Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator: Speech Analysis

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To best describe the attitude, which seems to be the same all over the country, around the Irish voting system and general elections I have decided to look back to Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator’ speech. Nearing the end of this speech he says, “In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: the Kingdom of God is within man - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then - in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work …show more content…

Proportional representation means that as a voter, you can indicate your first and subsequent choices of candidates on a ballot paper (Proportional representation, 2016). If your first preference is elected with a surplus vote or is no longer in the running then your vote is transferred to your second choice candidate. The same method is used for the rest of your ballot paper.
Against: PR-STV generates intra- party electoral competition, which cannot take place on policy grounds and hence is fought on the terrain of constituency service. Consequently, TDs must spend much of their working time focused on serving individual and collective needs and demands of their constituents in order to fend off the threat posed by running mates instead of being able to concentrate on national political issues. Ministers are not immune from the threat of intra-party defeat, hence even they cannot focus entirely on national …show more content…

While electoral systems do have an impact on the proportionality of electoral outcomes and to a lesser degree on the shape of party systems, it is not realistic to expect a change in electoral system to transform the style of politics in a country. For example, PR-STV was not responsible for the economic boom in Ireland and neither is it responsible for the economic crisis. In their cross-national study of the impact of a number of political reforms, including change to an electoral system, Shaun Bowler and Todd Donovan (The Limits of Electoral Reform, Oxford University Press, 2013) strike a cautionary note, arguing that such reforms tend to have minimal or zero impact. Expecting an electoral change to result in a transformation in the style of politics in a country is completely unrealistic. It is far too easy to blame PR-STV for the happenings in our country, the power is with the people and, therefore, it is down to us to try to create the best possible government that we can. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr. “and so we shall have to decide to do more than register and more than vote; we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues that we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with enthusiasm.” (Martin Luther King, Jr. Quote,

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