Government of the People
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(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(interchangeable), 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.
Democracies fall into two basic categories, direct and representative. In a direct democracy, all citizens, without the intermediary(mediator) of elected or appointed officials, can participate in making public decisions. Such a system is clearly only practical with relatively small numbers of people--in a community organization or tribal council, for example, or the local unit of a labor union, where members can meet in a single room to discuss issues and arrive at decisions by consensus or majority vote. Ancient Athens, the world's first democracy, managed to practice direct democracy with an assembly that may have numbered as many as 5,000 to 6,000 persons--perhaps the maximum number that can physically gather in one place and practice direct democracy.
Modern society, with its size and complexity, offers few opportunities for direct democracy. Even in the northeastern United States, where the New England town meeting(town meeting) is a hallowed tradition, most communities have grown too large for all the residents to gather in a single location and vote directly on issues that affect their lives.
Today, the most common form of democracy, whether for a town of 50,000 or nations of 50 million, is representative democracy, in which citizens elect officials to make political decisions, formulate laws, and administer programs for the public good(public good). In the name of the people, such officials can deliberate on complex public issues in a thoughtful and systematic manner that requires an investment of time and energy that is often impractical for the vast majority of private citizens.
How such officials are elected can vary enormously. On the national level, for example, legislators can be chosen from districts that each elect a single representative. Alternatively, under a system of proportional representation, each political party is represented in the legislature according to its percentage of the total vote nationwide. Provincial and local elections can mirror these national models, or choose their representatives more informally through group consensus instead of elections. Whatever the method used, public officials in a representative democracy hold office in the name of the people and remain accountable to the people for their actions.
Majority Rule and Minority Rights
All democracies are systems in which citizens freely make political decisions by majority rule(the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority). But rule by the majority is not necessarily democratic: No one, for example, would call a system fair or just that permitted 51 percent of the population to oppress the remaining 49 percent in the name of the majority. In a democratic society, majority rule must be coupled with guarantees of individual human rights that, in turn, serve to protect the rights of minorities--whether ethnic, religious, or political, or simply the losers in the debate over a piece of controversial legislation. The rights of minorities do not depend upon the goodwill of the majority and cannot be eliminated by majority vote. The rights of minorities are protected because democratic laws and institutions protect the rights of all citizens.
Diane Ravitch, scholar, author, and a former assistant U.S. Secretary of education, wrote in a paper for an educational seminar in Poland: "When a representative democracy operates in accordance with a constitution that limits the powers of the government and guarantees fundamental rights to all citizens, this form of government is a constitutional democracy. In such a society, the majority rules, and the rights of minorities are protected by law and through the institutionalization of law."
These elements define the fundamental elements of all modern democracies, no matter how varied in history, culture, and economy. Despite their enormous differences as nations and societies, the essential elements of constitutional government--majority rule coupled with individual and minority rights, and the rule of law--can be found in Canada and Costa Rica, France and Botswana, Japan and India.
Democratic Society
Democracy is more than a set of constitutional rules and procedures that determine how a government functions. In a democracy, government is only one element coexisting in a social fabric of many and varied institutions, political parties, organizations, and associations. This diversity is called pluralism, and it assumes that the many organized groups and institutions in a democratic society do not depend upon government for their existence, legitimacy, or authority.
Thousands of private organizations operate in a democratic society, some local, some national. Many of them serve a mediating role between individuals and the complex social and governmental institutions of which they are a part, filling roles not given to the government and offering individuals opportunities to exercise their rights and responsibilities as citizens of a democracy.
These groups represent the interests of their members in a variety of ways--by supporting candidates for public office, debating issues, and trying to influence policy decisions. Through such groups, individuals have an avenue for meaningful participation both in government and in their own communities. The examples are many and varied: charitable organizations and churches, environmental and neighborhood groups, business associations and labor unions.
In an authoritarian society, virtually all such organizations would be controlled, licensed, watched, or otherwise accountable to the government. In a democracy, the powers of the government are, by law, clearly defined and sharply limited. As a result, private organizations are free of government control; on the contrary, many of them lobby the government and seek to hold it accountable for its actions. Other groups, concerned with the arts, the practice of religious faith, scholarly research, or other interests, may choose to have little or no contact with the government at all.
In this busy private realm of democratic society, citizens can explore the possibilities of freedom and the responsibilities of self-government—unpressured by the potentially heavy hand of the state.
THE PILLARS(pillars, supports) OF DEMOCRACY
- Sovereignty of the people.
- Government based upon consent of the governed.
- Majority rule.
- Minority rights.
- Guarantee of basic human rights.
- Free and fair elections.
- Equality before the law.
- Due process of law.
- Constitutional limits on government.
- Social, economic, and political pluralism.
- Values of tolerance, pragmatism, cooperation, and compromise.
wives democracy constitutional democracy - constitutional democracy
democracy: n. democracy
Large Russian-English dictionary. New big Russian-English dictionary. 2012
More meanings of this word and English-Russian, Russian-English translations for the word “DEMOCRACY” in dictionaries.
