What is “democracy?”

[hopemountain]

https://johnlaurits.com/2016/06/14/what-is-democracy/

-intro snipped-

What is “democracy?”

Democracy — that’s a word that I’ve heard a lot, having grown up in the United States of America. Like “freedom” or “justice,” it seems to me that democracy is a word that has been used so much & so often that we tend to take its meaning for granted — I think that now would, perhaps, be an excellent time to remind everyone what it really means.

The word has Greek roots — it is drawn from two different words, demos & kratos, meaning “ruled by the people” — as opposed to autocracy, which is “ruled by a single person” (like the word autonomy), or plutocracy, which is “ruled by the wealthy” (ploutos means “wealth”).

I was taught that democracy is a good thing that is worth fighting for and I was taught that the United States was a country that was founded upon the idea of democracy — or, at least, our military seems to be really fond of “spreading democracy” to other countries.

But do we live in a democracy?

-snip-

I want to bring this article back to the Greek word –“demos” — from which democracy is derived. Rule by the people — but demos doesn’t necessarily mean “people” in the general, abstract sense of the word (that’s just what the plutocrats, the “wealthy rulers” want you to believe).

Demos means an assembly of people — demos means crowd.

That is the way that the people rule — that is how democracy works. Just look at what Iceland did in April — they gathered a crowd & they forced their corrupt Prime Minister to resign

.....more at link ...

a concise overview of the state of 'democracy' in our country at this time.

[geek tragedy]

1. in other words, Bernie lost so it can't be democracy, because Bernie would

never lose if it were a real democracy.


Tedious.

[jamese777]

2. Democratic-Republic?

Conservatives are fond of saying that the word "democracy" does not appear in the U.S. Constitution.
In Article IV, Section 4 the states are guaranteed "a republcan form of government."
A republic (from Latin: res publica, the people's thing) "is a sovereign state or country which is organized with a form of government in which power resides in elected individuals representing the citizen body and government leaders exercise power according to the rule of law. In modern times, the definition of a republic is commonly limited to a government which excludes a monarch."

In my humble opinion, in contemporary times, a "democratic-republic" is a nation where regular elections are held to select the representatives of the people.
In Iceland, yes the prime minister did step down after mass protests but he was replaced by an unelected member of his cabinet and the former Prime Minister is still the leader of the Progressive Party which is ideologically a capitalst, market based center-right party.
Kind of like Nixon and Ford in the U.S., but at least Ford had been elected.

From the very formation of this nation, it is an extremely small group of people (currently 538 of them) called "Electors" who determine who will be president. In 29 states plus the District of Columbia Electors must obey the will of the Electorate but in 21 states, Electors are free to ignore the democratic will of the Electorate

[DemocratSinceBirth]

3. We are a democratic republic or a constitutional republic.