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Democracy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Democracy is a form of government in which policy is decided by the preference of the majority in a decision-making process, usually elections or referenda, open to all or most citizens. In recent decades 'democracy' was used as a synonym for (western) liberal-democratic systems in nation-states, but the existence of "illiberal democracies" is now recognised. The qualifier 'liberal' in this context refers strictly speaking to constitutional liberalism and individual rights, but 'liberal democracy' is widely used to describe other aspects ..." |
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'What Kind of Democracy Is This?': A grieving father wants to know, by Justin Raimondo, 23 May 2007
Related Topic: Militarism
Examines questions about American democracy and militarism posed by professor Andrew J. Bacevich after the death of his son in combat in Iraq
"This is the kind of democracy ... that can have both parties calling for an increase in the size of the U.S. military at a moment when the people are sick and tired of war ... The kind that has all 'major' candidates for the White House ... pledging to prosecute the war in Iraq more efficiently and successfully than Bush." |
A Democratic Dictatorship, by Jacob G. Hornberger, Freedom Daily, May 2006
Related Topics: George W. Bush, Terrorism
"What many Americans fail to understand is that it is entirely possible to have democracy and dictatorship at the same time. Democracy entails the use of elections to place people into positions of power. Dictatorship entails the extent of the powers that the ruler is able to exercise after he assumes office." |
Democracy Versus Freedom, by Jarret B. Wollstein, Freedom Daily, Jan 2006
Related Topics: Inalienable Rights, Rights, Voting
"Whatever its virtues, democracy is not freedom. As the 19th-century French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville warned in his classic Democracy in America, a democracy can be just as tyrannical as a dictatorship once the voters decide to vote themselves money from the treasury." |
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Democracy Versus Liberty [PDF], by James Bovard, The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, Aug 2006
Related Topics: Bill of Rights, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson
"Democracy can be a good method for reaching agreement on standards of weights and measurements used in commerce, but is a poor method for dictating wages and prices. Democracy should be a system of government based on common agreement on issues that must be agreed upon, and tolerance—however grudging—on all other differences." |
Democracy: The God That Failed: In Iraq, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, by Justin Raimondo, 12 Oct 2005
Related Topics: Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine
"Democracy is the god that failed to accomplish its ostensible goals everywhere the U.S. has intervened — but the real objective of our 'liberationist' foreign policy is well on the way to being achieved. ... the would-be exporters of 'democracy' have merely succeeded in creating more and bigger trouble, wherever their democratist dogma has been applied." |
Killing in the Name of Democracy, by James Bovard, Attention Deficit Democracy, 27 Jan 2006
Related Topics: Guatemala, William McKinley, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson
Excerpt from the "Messianic Democracy" chapter
"The U.S. government's first experience with forcibly spreading democracy came in the wake of the Spanish-American War ... President Woodrow Wilson raised tub-thumping for democracy to new levels ... During the 1920s and 1930s, U.S. military interventions in Latin America were routinely portrayed as 'missions to establish democracy.'" |
Killing in the Name of Democracy, by James Bovard, Freedom Daily, Jun 2006
Related Topics: Dominican Republic, Mexico, Philippines
"Killing in the name of democracy has a long and sordid history. ... The U.S. government is currently spending more than a billion dollars a year for democracy efforts abroad. But Thomas Carothers, the director of the Carnegie Endowment's Democracy and Rule of Law Project, warns that Bush policies are creating a 'democracy backlash' around the globe." |
Misguided Democracy, by George C. Leef, Freedom Daily, Mar 2006
Related Topics: James Bovard, Voting
A review of Attention Deficit Democracy by James Bovard
"What if, however, the state becomes so omnipotent that the elections under democracy are virtually meaningless? What if 'throwing the rascals out' means only replacing them with other rascals? ... Under those conditions, it might be the case that democracy is just a delusion — a fancy, elaborate ritual in which the results of elections scarcely matter." |
Nonsense on the Inevitability of Democracy, by James Bovard, Freedom Daily, May 2006
"Many Americans are being lulled into assuming that democracy is inevitable. This is a favorite theme of President Bush's beating on the same drumhead used by President Clinton, President Wilson, and other notable demagogues. But the fact that politicians agree does not make something true." |
