what's so good about democracy?

it boils down to this: instead of one person deciding what everyone else must do, everyone discusses what each must do, and only those actions most can agree on become law. this doesn't mean a curtailment of freedom, but liberation: it's in everyone's interest to minimize interference in personal life.

this becomes obvious in the 'big' questions of public life: the bush2 cabinet decided to go to war for reasons they dared not make public, and buttressed their lies about why they were doing it with manufactured data from the cia. they sent the whole nation to war to satisfy the secret aims of a few.

when information is freely available to all, as wikileaks attempts to demonstrate, the oligarchs are exposed as the selfserving careerists they are, using public resources and citizen lives to further their personal interests, e.g. enriching halliburton.

does democracy work? must humans submit to masters lest worse befall?

it does work, the most democratic societies are the most efficient and advanced in social goals. the best and obvious example is switzerland, rich, peaceful, and active in advancing humanitarian concerns. by no means perfect, far from heaven, but arguably the best humans can do at present. it is worth noting that switzerland usually functions just like any other western european parliamentary republic. the 'people assembled' don't micromanage the state, their hired clerks do. only occasionally does the swiss electorate find it necessary to act directly.

electorocracy

electorocracy is a substitute for democracy, a word so polluted by doublethink as to be almost useless. in fact electorocracy is more useful nowadays, as i intend to discuss and promote the rule of the nation by the electors.

electors are those people resident in a nation who are members of the ruling class, when it is a very big club. this club can be small, a cabinet is a good example, but when small we already have a name- oligarchy. or it can be a little larger, such as a parliament. this too is an oligarchy, but doublethink and newspeak have effectively hijacked the word 'democracy' for this society.

electors are citizens, another word newspeaked into uselessness. electors are citizens who can vote. this was the original meaning of 'demos,' the athenians weren't too admirable about who were 'people,' limiting the word to 'sons of athenians and enrolled in the militia.'

so i have dodged around the the use of the word 'democracy', to come to its original use, the people who 'count' because they are counted in the resolution of political propositions. i hope to demonstrate that that number should be large, as large as the number of adults born in a nation, plus invited immigrants willing to participate in the aims of the nation.

'democracy' has a good reputation chiefly because of the glory of athens, and 'citizenship' as the quality of being a member of the ruling class is immensely appealing. this appeal threatens the elites who intend to rule the 'mob,' so national elites have been engaged in diluting this appeal for hundreds of years. the writers of the american constitution hit on a method of pacifying the american electorate that was simple and immensely effective: they said: "democracy is a good thing, and here it is: with the latest improvement, 'representative' democracy does all you need, and requires no effort beyond choosing which selfless saint will work himself to exhaustion serving your personal interest."

actual democracy never recovered in the usa, although it made a weak appearance in some of the states. the result is, america has purported to carry democracy to the world while not actually having any.