Friday, February 04, 2005

Heckling

On Bush getting heckled at the state of the union address:

In the vast, vast majority of healthy democracies, the head of government getting heckled, jeered, and booed during his addresses to the legislature is perfectly normal. Hell, in the UK and Canada, it's an artform. It's also at the heart of democracy- the difference between an autocrat and a democrat is that the latter expects to be criticized when leading, especially by the loyal opposition. His party expects it to, so playing silly games about "decorum" are a non-starter.

This might be why rather a lot of new democracies tend to be based on variations of that model. They've had enough of autocrats.




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