What is Democracy?

        We talk a lot this election season about democracy as if it is an absolute. I suspect it is because we have created a bipolar world where all the political commentators speak as if one side is “absolutely” wrong and the other “absolutely” right. We just need to find out which side we agree with and listen to only them. This seems to play well with television or media ratings, but it is wreaking havoc on the administration of justice, and society in general.

We seem to have lost sight of the wisdom from the age of enlightenment, when men argued over the rights of the many versus the rights of the few.

Democracy traces its foundation back to the golden age of Greek civilization when Athens gave its citizens the right to decide the big issues facing the city. We tend to gloss over the fact those guys told Socrates to bugger off and while he’s at it never bother them again. I’m not sure that approach was really the best course of action for someone we now hold as a great philosopher. Of course, they say hindsight is 20/20.

As I’ve aged, I’ve changed, just as the world has changed around me. The one thing I’ve come to accept is the supposed truths I held at thirty are not the same as I hold today. Of course, anytime we talk about truths we seem to come back to the opening of the Declaration of Independence, where our learned politicians seeking to rebel against the Crown declared “all men are created equal” as a counter to the standard of the day where the Pope had declared the divine rights of the kings, and the nobility were happy to keep that idea alive. Today we can question what they really meant but should keep in mind the progressives of the day didn’t see a real problem with slavery.

As I look back on life, I’m not sure I’ve seen a move toward that utopian world all the progressives and media promised us if we would just let the government guide our individual destinies toward that united ideal where all men and women (or other accepted genders) within the galaxy would serve a single purpose. Excepting, of course, those worlds who are the baddies. In fact, it appears San Francisco is doing its best not to be considered as a campus for Starfleet.

In the roughly 80 years since it was chartered has the United Nations ever actually lived up to its original purpose to allow conflict resolution without resorting to war. Why is that? We have great documents, but not much faith in its ability to protect human life, religious freedom, the rights of all men and women, and the environment. From my perspective it seems to be just a big clearing house for money transfer from the haves to the wants. Of course, progressives love it for its purpose and happily gloss over its failures.

So, we come to our quad annual election of a Chief Executive. One side promises democracy, while telling us the other side will return us to the life of 1930’s Germany under a new Hitler. We are presented a black and white choice that so many young have come to believe is the only option. Neither party and the power brokers within it are willing to cast aside their old ways and find a moderate approach that will serve to fix America and its problems. The best we can do is vilify the other side. Until recently the right was complaining about having a President with dementia running the country. Now it is the left who worries about having a President with dementia running the country.  As an interested individual all I can say is giving every kid a trophy apparently didn’t grow kids who could inspire anyone. Between piercings and tattoos, gender fluidity, and various shades of hair I don’t think the next generation is going to be much different than the radicals and hippies of my generation who are now the elder statemen of the two primary parties.

At the end of the day the question of what is democracy remains open for discussion since I’m no longer sure we have a republic that honors the individuals as it once did.