Faux Democracy

Democracy may be a word familiar to most, but it is a concept still misunderstood and misused in a time when totalitarian regimes and military dictatorships alike have attempted to claim popular support by pinning democratic labels upon themselves. Yet the power of the democratic idea has also evoked some of history's most profound and moving expressions of human will and intellect: from Pericles in ancient Athens to Vaclav Havel in the modern Czech Republic, from Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence in 1776 to Andrei Sakharov's last speeches in 1989.

In the dictionary definition, democracy "is government by the people in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system." In the phrase of Abraham Lincoln, democracy is a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."

Freedom and democracy are often used interchangeably, but the two are not synonymous. Democracy is indeed a set of ideas and principles ABOUT freedom, but it also consists of a set of practices and procedures that have been molded through a long, often tortuous history. In short, democracy is the institutionalization of freedom. For this reason, it is possible to identify the time-tested fundamentals of constitutional government, human rights, and equality before the law that any society must possess to be properly called democratic.

http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/whatsdem/whatdm2.htm

I could not have stated what Democracy isn't any better. Democracy is not freedom. I completely agree with my first quoted paragraph in saying democracy is not what it used to be. The Bush administration has flip flopped my view of democracy by backing their decisions with military and political muscle. I feel like the Bush Administration has used Democracy as a weapon to fight so called 'terrorism'.

"Democracy" by Langston Hughes

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my own two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.

I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.

Wyncoop,moriah(2008). Langston Hughes.

Moriah's choice of poem as a blog is brilliant. Langston Hughes captures the very essence of freedom and the difference between democracy and the later. Do not penalize her for lack of words, I beg you. Occam's Razor- the simplest answer is usually the right one.