I disagree. Social media enables us to be more connected with people, whether they be near or far. It allows one to access far away cultures, which helps that person keep an openmind. Also it helps persons become exposed to new groups near them, once again helping to broaden the horizons of that person. Granted it can be abused and can potentially lead to isolation. However these are extreme cases and are not representative of the overall result.

I wouldn't defend something like the US supreme court. Lifetime appointments can be extremely bad. The problem with a republic is that it generally relies on majority rule. This can lead to subjugation, and possibly eradication, of any resistance. You are right though a system like what i'm describing would be horribly impractical, and more persuasive participants would form the ruling class.

That is a major problem with it all. There is no such thing as a perfect political ideology. The corruption is inherent to society, for there will always be a segment of corrupt individuals. Even the small scale utopian communities fell to corruption. In my opinion the best solution would be to place power in as many hands as possible to try to mitigate the influence of corrupt individuals. Note that i'm not arguing for communism, because that usually ends up with a small group of government officials holding all the power.

But is this a failure of Palpatine and Skywalker rather than the system. If you assume the first galactic republic is analogues to the US (3 branched central gov, representative democracy, and organized military are known to exist), and that the ancient sith used similar governmental philosophies, then based on the near success of Exar Kun and Darth Revan the sith system may not be so far inferior. Granted it is based heavily on the competency of the leadership, which over long periods of time is likely to decline, it still stands a chance at defeating governments more like the US gov.

To answer this the terms "freedom" and "security" must be more clearly defined. If I had absolute freedom would I be able to do exactly as I pleased? Could I bend the laws of nature to my will, for if I lacked such power I would lack absolute freedom. If I had absolute security what is motivating me to conform to restrictions on my freedom? Assuming the security was permanent, could I not avoid retribution for acting outside of what others tell me to do? I can not resolve these questions, so I can not answer.

Does anyone have recommendations for finding posts that you might find interesting, or do new users just explore and discover things over periods of time?