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why is democracy so great

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BH

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Why is democracy so great and worth defending?

I'm talking about it in its American (USA) setting.

To me, it seems it is just a word thrown about to raise emotions and manipulate. To me we are not and never have been a democracy.

Please educate me different.
 
I was talking to a friend the other day and she made this comparison. She said .."the US government and claims about itself, the constitution, democracy, and so forth are just like the claims the Christians make about God and the Bible. But when you look at those claims (about the Bible and God) you see they are not true. Its the same thing about our government. It makes lofty claims but they are simply facade and not true."

I didn't frame my opening post as well as I liked. I suspect I just don't have the vocabulary from a legal or politically educated schooling to frame it the way I want.

I will say that I do believe there are lots of contradictions in our government between the various claims it makes and how it actually functions. There is an Orwellian doublespeak used really from the beginning of the country.
 
When a country is ruled by authoritarianism, if the leader is incompetent and has nothing restraining them, their decisions can go horribly wrong. In a democracy the excesses of leadership should be moderated to some extent, resulting in more stability.

People tend to think of democracy as giving power to the people, but more importantly it's about taking power away from the government. So we avoid arbitrary rule.
 
Democracy is like old age - it sucks but it beats the alternative.
I'd be fine with any other government structure if I thought it would make the government more representative of and dedicated to service to the citizenry. A minority electing a loudmouth authoritarian IQ95 narcissistic criminal sociopath who just wants to destroy the government to save his own ass?
No, not okay with that.
 
rousseau said:
So we avoid arbitrary rule.
Click to expand...
Term limits, even for SC Justices, publicly funded elections, reinstatement of the fairness doctrine in some form, abolish gerrymandering, making presidential elections by popular vote, disallowing the "I'm filibustering" line to serve as a filibuster... lots of things could really help avoid arbitrary rule, but most of them would have a negative impact upon too many politicians' personal lives to ever get done.
 
The modern "Western" democracy developed out of absolute monarchy, which is a hereditary dictatorship.

The critical changes are that powers are distributed amongst lots of different people, rather than one king having all of the powers (in practice, kings generally delegated powers to a council of aristocrats, but ultimately they were in charge and could overturn any decision made by any subordinate); And that the people are regularly asked whether to fire the people in charge, or to let them keep their jobs.

Importantly, voting in a modern Western democracy is a negative process; Voters choose who they DON'T want in power, rather than who they do. This is a direct consequence of the fact that candidates are volunteers, not draftees - if the voters cast an overwhelming write in campaign for a person who doesn't want the job, that person has the right to say "no".
 
Elixir said:
rousseau said:
So we avoid arbitrary rule.
Click to expand...
Term limits, even for SC Justices, publicly funded elections, reinstatement of the fairness doctrine in some form, abolish gerrymandering, making presidential elections by popular vote, disallowing the "I'm filibustering" line to serve as a filibuster... lots of things could really help avoid arbitrary rule, but most of them would have a negative impact upon too many politicians' personal lives to ever get done.
Click to expand...

There was a time that I had the impression that democracy was the natural state of things, then you come across statistics like these. At present only 8% of the world's population lives in a full democracy. Another paper arguing that the world is currently in a democratic backslide, here.

When fromderinside was around he once used the analogy of 'entropy'. Keeping a nation state together needs more builders than breakers. If you have too many idiots tearing things at the seams, you're going to have problems.
 
I was leafing through a Life Magazine from 1959 that covered the so-called Kitchen Debate between Vice President Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev. The two of them essentially flung generalizations about Communism vs. Democracy at each other. Life said the topics even included jazz, and I couldn't imagine how that came up. At cia.gov I found our government's transcript of the 'debate'. Unfortunately it didn't touch on jazz, but it had this weird exchange, that I love:
Khrushchev: I know I'm dealing with a very good lawyer. Therefore, I want to be unwavering in my miner's girth, so our miners will say, "He's ours, and he doesn't give in."
Nixon: No question about that.
Khrushchev: You're a lawyer of Capitalism, I'm a lawyer for Communism. Let's kiss.
(This just begs for John Waters to do a film version.)

P.S. The vagaries of translation are rather wild on this exchange...I just visited the film footage of the exchange on YouTube, and Khrushchev's English subtitles have 'dignity' in place of 'girth', and he doesn't say "Let's kiss", he says "So let's compete." Perhaps there's a Russian idiom that plays on kiss/compete? I much prefer the kiss.
 
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There was a time I imagined that a "philosopher king" who truly cared about the welfare of his/her people might make for a better form of government than a democracy. While some excuses for the benefits of democracy were always apparent to me. It was always difficult for me to imagine exactly what the biggest problems with authoritarian rule were and why democratic rule is necessarily better until I watched this youtube video. Rules for Rulers by CGP Grey.



