Food for though: What is democracy? What is freedom?

sagegirl said:
Freedom and democracy must be two of the most overeused and misunderstood words in the English language. Democracy I suppose means a representative government. Freedom is a relative term that at best means "being comfortable in your harness". We sort of lost the concept of representational gov. when we adopted the Electoral College. Then again how many eligible voters do vote?????? So a democracy requires a proactive and informed electorate. And I might add from my own point of view accountability by those we elect. Lobbyist and special interests have polarized our electorate into a two party or 3 or 4 party system, the system should be open, available and credible for so many more. We have great minds and great ideas and look what we are offered up by the two big ones, the dems and reps. Freedom is a social phenomenon....more tough I would guess than a democracy. Freedom requires a whole lot of tolerance, and cooperation. So far I havent seen alot of that out there. It seems more like a competition for who can get the most out of it for themselves. So sad.

Yea I often get chided on this board for using the word Democracy instead of Republic. I never see a post attacking Bush for using the word. I think we are referring to one man, one vote when we talk of Democracy. And yea Freedom is relative. Thank God we aren't all totally free, good luck walking down the street.

I believe the electoral college has been around since the beginning. It's a nice way to keep the candidates from ignoring less populated states. The Congress is elected directly and they are the ones that make the laws.

Lobbyists suck and the average citizen sucks more for not reclaiming the power they have taken from us.
 
A pure democracy is mob rule, not necessarily moral or just in any fashion. Democracy must be set up within a framework, bounded at one end by a group of protections on the individual; we call ours the bill of rights. The mob it's senselessness cannot vote out these protections on the individual.
 
For years I have watched the conflict in the middle east with the US obvisly on the Jews side the muslims will hate us just the same. It is sad to see the muslim's being oppressed by the Islrele's. Me being a observer it feels as if they are abusing thier power's now they have some. This I belive plays a large part as to why they hate us. Yet not all musslims feel this way, as do not all americans support the Jewish behavior over there. Simply sayin' in our country we all may not belive what we do is always right, but we support our people over there cause in the end all we really have is each other.
 

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