I've been wondering with all the complaining people do about President Bush wasting the country's economy. Is there a such thing as a democracy, especially in the "truest" sense of the word? And consequently, is there a such thing as "freedom" in today's society?

This would depend on your definition of democracy.

According to a U.S. Government text book I have handy, that is, American Government; Insitutions and Policies, by James Q. Wilson and John J. DiIulio (Check it out. (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0618043594/qid=1084326922/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-5338246-3816763?v=glance&s=books)), there are three definitions of democracy.

The first is the contestible definition once used by the Soviets, that of democratic centralism, or an oligarchical or junta rule purportedly in the 'true interests' of the people.

The second is that of the polis of ancient Athens and the traditional town meeting scenario of New England. It is direct, or participatory democracy, wherein all eligible and willing citizens participate actively in the making of decisions. This definition is practiced in the referendum, and has also been suggested in the form of 'community control,' or strictly local government rule.

The third definition is that of a representative democracy, or republic, explained by the 'elitist theory of democracy,' whereby any person bidding for rule must engage in a competition for the vote of the people.


I should say that true execution of the first is fairly doubtful, while the second is surely still practiced in remote, agrarian regions, the third maintained in the 'democratic' nations of the West.

seems to me like America exalts representative democracy as being a banner for the world to follow. from what i know in history, direct democracy is only available to a select group. Democratic centralism sounds like it would work if people would stop rebelling against authority just because they could.

and why do you put democratic in quotations?

I did so because, given one's definition of democracy, centralist, direct, or republican, one might argue whether or not they are 'democratic,' although, yes, I can see where that raised your suspicions.




On democratic centralism, SouthStar, it does not fail simply because people are fickle and wicked, as Hobbes (?) put it, and willing to rebel at the drop of a hat.
Please recall that the Bolsheviks were not a substantial representation, or good ideological slice, of the Russian people. They were the minority. Therefore, they could not, unerringly, govern in the true interests of the people; they did not know these interests themselves.
Ergo, we have the eventual dissolution of the USSR.

Democratic centralism does not work out because it depends on sincere leadership.
Inevitably, however, we find that the leaders do not have the true interests of the people in mind and are, thus, at a loss.

The theory of democratic centralism remains, but the practice fails.

Y'all have seen The Godfather, right? Well, if ya' haven't, there's a scene which sums up democratic centralism. Tattaglia, a heroin smuggler, has come to the Corleones, wanting the Don to use his political influence to protect a proposed drug running operation. The Don doesn't want to do it, because he thinks it's too risky. Sonny interrupts, offering his support for Tattaglia's plan, and the Don responds "Never tell anyone outside the family what you're thinking again." In other words, if you disagreed, you could've told me, but don't be open with your grievances. Of course, even if Sonny had expressed his opinion in private, the Don would have refused Tattaglia's plan.

Actually, that might be Michael reprimanding Fredo in Godfather II, but either way, the point's the same ... democratic centralism has essentially nothing to do with democracy as it's understood. It's phrases like democratic centralism that led George Orwell to create the term "doublespeak" for 1984.

Also, I think it's doubtful that either Lenin or Stalin had any concern for the true interests of the people, given that Lenin created a secret police two months after assuming power, and Stalin expanded that secret police into a network of death camps. As for Trotsky? He was touchy about his Jewish heritage that he allowed the Red Army to carry out pogroms during the Civil War.

Final point ... after assuming power, one of Lenin's moves was to ban "factionalism," that is, any organized dissent within the Party. Thusly, even if you're willing to assume that democratic centralism is something more than a polite way of saying "dictatorship," it was never anything more in reality.

So America is a "dictatorship"? Or oligarchy.. ;)

Most of the money Bush (actually Congress for they approve all money spent not Bush) is spending actually stays in America. There is some that goes into rebuilding Iraq of course but the military gets the lions share as well as the contractors that supply weapons and other equipment to the military.

then why do people complain about Bush wasting the nation's money? If it's a democracy, couldn't they do more than sit on their palms and complain to a TV?

Bush was voted into office.

He's free to do anything he wants, so long as it's legal.

That's how a representative democracy operates.

He's free to do anything he wants, so long as it's legal.



