I just returned from the first of Calvin’s January Series talks. You can find more information on the January series here. Andy and I will be attending these throughout the month and writing up our experiences. Anybody else attending these?

Today’s talk was given by Michael Mandelbaum the author of a book called Democracy’s Good Name. His presentation focused on the political preconditions that Democracy requires.

I know, it sounds crazy boring. Really, it wasn’t.

Here’s an action shot of the good Dr. Mandelbaum while he was answering questions after his talk:

I took three solid pages of notes, very little of which you’ll want to read. Here are a few probably befuddled ideas though:

In his mind there are two main political ideas that make up democracy (with subpoints, subsubpoints, and subsubsubpoints): popular sovereignty (people voting for their leaders) and liberty (commonly known as freedom in the United States). It’s extremely important to note that not too long ago (like 18th century) these two ideas were often considered contradictory to each other.

One thing that necessitates liberty in this day and age is a free market economy. Free-market economies are driven on greed and selfishness (feel free to debate that one).

A free-market is necessary because it makes other things possible like:

-Private property
-Wealth/Affluence, which gives people time to run the democracy.

A few interesting statistics:

In 1975 there were only about 30 democracies worldwide
In 2005 that number was 119.

Thoughts? Anything to add?