French President Emmanuel Macron and democracy

Both Plato and Aristotle objected to democracy They distrusted democracy because it requires a critical mass of people to be intelligent and active citizens, and their experience of people was that it was not sensible to expect one's community to have a critical mass of intelligent, engaged citizens. I think also that Plato and Aristotle objected to Democracy because it would mean that people would expect the State to support them,

Since January, 2023 many people in France have been on strike over reforms that Macron claims are necessary to shore up the nation's struggling pension system. French protesters recently set fire to Lyon town hall as part of a nationwide uprising against Macron's pension reforms, Macron ordered Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to bypass the National Assembly and push through new legislation that would raise the retirement age in France from 62 to 64 for most French workers.

France's Senate adopted the reforms earlier in the day in a 193-114 vote. Macron then utilized a barely used codicil, known as Article 49.3, to, essentially declare the vote passed in the National Assembly.

Article 49.3 of the French Constitution enables a government to push a bill through the National Assembly, France's lower house of Parliament, without a vote.

The move is perfectly legal, and it has been enshrined in the Constitution since 1958 - part of several institutional tools that Charles de Gaulle insisted upon in order to rein in the parliamentary instability of France's Fourth Republic and give the executive stronger control.

But over the past decade, Article 49.3 has increasingly been seen as an undemocratic tool, used by the government to strong-arm lawmakers.

France's Fourth Republic governed the French Republic from 1946 to 1958

Retirement age in developed countries is about 65. The OECD average for a normal pension age is currently 64.3 years for men and 63.7 years for women. In Australia according to the government's Retirement Income Review released in November 2020, the average age of retirement is currently between the ages of 62 and 65, with women tending to retire one to three years before men.

So it does look as though the peoples' position in France is self-serving, while Macron's position is to increase the years people will be at work, and therefore the overall wealth of the country. So, democracy is perhaps not a "good thing."

But more interesting is Article 49.3. It provides that the government can pass a bill without a vote at the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, after a deliberation at a Cabinet meeting.

In response, lawmakers can file a no-confidence motion within 24 hours. If the motion gets approval from more than half the seats, the text is rejected, and the government must resign. In response, lawmakers can file a no-confidence motion within 24 hours. There can only be two outcomes: either the law passes through the Assembly, or Government is overthrown.

If not, the bill is considered adopted and passes into law. Since the Constitution was established in 1958, only one no-confidence motion was successful, in 1962.

All democracies have similar legislation to bypass the democratic system. In the United States, the war against democracy is intense.

The following paragraphs cover four areas in the United States: (i) the undemocratic election system, (ii) The gerrymandering of electoral boundaries, (iii) Creating difficulties for black voters and (iv) The battles between the political parties.

The minimal criterion of democracy is universal suffrage. In 1893, the self-governing British colony of New Zealand became the first jurisdiction in the world to grant universal adult suffrage, including women, The Scandinavian countries followed, Britain did not gain universal suffrage until 1928. In United States the Supreme Court under Earl Warren and the U.S. Congress expanded the voting rights of all Americans, through the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As the following four issues demonstrate, however, the electoral system then devised, is far from perfect.

1, The Electoral College attempts to give equal weighting to each state. Smaller states therefore have disproportionate influence on the election of the president. In short, it is not one person, one vote in the United States. Kay C. James, President of the Heritage Foundation, an extremely conservative organisation, has stated: "For over 200 years America has elected its presidents through the Electoral College. While it's a unique method for choosing a president, our country's framers intentionally designed it this way."

'They wanted to strike a critical balance between people being able to choose their leader and states having proper representation in the process," James said.

2.Gerrymandering, an American term, was used for the first time in the Boston Gazette on 26 March 1812 to describe the redrawing of the Massachusetts state senate election districts under the then-governor Elbridge Gerry (1744–1814). Unfortunately, it is a practice that has spread worldwide.

3.Creating obstacles for black voters. Black voters are frequently disenfranchised. Several methods are used: In Florida, an investigative commission's report stated: "a black citizen was 10 times as likely to have a vote rejected as a white voter." Access to booths in black areas are restricted, the number of booths is reduced causing long lines and lengthy waits. North Carolina required ID's that a disproportionate number of black people did not have. Many republican dominated states are still attempting to limit black voting. Many of these problems are discussed under the issues arising with the Republican Party.

