Not in my name

Published on August 23, 2004 By oneofus In Politics

This blogg is prompted by a discussion tied to another one of my rants , and specially to the comments made by a reader that set me thinking. Anyway, the problem is this - we (most of us) live in so called 'democracies'. Why 'so called'? Read on...

To define democracy, I went here
A democracy is a form of government in which the people, either directly or indirectly, take part in governing. The term is also used as a measurement of how much influence a people has over their government. The word democracy originates from the Greek "demos" meaning "the people" and "kratein" meaning "to rule" or "the people to rule" which meant literally: "Rule by the People."

So, if we (the people) rule, can it happen that the country in which we live does something we didn't want it to do? That shouldn't be possible - as in that case we don't REALLY rule. If we approve of the general political / economical / religious... strategy of the country, but not of the specific actions, do we "kratein"? Or does someone do it in our name? And, as we finance it (by paying our taxes) are we entitled to JUST a say about it or can we use a power of veto? If not one of us (and why not?), than how many people are needed to make a veto? Or is it important how many or how much taxes they pay (should the guy who pays so much taxes that he single-handedly finances some government action have a more important vote than the one who receives support from the same government)?

In most of the countries we (the people) choose representatives to ease the process of government - but what if the representative doesn't do (usually vote) for the solution we want? Is he representing us in accordance to our wishes? And, anyway, if he does vote the way we want him but the majority of votes is against him (I'm using the male pronoun just to ease the writing), can we withdraw the money we are paying if we don't want to finance the action the country will be undertaking? We should be able to do it, or the whole government thing would have to be named 'dictatorship' - 'Absolute or despotic control or power'

Thinking, reading and listening about the subject, I found a lot of explanations of the theory of democracy - and it really all 'falls into place' in theory. But in reality the whole process is really just another complicated concept developed to enable the minority to use the funds and resources of the majority for it's own purposes. Is that 'democracy'? Don't think so. Was it ever? Not really. So what am I arguing about?

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