Going back to my original question.. is that how "freedom" came to be tied in to "democracy", that the leader gets to do anything and everything that is legal, even if its not "approved"?

is this something fortunate, or unfortunate?

Please tell us what Bush has done that wasn't approved by Congress because they are the only people, not Bush, that have the authority to pay anyone for anything.

Well, of course... it would be illegal to bypass the Congress.







...that the leader gets to do anything and everything that is legal, even if its not "approved"?


By "'approved'" I assume you mean "given popular approval".

When an elected offical does everything the majority of the people want him to do, his actions are majoritarian politics.
Of course, if any official wants to be elected for another term, he will stick to this.


However, you must understand, in a republic, majoritarian politics and a state thereof are not mandated.
An offical may do whatever he pleases, so long as its legal.
The popular approval was already given, during the election of that official.

Going back to my original question.. is that how "freedom" came to be tied in to "democracy", that the leader gets to do anything and everything that is legal, even if its not "approved"?

is this something fortunate, or unfortunate?

The United States is a Constitutional Republic. By even the most liberal (speaking definitively, not politically) definition of the term, it was never intended as a true democracy.

The Founders wanted rule by, and for the people, but did not trust those same people with the responsibilities of that leadership. Hence the Electoral College, rather than direct elections, or the Senate, which was (previously) by appointment, rather than election. The principle method of preserving liberty was not, they postulated, by empowering the majority population (which, it was feared, would lead simply to tyranny of the majority, a fate no better than tyranny of the minority, or oilgarchy), but by restricting the authority of the state, particularly at the national level.

Once elected, one may not "do whatever he wishes." The seperation of powers strictly prohibits individual authority; the president is the executor, the congress the legisator, and the justices the oversight. Moreover, the federal government is prescribed jurisdiction only in regards to interstate and national affairs. Local authority is reserved to the states alone. Not to mention the matter of the Bill of Rights and Amendment system, which restricts the scope of any law, at any level, according to prescribed civil liberties and legal boundaries.

Finally, the Constitution establishes for the means of removing an elected President from office via Impeachment, proceedings for which may be enacted by the House of Representatives if the President has been found criminally negligent.

Hmmm.. if the founders wanted rule for the people, by the people, how come the "people" had no say in these core laws that would direct the country for the proceeding centuries?

And, in that case, if one may not do "whatever he wishes", why is Bush recieving so much blame? And why is the president, generally, the scapegoat of the nation (to the citizens, at least).

If we had three slaves for every voting person, and military service was compulsory, and we spent all day in the forum casting black and white stones, yeah, we could attempt a truer democracy.

In a world where people are greedy, and a society that always seems to want bigger, and better I believe that No... there is never something that can be considered Democracy...

Democracy must be totalitarianism by the people...


i guess it's back to serfdom, eh?

There are towns in sweden were everyone gathers in the middle of the town and does a show of hands for to count votes. True democracy wouldn't work with larger populations though.

In Sweden i would rather want the old ways back...

If someone was a rapist then no one would wonder what had happened to him, since he most likely was burried in the woods somewhere.
If someone was a murderer then he would be hung as a part of the justice after comming to court where they decided that the ones he killed were worth more than him and therefore would kill him.

There was a sort of small scale domestic relationship between everyone in the town during that time and it worked much better then the modern law system, i can tell you that.


Ancient democracy was based on everyone knowing everything and therefore being able to vote. Now it just seems that the politican's are trying to hide everything from us.
Democracy ended a long time ago, what we have now is crap (in lack of better words)

Read Utopia by Thomas More. It's fictional, but dead on... The only democracy that truely exists is in the mind. All other forms are pale.

then why do people complain about Bush wasting the nation's money? If it's a democracy, couldn't they do more than sit on their palms and complain to a TV?

They can sit on their palms and complain to their local representatives.
The way the system was designed, the people have almost no direct power over the federal government at all. No, not even voting for the president counts, because the popular vote is little more than an opinion poll that is supposed to let the electors who actually DO vote for the president know how you feel (technically, someone could get 100% of the popular vote and STILL lose the election and vice versa).