4.Political battles. Several newspapers have described the US political scene as fractured. The Republican and Democratic parties are at near war. The American Review describes U.S. political system as broken, asking, how can we fix it?

Australia experienced a different attack on democracy when the Governor General dismissed the elected government of Gough Whitlam. Under Whitlam's leadership, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) contested and won the December 1972 election campaign. After less than three years in power the Whitlam government had enacted 508 bills. Significant laws were passed in relation to education, community health and wellbeing, Indigenous Australians, multiculturalism, women's rights, international relations, defence, environment, economy and the arts.

But the Whitlam government ran into a number of issues The Khemlani affair and the attempted raising of funds by the Minister for Minerals and Energy, Rex Connor and Treasurer Dr Jim Cairns. It severely tarnished Australia's international reputation. Then there was Juni Morosi and Jim Cairns. Employed as Principal Private Secretary to Deputy Prime Minister Dr Jim Cairns, Morosi was a target for gossip, who alleged that she and Cairns were having an affair, despite the fact both were married.

The Whitlam government lost support. On 11 November 1975 Gough Whitlam proposed an immediate 'half Senate' election in order to break the stalemate.

This measure was not granted, and in a dramatic and controversial decision Governor-General Sir John Kerr instead dismissed the Whitlam government and appointed Liberal leader Malcolm Fraser as caretaker prime minister.

Fraser immediately arranged for budget supply bills to be passed in the Senate and called a double dissolution election. On 13 December 1975 the Labor Party was soundly defeated. The result was a disaster for Labor, the party's worst election result for decades. The coalition won 91 seats to Labor's 36; the Liberal Party won enough seats to govern in its own right. The argument for years has been that the dismissal of a democratically elected government was wrong. The Constitutional crisis of 1975, often referred to as 'the Dismissal' represents one of the most turbulent periods in modern Australian history.

We can add a fourth country, Germany during the Nazi years. Hitler's Nazi party had the largest elected support in the mid-1930s. In 1932 Paul von Hindenburg was re-elected president by opponents of the Nazis; however, his advisers considered the Nazis useful, and in 1933 Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor. Hitler then introduced a number of decrees that gave him absolute power,

Were then Plato and Aristotle correct? Should we give away the will of the people as our overriding political principle? A 1974 book by the American political philosopher Robert Nozick. Anarchy, State, and Utopia won the 1975 US National Book Award in category Philosophy and Religion, and is possibly the optimum exploration of this issue. It has been translated into 11 languages, and was named one of the "100 most influential books since the war" (1945–1995) by the UK Times Literary Supplement. Nozick argues in favour of a minimal state, "limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on." "Individuals have rights," Nozick writes in his opening sentence, "and there are things no person or group may do to them without violating their rights." On his opening page Nozick states "The state may not use its coercive apparatus for the purpose of getting some citizens to aid others, or in order to prohibit activities to people for their own good or protection."

The work that follows has been described as a sophisticated and passionate defence of the rights of the individual as opposed to the state. But this writer disagrees. He believes that the state can use its powers to protect people for their own good, Speed limits, anti-covid masks, the burning of coal are examples. But that overall, the will of the people, democracy, must dominate,

So how do we ensure that the will of the people is sensible, in the interests of the common good, not self-serving? So that we can be assured that democracy gives us answers that are in the best interests of the majority.

The answer is our education system. One in which we learn to distinguish fact from opinion, the value of evidence, assessing that evidence. Along with that learning a set of moral rules that tell us what is the right thing to do. Such moral rules have been established for over 2000 years.

"Do no harm, help others" is universally applicable to all moral issues. And most political questions.

But we have to learn how to resolve these issues. The complexities of this learning will stretch school children. And many even mature adults. After a lifetime of a non-thinking job - cleaning the streets, serving coffee, making these decisions in the optimum interest of the majority – would stretch most of us. We only have to read the multiplicity of confronting opinions on the internet to realize that the world is not in agreement over many issues. Maybe we have another government Diktat. That sometime in our lifetime, before we get our pension, or super payments, we do a three-week course on political decision making in a democracy – how we decide what is the truth, on sorting fact from fiction, how we evaluate evidence. After this learning, and now mature adults, we pass this learning onto our friends and family. And then, if we are Frenchmen, will we agree to Macron's retirement age?