Re: What made you feel giddy today?
Be careful never to confuse the two. Democracy is the "rule of many," in which a majority can enforce their will. It is a political system with a history of slavery and minority mistreatment dating back to the ancient Greeks who started it. The freedoms so often confused with democracy are actually representative of liberalism, in which individual rights (such as property, speech, etc.) are guaranteed to all citizens (or even all people).
Actually the fine-tuning on what portion of the population should have the right to get involved, let's say,
is something the greeks themselves have thought about.
Aristotle considered timocracy (only the wealthy may participate politically) to be the ideal form of government.
He perceived democracy to be some kind of degenerated form of timocracy, i.e. an extreme on the other side of
plutocracy. Maybe like this:
... << democracy << ... << timocracy >> ... >> plutocracy >> ...
Be that as it may, the problem with the "rule of many" is something that the greek historian Thucydides (around the same time as
Aristotle) studied.
In his opinion, the majority of people is irrational and opportunistic, blame others for own mistakes etc.
On the other hand, the wealthy are only interested in maintaining power, getting richer and so on.
Thucydides followed, that the preferred form of government should be something that looked like
democracy on the outside only, but in reality was some sort of dictatorship/monarchy.
In a liberal democracy (which is what the founding fathers of the US hoped to create), there is a balance between democracy (rule of many) and liberalism (rights of all).
Actually, this is something that one might argue about. But please let's not, since
People could debate all day about which of today's states are liberal, democratic, both, or neither; but the point is that not all democracies guarantee freedoms, and not all liberal states are necessarily democratic.
Let me just state that the aforementioned founding fathers DID argue about this. Let me quote James Madison:
maddy51 said:
Mr. MADISON. We are now to determine whether the republican form shall be the basis of our government.[...]
Such are the various pursuits of this life, that in all civilized countries, the interest of a community will be divided. There will be debtors and creditors, and an unequal possession of property, and hence arises different views and different objects in government. This indeed is the ground-work of aristocracy; and we find it blended in every government, both ancient and modern. Even where titles have survived property, we discover the noble beggar haughty and assuming.
The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa, or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge of the wants or feelings of the day laborer.[...]
In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability. Various have been the propositions; but my opinion is, the longer they continue in office, the better will these views be answered.
Madison opted for a representative democracy to ensure the interests of a minority will be preserved.
The citation was taken from the
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, 1787.
Since I had to leave a few things out, you can't (and really shouldn't) trust me to not have taken things out of context.
Though I don't think Hope doesn't know what he's talking about - we actually had fruitful discussions in the shoutbox, though that's
a while ago - I wanted to write something, since in school (I'm not American, mind you) we basically learned that
the founding of the United States was to ensure basic civil rights that were back then unheard of.
While this is true even in my opinion, the reasons why this particular form of government was chosen were not
really looked at to the extend they deserved.
Also the quote shows that back in the day, people were not only troubled with who should have the right to participate politically. It really implies that the form of government has a strong influence on the allocation of wealth.
It was taken into account that wealth comes with power. Nowadays we seem to regard political power as something cleanly distinguished, even though
the fact should have become more apparent, what with lobbyists, public relations and the like.