Democracy and Government Schools, by Sheldon Richman, Freedom Daily, Jan 2007
Related Topics: Educational Freedom
"In the United States the variant of statism known as democracy isn't seen as simply one of a variety of ways to accomplish a goal. It is a secular religion. Its test is not how well it does things, but whether it, in some theoretical way, acts in the name of The People." |
Finding the Flaws, by Joseph Sobran, 25 Mar 1997
Related Topics: Government, Constitution of the United States
"The worst twist in American democracy is that the voters have learned to pass the stupendous costs of the welfare state on to the next generation. It's bad enough when some voters force other voters to support them. But the American voter has learned to force nonvoters to bear his expenses, by deferring payment to the next generation." |
Goethe on National Greatness, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Free Market, Oct 1999
Related Topics: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany
"In his view, democracy was incompatible with liberty. 'Legislators and revolutionaries who promise equality and liberty at the same time,' he wrote in his Maximen und Reflexionen, 'are either psychopaths or mountebanks.' Political centralization, as Goethe explained in his conversation with Eckermann, would lead to the destruction of culture ..." |
The Crazy Arithmetic of Voting, by Sheldon Richman, 8 Feb 2008
Related Topics: Voting
Reviews the "Voting Versus the Market" chapter of Bruno Leoni's Freedom and the Law
"Leoni points out that the motive of early democratic movements, such as Jeffersonianism, was to prevent the tyranny of an aristocracy. In that sense, advocates of liberty should sympathize with democracy and be wary of moves toward rule by the few. But this does not mean that majority rule respects individual liberty the way the free market does." |
The Idea of a Private Law Society, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Mises.org Daily Article, 28 Jul 2006
Related Topics: Private Property, Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Government, Law, The State, Taxation
"Under democracy, monopoly, and monopolistic exploitation do not disappear. Even if everyone is permitted to enter government, this does not eliminate the distinction between the rulers and the ruled. ... Instead of a prince who regards the country as his private property, a temporary and interchangeable caretaker is put in monopolistic charge of the country." |
The Myth of the Rational Voter, by Bryan Caplan, Cato Unbound, 6 Nov 2006
Related Topics: Voting, Economists, Logic, Psychology
"If the average voter believes that less immigration is best for society, democracy rewards politicians who oppose immigration. ... Regardless of what is going on in politicians' hearts and minds, though, we can expect democracy to listen to the average voter, even when he is wrong. The empirical evidence indicates that he often is." |
The Servile State Revisited, by Joseph Sobran, The Wanderer, 5 Jun 2003
Related Topics: The State, Military Industrial Complex
"The citizen is told that he enjoys 'democracy' and 'self-government,' so that the will he obeys is really his own will. The State is really nothing more than an extension of ourselves, so that when it seems to be harassing us 'we' are really harassing 'ourselves.'" |
The War System and Its Intellectual Myths, by Murray N. Rothbard, Harry Elmer Barnes: Learned Crusader, 1968
Related Topics: War, Cold War, Foreign Entanglements, Japan, Military Industrial Complex, George Orwell, Right Against Unreasonable Searches and Seizures, World War II
Originally titled "Harry Elmer Barnes as Revisionist of the Cold War"
"The broad Revisionist ... knows only too well that democracies can be just as or more aggressive and imperialistic [than dictatorships] — the chief difference being that democratic governments must engage in more hypocritical and intense propaganda to drug and deceive the voters into joining the war drive." |
We the Sheep, by Joseph Sobran, The Reactionary Utopian, 7 Mar 2006
Related Topics: Voting
"... remind yourself that this is a democracy, where every sheep can freely express its preference for which kind of wolf it wants to be eaten by. Many sheep, perhaps understandably, prefer a wolf in sheep's clothing, which is after all the basic idea of democracy. So far it has worked pretty well. The wolves all agree ... and they want to spread democracy everywhere." |
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Attention Deficit Democracy, by James Bovard, 10 Jan 2006
Related Topics: George W. Bush, Voting
Electronic text of Introduction available at LewRockwell.com
"The rising gullibility of the American people may be the most important trend in U.S. democracy. With each passing decade, with each new presidency, it takes less and less to snooker Americans. And a candidate only has to fool enough people on one day to snare power over everyone for four years." |
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The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, by James M. Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, 1962
Electronic text available at The Library of Economics and Liberty. |
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