For years I have preached against small parties. Whenever my friends get excited by the latest new and fashionable political movement or the latest political star whose ego-trip involves founding and leading his own party, I’ve warned that a vote cast for a small party is both wasted and wanting. Wasted because, in Israel’s system of proportional representation, a vote that goes for a party that does not get over the two percent threshold required for Knesset representation functions like an abstention. Wanting because in a democracy large big-tent parties are, for all their faults, important and effective arenas for the political give-and-take necessary to create consensus around policies.
Large parties should not be chucked out like a perfectly good but old refrigerator just because the latest model dazzles you. And Labor (which I’ve almost always voted for) and Likud (which I’ve always voted against) have emerged, through the natural selection of the Israeli political environment, as the fittest parties to lead the country.
But these are unusual times, and I’m about to violate my own rule. I’m going to abandon Labor and vote for the new Green Movement.
Read the rest on Jewcy–Comment there or here.
Just back from Austin, a green city….
Big houses…Utility bills that would choke a horse……
But they recycle….soooo they are green……
Their houses have an entrance that is 32 feet high…..But they are green,,,,,,What is going on?
A house in the mid-west with 1500 sq ft is much more green and they don’t even know it….