Balancing Liberty, Democracy, and Equality

Perhaps I can summarize my view of good government as having Liberty, Democracy, and (Rough) Equality, all strong and in balance, and much of the much of what has gone wrong with various ideologies (left, right, and other) can be blamed on obsessions with one or two of the three qualities to the point of practically ignoring the other(s).

Many left-leaning people have tended to worship equality far above anything else, with disastrous results. On the other hand today, many Americans seem almost exclusively obsessed with liberty. But none, and not even any two is likely to survive without the others.

In the old Communist system, the obsession with equality led to the death of liberty and democracy. And yet equality was not achieved either. PERHAPS it is inevitable that when one or two of the qualities is driven to near extinction by the others, even the one that received too much emphasis will be lost in the end.

The trouble is, to merely say 'this is the quality', or 'these are the qualities that matter' has no effect on the world. There has to be a living system that seeks to preserve all of them.

EQUALITY:
Without practical equality in various forms the majority of us can be in a position to lose all our power when a government entity, or an ultra-rich corporation or individual encrouches on it. I don't only mean formal equality before the law, also believe there must be some rough degree of practical (economic) equality. I.e. when you have a class of people with nothing, it is both inhumane and short sighted for us not to do something collectively for them. In most cases, a "dole" or "welfare" payments does more harm than good. The goal of supporting people to stay out of dire poverty isn't enough; rather, imaginative means must be used to enable and encourage people to be integrated into economic society. I am so far from being a radical leveler that I think maybe 100 to 1 ratios of income could well be fine, while there could still be some "tipping point", some critical mass of individuals 1000 times richer than the average, would put us well on the way to a permanent class system in all but name.

So I leave "rough equality" (which Tocqueville thought was a source of America's strength) undefined, and could consider and respect a wide range of attempts to define it, but we should not accept just burying the whole idea just because it has no obvious or "natural" definition.

FREEDOM OR LIBERTY
Without a wide range of freedoms, we can be robbed of everything else by either the state or by super-rich individuals and we will have no PRACTICAL means of resistence.


DEMOCRACY
Without practical democracy (democratic control of the state) -- and of a meaningful state with sufficient power (hard as this is to define) most people, however well organized, would find it very difficult to hold onto the other values: Freedom and equality.