Each individual state is supposed to be a democracy united under a set of common views and goals.
The president was to be little more than a mediator between the state representatives in issues that were deemed worthy of being centralized and presided over by the federal government, and the global representative of those common views and goals.
It wasn't really designed as a single centralized democracy.

The system worked well for the times.
Communication and travel was severly lacking.
The states were vastly different areas with vastly different people inhabiting them.
The people elected the state's officials that were to serve and protect them.
The state officials elected the president.

The problem is that with the advent of the cold war (and ever escalating since) the federal government's (mainly the exectutive branch's) direct control over the population has been increasing, yet the people still have little direct control over it.

This was suppsed to be a country of united independent states united under a common ideal.

What people need to do is work on their representatives to abolish the electroal system and allow people to directly vote for the president.
Until then, the executive branch of the government amounts to little more than state-sponsored dictatorship.

The system of Government in the US was first concieved as more of a distributed or delegated Libertarian System than a Democracy.

What do you mean Raman?

Much has been said about this. There are many characteristics applied to "democracy". If you were to speak about the orginal greek democracy, it meant the ruling of the majority of the people(expressed by discussing an voting on issues). Nowadays it is much more. I particularly like Robert Dahl's poliarchy concept.

I think that what we have to do is agree on an ideal model of what a democracy is, an then analyze an actual and factual democracy by how close or far from this ideal it is. i hope i was clear since english isn't my native language

Well I decided to look up the term in the latest version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and here's what I found:

-------------
literally, rule by the people (from the Greek dēmos, “people,” and kratos, “rule”). The term has three basic senses in contemporary usage: (1) a form of government in which the right to make political decisions is exercised directly by the whole body of citizens, acting under procedures of majority rule, usually known as direct democracy; (2) a form of government in which the citizens exercise the same right not in personbut through representatives chosen by and responsible to them, known as representative democracy; and (3) a form of government, usually a representative democracy, in which the powers of the majority are exercised within a framework of constitutional restraints designed to guarantee all citizens the enjoyment of certain individual or collective rights, such as freedom of speech and religion, known as liberal, or constitutional, democracy.

Democracy had its beginnings in certain of the city-states of ancient Greece in which the whole citizen body formed the legislature; such a system was possible because a city-state's population rarely exceeded 10,000 people, and women and slaves had no political rights. Citizens were eligible for a variety of executive and judicial offices, some of which were filled by elections, while others were assigned by lot. There was no separation of powers, and all officials were fully responsible to the popular assembly, which was qualified to act in executive and judicial as well as legislative matters. Greek democracy was a brief historical episode that had little direct influence on the development of modern democratic practices. Two millennia separated the fall of the Greek city-state and the rise of modern constitutional democracy.

Modern concepts of democratic government were shaped to a large extent by ideas and institutions of medieval Europe, notably the concept of divine, natural, and customary law as a restraint on the exercise of power. Highly significant was the growing practice by European rulers of seeking approval of their policies—including the right to levy taxes—by consulting the different “estates,” or group interests, in the realm. Gatherings of representatives of these interests were the origin of modern parliaments and legislative assemblies. The first document to notice such concepts and practices is Magna Carta (q.v.) of England, granted by King John in 1215.

Also of fundamental importance were the profound intellectual and social developments of the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions, notably the emergence of concepts of natural rights and political equality. Two seminal documents of this period are the American Declaration of Independence (1776) and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789; see Independence, Declaration of; Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Declaration of the).

Representative legislative bodies, freely elected under (eventual) universal suffrage, became in the 19th and 20th centuries the central institutions of democratic governments. In many countries, democracy also came to imply competition for office, freedom of speech and the press, and the rule of law.

Numerous authoritarian and totalitarian states, notably the communist nations of the 20th century, have adopted outwardly democratic governments that nonetheless were dominated by a single authorized party without opposition. States with Marxist ideologies asserted that political consensus and collective ownership of the means of production (i.e., economic democracy) were sufficient to ensure that the will of the people would be carried out.
---------------------------


doesn't sound anything like what one_raven described..

Yes there are democracies, where people can be represented justly. But America has increasingly become a playground for lobbyists and interest groups which would hamper the freedom that is conducive towards a democracy.

And of course, there's always proletarian democracy.