''Democracy sucks''

(YellowTimes.org) – This article was prompted by an e-mail exchange I had with a reader who had written to me about one of my earlier columns (it doesn't matter which one; this reader doesn't like any of them). After a few messages between us, our reader finally concluded by saying that YellowTimes.org promotes anti-Americanism, that our funding all comes from places like Teheran and Beirut, and that we actively discourage democracy. As I would hope you all understand, none of this is true but his final accusation caught my attention. How exactly do we discourage democracy? In our view, we are fervently hoping that people will once again participate in democracy and we are trying to engage them to do so.

We've all heard variations on the statement, usually ascribed to Winston Churchill, that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. But somebody define democracy for me. The Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1992 pocket edition) says it is: "1. government by the whole population, usually through elected representatives; 2. classless and tolerant society." Anybody know where I can find one of those? Does everyone agree that's what makes a democracy?

A few years ago, a very bright Canadian journalist by the name of Patrick Watson got intrigued by the question of just what is a democracy. He noted that, for instance, the United States has a formal constitution and a whole set of laws and rules for how its version of democracy works. Countries following the English parliamentary tradition don't follow the same rules as the U.S., but most folks would agree they are democracies. Many other nations follow neither of those models but still describe themselves as democracies. Is any one of these models the "real" democracy? Or are they variations of the same thing and thus equally entitled to think of themselves as democracies?

Watson produced a multi-segment documentary on the struggle for democracy and part of what had intrigued him was the variety of manifestations around the world of countries claiming to have democracies although they bore no resemblance to each other. In the course of his research, he was quite surprised to discover a number of countries who considered themselves to be democratic that would astonish most of us in the West: countries such as Libya, the former USSR, and China. How could they think of themselves as democracies? Because we are smug in our self-assurance and they are the bad guys, our natural tendency is to simply dismiss them as liars. But let's try to examine what democracy really is.