ourselves and our families. How much more important and difficult it is to plan for the welfare of communities, nations, and now that our power is so much greater than in the past, the entire planet. And so we talk among ourselves. We often disagree. And our Western culture from the earliest times has been to submit ideas to the whole people and when a decision is made by them it is the job of the leader to carry out the program as well as he can. Of course the implementation of this ideal has been fitful, but even the most tyrannical of despots has had to consult and compromise his will to power and bend to the opinions of others. Otherwise, like Louis XVI he could lose his head. Even the Spartan system was a type of consultation. But in my naive youth I thought we had risen above that.
Some voices always carry more weight than others, and deservedly so. When I want my car fixed I go to a mechanic. But when different mechanics give me varying opinions on why the damn thing won't start I am still the one who has to make the call. Often enough I have rued my choice, but I always do my best to learn from my mistakes.
This is the problem with paying attention to the loudest voice: the most stridently opinionated people are also usually extremely ignorant. They don't seem able to learn from their mistakes, or even admit they've made any. It doesn't matter how often they are wrong. Nothing shakes their high opinion of themselves. But they are the ones the politicians listen to...becayuse they make the most noise. The rest of us go quietly about our lives, but the loudmouths seem to have nothing better to do than hector the people we vote into office. This is how it works out that certain groups have more influence on policies than we poor sucks who vote and work to pay for everything.
Their main technique is to make it seem like everyone who is anyone thinks the way they do. That's why they like celebrities. Celebrities like being the centre of attention and as a rule they are not deep thinkers. They like to play a part and they are good at learning their lines but that is a skill set that may or may not be coupled with a capacity for critical thinking.
Who are these People? Al Gore. Jimmy Carter. Rosie O'Donnell. David Suzuki. Jane Fonda. All of them blithely unaware of the damage to humanity their ideas can cause. Idon't know if they are intentionally vicious, like Stalin, but they might as well be. I've just been reading about Rachel Carson and all the damage her book has done. And none of her followers in the environmental movement has yet acknowledged that the banning of DDT has led to millions of deaths, mostly of children in poor countries.
These loudmouths don't have any actual arguments, they just have mantras. In connection with the epidemic of drug use that has exploded in the past few decades, the mantra is harm reduction. Not content with going to the public, via the established rules for making important public decisions, they take it upon themselves to do whatever they want. Case in point: Nanaimo city councilors recently discovered that nurses at the regional hospital have been distributing crack pipes. This is a program instituted by a bureaucracy known as the Vancouver Island Health Authority which has decided it is a law unto itself.
These are the same kinds of people who brought us needle exchanges, telling us that if addicts had clean needles they would be less likely to get all the diseases that go with drug use. Now we have a situation where you have to watch where you step there are so many discarded needles littering the streets. Has nobody noticed that the number of drug addicts on the streets has increased exponentially since this program began? It was a mistake. Most of us average Jills and Joes know it, but the so-called experts don't. Now they say we need safe injection sites. Hasn't it occured to the proponents of this plan that they are making it easier to become an addict? Hasn't it occured to them that such policies legitimize drug use? As far as I am concerned they are no better than drug pushers. Thankfully, this is one issue where the Federal Conservative government is showing some gumption. Let's hope they don't cave in at the predictably deafening Greek chorus they will have to endure. Go around them, boys. My vote counts just as much as David Suzuki's or Margaret Atwood's or whatever minor celebrity you can think of.
And think of the poor Indians. What a disaster for them the Indian Act has been, and how much worse the lawyers and the activists have made things. Since Canada has to slavishly follow every dumb policy that comes along in the USA all our lefties claim to hate, we have affermative action, race-based laws here, too. Since the lawyers cashed in on all the residential schools they are moving on to land claims. You see the activist Indian leaders believe they have a prior right to the Canadian land mass, it having escaped their attention that many of us honkies were born here, too. Well, it's time for a change of direction, that's for sure. It's time that Indians have the right to work and make enough money to buy a piece of property the same as me...and sell it if he wants to. The Indians can't do that now...on their own lands. And they want to expand that system? Where is the evidence that the communal system works for them? There isn't any. All the communally owned native reserves are disasters. Yards full of rusting cars, rotting boats, broken appliances, toys, starving dogs, dirty, uncared for children, the houses with broken windows, leaking roofs, no doors. On waterfront property that would bring millions of dollars if they could sell it. Gordie Campbell said he was going to do his best to fix this idiotic system if he was elected, but that was a few elections ago. I guess he just forgot. He's too busy having photo ops with Arnie to worry about Indian children, I guess.
The imams have been paying attention to this state of affairs. What do you know, they have concluded. Western politicians have no balls. If they can't stand up to screaming headlines, or econazis chaining themselves to trees, why think what will happen when they are threatened with decapitation. And just to make things easier, a little oil money will lubricate a lot of palms and soothe their feelings.
You know, I'm beginning to understand why the French suddenly decided to massacre its elite. Hopefully, it won't come to that. But I think a big purge has to come. For instance, I think whoever was responsible for distributing those crack pipes should be fired immediately without compensation.