Ah Democracy, a word loaded with importance. What is it though? Elections? Well, Cuba has elections, is it a democracy? Greece was a democracy, but only for landowning white men. America is a democracy, but what we are allowed to vote on is only representatives, not on issues.
Is your idea of democracy direct democracy -- or representative? Parliamentarian? Or what about those kingdoms which have consultative councils that afford the regular people a lot more access to their rulers than our representative democracy? A Saudi citizen has a better chance to talk directly to the King than any American stands a chance of even seeing the president.
And when we talk about bringing democracy to the rest of the world -- what does that mean? We blithely assume, because the vast majority of people are unaware of the facts, that we mean to bring them what takes place in, say, Iowa. But what if the "democracy' they mean over there is one of the ayatollahs meeting with supplicants? Is their form of representative democracy the same? Different? In form? Function? Rights? It is easy to bandy about the word, but what does one mean by it? |
