Self-Defeating Democracy

Communism and democracy are not mutually exclusive.

Let's change the example to a proposed dictatorship winning an election.

Well, pretty much exactly what I said.

Communism is not the opposite of democracy, despite that perception's prevalence in America.

Communism and democracy can co-exist. Communism is economic system whose opposite is capitalism. Democracy is a system of government whose opposite is autocracy.

But this is a distraction to your thread. Just pretend you used autocracy in the example. :wink:

I already altered my response before I read your new post. I just hadn't thought it out.

That is what the Judicial branch is for. There have been several times where the majority of people as expressed "democratically" have been undemocratic.

In your example of people named Jack, the Supreme Court would do its job and prevent it. The Supreme Court also has power to prevent a dictator from taking power.

The Supreme Court has stepped in many times to keep the government from doing things that the majority of people would have supported. This divided governemnt was won of the most brilliant ideas of the founding fathers.

Of course if a great majority of people in a society (let's say 70%) don't want to live in a democracy, they can change it either by force or by changing the Constitution.

Democracy does demand the consent of the governed. If the majority of people want to live under a Monarch, they should have that right, shouldn't they?

But the system we have here seems to work pretty well.

Yes, I agree that the system we have in America works very well, but it cannot be classified as a pure democracy, that's partly why I wanted to use a hypothetical example. My feeling is that a pure democracy SHOULD possess self-defeating potential, by definition. Which is also why I don't think a pure democracy is always ideal.

A democracy ceases to exist when the citizens no longer have the opportunity to revise their own decisions or change their mind.
Socialism can be practiced in a democracy, but communism is a totalitarian system of government control over every aspect of life.

False. Communism has had many instances of totalitarian government but the word merely describes several forms of socialism.

That is an economic descriptor and not one of the freedom gauge between democracy and autocracy.

Very interesting, SCoates!

False. What some call Communism, can also be Marxism or State Socialism.

And they do not have to be the same.

But under SCoates presented scenario a single party could be elected by a large majority at both the state and Federal level and amend the Constitution to eliminate the entire judicial branch removing that as an obstacle.

But to the basic question, if that's what people choose for themselves so be it. I don't see why anything should be done.

What some call "pink elephant" is actually a taxi or a bus. <shrugs>

Such things have been known to happen. In Islamic countries, for example, radical fundamentalist parties have done well in the few elections that have been held.

Take the case of Algeria. Democratic elections were attempted in 1992, in an effort to stabilize the nation after years of civil war. However, the FIS - a fundamentalist party whose leader openly declared "when we are in power there will be no more elections because God will be in power" - was poised to win in a landslide victory. So the military cancelled the elections, thus plunging the nation back into civil war.

This can be referred to as the democracy paradox.

Our leaders would be wise to take this paradox into consideration when crafting American foriegn policy. For the past hundred years America has been actively promoting Western political ideals - especially democracy - throughout the globe. This was ostensibly done because it was assumed that democracy would lead to more peacefull, stable, pro-Western governments. It also helped provide justification for wars, like the ones we fought recently in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The problem, from a policy planning standpoint, is that democracy in non-Western nations usually doesn't lead to Westernization, as we had assumed, but rather achieves the opposite. Why? Because democracy is inherantly a parochializing process. Leaders are forced to compete for votes by pandering to the masses; too often in non-Western countries this means basing a platform on appeals to the nativist religious nature of thier society. Examples are plentifull - India, Algeria, Sri Lanka, Egypt, etc, etc, etc.

heh

Craven, have you been drinking again?

ILZ makes a rather lucid argument. However, I don't think the Western initiatives to 'spread Democracy' have included any notion that newly democratic nations should be westernized. Of course western capitalists push for that, but it is not a political initiative so far as I can tell.

Democracy is a powerful force however and generally results in opportunity and opportunity for the people as well as muting of aggressive tendencies. Very few countries go to war once they get a McDonalds.

Have you been beating your wife again?

I wonder if you thought that one out? We have a McDonalds all over the place and we still go to wars.