The very existance of political power in a community necesitates the exploitation of most of the people in that community. Democracy is a buffer against that exploitation.
 
ideologyhunter said:
I was leafing through a Life Magazine from 1959 that covered the so-called Kitchen Debate between Vice President Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev. The two of them essentially flung generalizations about Communism vs. Democracy at each other. Life said the topics even included jazz, and I couldn't imagine how that came up. At cia.gov I found our government's transcript of the 'debate'. Unfortunately it didn't touch on jazz, but it had this weird exchange, that I love:
Khrushchev: I know I'm dealing with a very good lawyer. Therefore, I want to be unwavering in my miner's girth, so our miners will say, "He's ours, and he doesn't give in."
Nixon: No question about that.
Khrushchev: You're a lawyer of Capitalism, I'm a lawyer for Communism. Let's kiss.
(This just begs for John Waters to do a film version.)

P.S. The vagaries of translation are rather wild on this exchange...I just visited the film footage of the exchange on YouTube, and Khrushchev's English subtitles have 'dignity' in place of 'girth', and he doesn't say "Let's kiss", he says "So let's compete." Perhaps there's a Russian idiom that plays on kiss/compete? I much prefer the kiss.
Click to expand...
All translation suffers from ambiguities, often hilarious.

Kruschev could have said "мир будет нашим", which can equally well be translated as "Peace will be ours", or "The world will be ours"...
 
zorq said:
There was a time I imagined that a "philosopher king" who truly cared about the welfare of his/her people might make for a better form of government than a democracy. While some excuses for the benefits of democracy were always apparent to me. It was always difficult for me to imagine exactly what the biggest problems with authoritarian rule were and why democratic rule is necessarily better until I watched this youtube video. Rules for Rulers by CGP Grey.



The very existance of political power in a community necesitates the exploitation of most of the people in that community. Democracy is a buffer against that exploitation.
Click to expand...

That's basically the synopsis of the book "The Dictator's Handbook".
 
BH said:
That's basically the synopsis of the book "The Dictator's Handbook".
Click to expand...
Applies to the American "Democracy" too.
American "Rulers" have to have loyalty of oligarchs who control everything including media, without their money and indirect support they can't lie their way out to the election victory.
 
BH said:
That's basically the synopsis of the book "The Dictator's Handbook".
Click to expand...
I am unfamiliar with that book, but I just read an actual synopsis of "The Dictator's Handbook" and I think I agree it says the same. So if we accept the premises and reasoning in this book we must agree that the key reason that democracies are superior to dictatorships is because the needs of the rulers in a democracy are more aligned with the the needs of the people.

I would like to think there are other legitimate forms of government, like anarchy, theocracy, communism, but these simply don't seem to be viable alternatives. Anarchy is very unstable and offers no protection to the people from some of the most common disasters we encounter. (Anarchy has got to be the worst form of government, if you can even call it a form of government. Is 'bald' a hair color?) And all the experiments with large scale communism in the 20th century quickly morphed into or perhaps merely revealed themselves to be dictatorships in disguise. Theocracies are also usually just dictatorships with windowdressing and don't actually offer any meaningfully distinct patterns for organizing and distribuiting resources.

So having compared all of the viable forms of government, (sadly, just two as the others don't make the cut) democracy clearly stands out as the best. Of course, Cheerful Charlie pointed that out in post number two in this thread.
 
A democracy should be a meritocracy. A meritocracy with checks is the best functioning democracy. A meritocracy that not only lets each person achieve their full potential but initially pushes the young individual a bit beyond to ensure they are not underestimating themself. Positions awarded based on patronage saps the strength of a nation. But it is not just ability that should be considered in a merit based system but the character of the individual. There are a few times I've seen the military's system fail. Even then, when need be, individuals are minimized, their rank left but their authority stripped.
 
Testy Calibrate said:
In a democracy, power can be limited by law. Whether it is or isn't actually done, it's the only system where it is possible
Click to expand...

Not exactly. In England, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, England had
a new king, William Of Orange, but to become a king, William had to agree to
a long list of agreements that meant England had a strong parliament. In England
at least, the days of a kings having unlimited power were over.

This set an example for Europe.
 
barbos said:
BH said:
That's basically the synopsis of the book "The Dictator's Handbook".
Click to expand...
Applies to the American "Democracy" too.
American "Rulers" have to have loyalty of oligarchs who control everything including media, without their money and indirect support they can't lie their way out to the election victory.
Click to expand...
This is true barbos. In fact the book basically talks about this in even more detail than the video touched on.
 
bilby said:
The modern "Western" democracy developed out of absolute monarchy, which is a hereditary dictatorship.

The critical changes are that powers are distributed amongst lots of different people, rather than one king having all of the powers (in practice, kings generally delegated powers to a council of aristocrats, but ultimately they were in charge and could overturn any decision made by any subordinate); And that the people are regularly asked whether to fire the people in charge, or to let them keep their jobs.

Importantly, voting in a modern Western democracy is a negative process; Voters choose who they DON'T want in power, rather than who they do. This is a direct consequence of the fact that candidates are volunteers, not draftees - if the voters cast an overwhelming write in campaign for a person who doesn't want the job, that person has the right to say "no".
Click to expand...
Elections in the US are bought and sold. I think that every candidate should have a flat limited amount of $$$ to campaign and it should be equal for all candidates. Period. No lobbyists $$$. No campaign contributions. Nothing. They need to figure out based on the single amount they receive how they want to campaign/spread their message. It should be illegal for any candidate to accept 'favors' or 'money' from lobbyists or industry.
 
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