Essay on Democracy a Way of Life Text

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More and more countries are revolting against their dictators and parliaments and evolving into democracies. Forms of democracy date back to about 500 bc where cleisthenes, a greek statesman and regarded as the founder of athenian democracy, led the government of athens. Due to the root of the word democracy originating in greece, one can only conclude that this is where direct democracy was propagated. Some say that with the great level of cynicism and public distrust in our political system that direct democracy is the only option for revival of true democracy. Representative democracy both share one thing in common and that is that the people have the ultimate power. The greatest tribute to democracy as an ideal of social life is unwittingly paid to it in the apologias of the dictators of the modern world, hitler, stalin, and mussolini. For all of them insist, in the shrillest tones, that the regimes they control are actually, despite appearances, democracies in a higher sense.

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And here in america, owing to the needs of the foreign policy of the various dictatorships, their partisans now wrap up their program of blood and steel in the american flag and make a great verbal play about being defenders of american democracy. 1 that the greatest enemies of democracy should feel compelled to render demagogic lip allegiance to it is an eloquent sign of the inherent plausibility of democratic ideals to the modern mind and of their universal appeal. But that its enemies, apparently with some success, should have the audacity to flaunt the principles they have so outrageously betrayed in practice is just as eloquent a sign that these principles are ambiguous. Agreement where there is no clarity merely cloaks differences it does not settle them. The analysis of the concept of democracy is not merely a theoretical problem for the academician. The ordinary man who says he believes in democracy must clearly understand what he means by it.

Otherwise, the genuine issues that divide men will be lost in the welter of emotive words which demagogues skillfully evoke to conceal their true intentions. And of all the words in our political vocabulary, none is in greater need of precise analysis and scrupulous use than democracy. Some methodological considerations anyone can use a word as a sign for any idea provided he makes adequately clear what he means by it.

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For example, if a man says, by democracy i mean a government in which the name of the ruler begins with a d, we can smile at his peculiar nominal definition and pass on. We have no right to dispute the legitimacy of his use if he always accompanies it with a parenthetical explanation of what he understands by the term. However, if he introduces the term into a political discussion without stating explicitly the special meaning it has for him, we have every scientific and moral right to object. For, where words of a certain kind are already in use, to employ them as signs of new meanings without posting, so to speak, a clear public notice, is to be guilty of a form of counterfeit.

Democracy is a term which has customarily been associated with certain historical practices and with certain writings in the history of culture. Instead of beginning with arbitrary nominal definitions, it would be preferable to describe and critically evaluate the growth of democracy in western europe from its origins in the greek city slave states to the present. The third alternative one which we shall here follow is to begin with a definition which formally is acceptable to most people who distinguish democracy from other forms of political organization and which is in consonance with at least traditional american usage. We shall then indicate what it implies as far as the structure of other present day social institutions is concerned, to what techniques of settling differences it commits us, and what fundamental ethical values are presupposed. In this way we shall combine the advantages of an analytical and contemporary historical treatment.

A democratic society is one in which the government rests upon the freely given consent of the governed. By the governed is meant those adult participating members of the community, with their dependents, whose way of life is affected by what the government does or leaves undone. By the government is primarily intended the law and policy making agencies, legislative, executive, and judicial, whose activities control the life of the community. In the first instance, then, government is a political concept, but in certain circumstances it may refer to social and economic organizations whose policies affect the lives of a large number of individuals.

In saying that the government rests upon the consent of the governed, it is meant that at certain fixed periods the policies of the government are submitted to the governed for approval or disapproval. By freely given consent of the governed is meant that no coercion, direct or indirect, is brought to bear upon the governed to elicit their approval or disapproval. A government that rests upon the freely given consent of the governed is one which in fact abides by the expression of this approval or disapproval.

Consequences of the definition a direct consequence of this definition may be that there is no complete democracy anywhere in the world. This no more prevents our employing the term intelligently and making comparative evaluations than the fact that no one is perfectly healthy prevents us from making the concept health basic to medical theory and practice. There is no absolutely fat man, but we can easily tell whether one man is fatter than another. So long as our definition enables us to order existing communities in a series of greater or less democracy, our definition is adequate. If a democratic government rests upon the freely given consent of the governed, then it cannot be present where institutional arrangements whether political or nonpolitical obviously obstruct the registration or the implementation of the common consent.

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