Democracy is one form of government.

Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

On the political level the response was the nationalist and fundamentalist revolt of the Maccabees.

Democracy Comes Second

Today we have globalized the markets but we have not globalized our democratic institutions.

Parties and Populists

What that will do is avoid the problem I was talking about earlier, where currently we have political parties presenting democracy as merely a political choice in those societies alongside other choices such as military rule and theocracy.

I had such faith in our democratic system, our selfgovernment.

Or to a president of Venezuela whose intolerance of the business class causes jubilation in the streets, but emigration by those whose initiative is crucial for the welfare of the people. Less damaging, yet problematic, is the election as in Poland of a minority government that ruthlessly pursues its members personal interests and breaks all promises of cooperation made before the polls.

And we can lose this with the very noble idea to keep people accountable for showing the people that we're not going to tolerate politicians the opportunism in politics.

But to get to that stage, where democracy builds the fabric of society and the political choices within that fabric, but are certainly not theocratic and military dictatorship i.e. you're voting in a democracy, in an existing democracy, and that democracy is not merely one of the choices at the ballot box.

Now these are things about general culture, but I'm also very much interested in political culture and whether liberty and democracy is appreciated, or whether there's an authoritarian political culture in which the state is supposed to impose things on the citizens.

Statically, China is a one party system, authoritarian there's no question about it.

But nevertheless, the system has moved in a more liberal direction, moved in a more democratic direction.

In a democracy, the people elect their government officials directly.

The second, I believe, is political correctness.

And what do we teach in these schools?

Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried.

And democracy was the political innovation which protected this freedom, because we were liberated from fear so that our minds in fact, whether they be despots or dogmas, could be the protagonists.

I thought this was a democracy and I thought the democracy is based to the collective will of the people.

The Limits of Democracy

The constitution's gone.

Democracy encourages freedom.

Kuwaiti Democracy in Action

But, we can escape from this trap, these pincers, I think.

Is that democracy?

This is not a good time for political parties, especially those with traditional orientations. Gone are the times in the older democracies when one could count on two major parties one social democratic, the other more to the right of center dominating the political scene.

Because especially now with the economic crisis, you can see that the trust in politics, that the trust in democratic institutions, was really destroyed.

If you are a Republican, you can take a Democrat to lunch, or if you're a Democrat, think of it as taking a Republican to lunch.

Representative democracy is one form of government.

We feed our political impotence by allowing ourselves to call democracy something that is the very negation of our rights.

And equality?

But this is a democracy, Harvey.

I believe in democracy.

Shoot, bitch! Democracy's at stake.

Huh? Democracy time, y'all.

And what happens as a result of this is, when those parties are elected, and inevitably they fail, or inevitably they make political mistakes, democracy takes the blame for their political mistakes.

Here, I interviewed people who were residents of formerly communist countries, who had all faced the challenge of transitioning to a more democratic and capitalistic society.

There are many reasons to celebrate the current democratic wave. Democracy is associated with less injustice and abuse, with basic civic and political freedoms, and with greater sensitivity by governments for the true priorities of its citizens.

And that's why the Ottoman Empire in its last decades turned into a proto democracy, a constitutional monarchy, and freedom was a very important political value at the time.

And that regime that we got rid of was actually a dictatorship, an authoritarian regime, that for decades created a great sense of paralysis within the nation, within the people themselves.

I am on the side of democracy.

It matters because this is a democracy.

York Harding. The Dangers To Democracy.

George W. Bush stood up in his State of the Union address in 2003 and said that democracy was the force that would beat most of the ills of the world.