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...Are we dealing with intelligent monkeys or with very underdeveloped people?
Oldfield, 1865
The only reasonable and logical solution regarding the inferior race is its destruction.
H. G. Wells, 1902
One of the most shameful pages in the history of English colonial expansion is the extermination of the native population of the island. Tasmania.,
British settlers in Australia, and especially Tasmania, systematically destroyed the indigenous population and undermined their livelihoods for the sake of their own prosperity. The British “needed” all the lands of the natives with favorable climatic conditions. “Europeans can hope to prosper because... the blacks will soon disappear...
If the natives are shot in the same way as crows are shot in some countries, the [native] population must in course of time be greatly reduced,” wrote Robert Knox in his “philosophical study of the influence of race.” Alan Moorehead described the fatal changes that befell Australia: “In Sydney the savage tribes were killed. In Tasmania they were completely exterminated... by settlers... and convicts... all of them were eager to get land, and none of them was going to let the blacks interfere with this.
However, those gentle and kind-hearted people whom Cook visited half a century earlier turned out to be not as submissive as on the mainland.” After farmers took the land from the indigenous people (primarily in Tasmania, where the climate was colder), the natives, with spears in their hands, tried to resist the newcomers armed with firearms. In response, the British organized a real hunt for them. In Tasmania, such a hunt for people took place with the sanction of the British authorities: “Final extermination on a large scale could only be carried out with the help of justice and the armed forces ... The soldiers of the fortieth regiment drove the natives between two stone blocks and shot
all the men, and then pulled women and children out of rock crevices to blow their brains out” (ISSO). If the natives were “unaccommodating [unaccommodating],” the British concluded that the only way out of the situation was to destroy them. The natives were “constantly hunted and hunted down like deer.” Those who were caught were taken away. In 1835, the last surviving local resident was removed. Moreover, these measures were not secret, no one was ashamed of them, and the government supported this policy.
“So the hunt for people began, and as time went on it became more and more brutal. In 1830, Tasmania was placed under martial law; a chain of armed men was built across the island, trying to drive the Aborigines into a trap. The indigenous people managed to get through the cordon, but the will to live left the hearts of the savages, fear was stronger than despair...” Felix Maynard, a doctor on a French whaling ship, recalled systematic roundups of natives. “The Tasmanians were useless and [now] all dead,” Hammond believed.
* Hammond John Lawrence Le Breton (1872-1949) - historian and journalist.
Europeans found the island quite densely populated. R. Pöch believes that about 6,000 natives could exist in Tasmania on the products of hunting and gathering. Wars between the Aborigines did not go beyond minor inter-tribal feuds. Apparently there were no hunger strikes; at least the Europeans did not find the natives exhausted.
The first Europeans were greeted by the Tasmanians with the greatest friendliness. According to Cook, the Tasmanians, of all the “savages” he saw, were the most good-natured and trusting people. “They did not have a fierce appearance, but seemed kind and cheerful without distrust of strangers.”
When in 1803 the first English settlement was founded on the island; the Tasmanians also treated the colonists without any hostility. Only the violence and cruelty of Europeans forced the Tasmanians to change their attitude towards whites. In the sources we find numerous colorful examples of these violences and cruelties. “Someone named Carrots,” says H. Parker, “killed a native whose wife he wanted to take away, cut off his head, hung it like a toy around the neck of the murdered man and forced the woman to follow him.” The same author reports on the exploits of one seal hunter, who “captured 15 native women and settled them on the islands of Bass Strait so that they would catch seals for him. If the women did not have time to prepare the required amount of skins by the time of his arrival, he would punish them by tying the perpetrators to trees for 24-36 hours straight, and from time to time he would flog them with rods.”
In the early 1820s, Tasmanians attempted organized armed resistance to European rapists and murderers. The so-called “black war” begins, which soon turned into a simple hunt by the British for Tasmanians, completely defenseless against white firearms.
H. Hull directly says that “hunting for blacks was the favorite sport of the colonists. They chose a day and invited neighbors and their families to a picnic... after lunch, the gentlemen took guns and dogs and, accompanied by 2-3 exiled servants, went into the forest to look for Tasmanians. The hunters returned in triumph if they managed to shoot a woman or 1-2 men.
“One European colonist,” says Ling Roth, “had a jar in which he kept the ears of the people he killed as hunting trophies.”
Pictured: Tasmania's last Aboriginal people
“Many blacks with women and children gathered in a ravine near the city... the men were sitting around a large fire, while the women were busy preparing food for dinner. The natives were taken by surprise by a detachment of soldiers who, without warning, opened fire on them and then rushed to finish off the wounded. One soldier bayoneted a child crawling near his dead mother and threw him into the fire.” This soldier himself spoke about his “feat” to the traveler Hull, and when the latter expressed indignation at his cruelty, he exclaimed with sincere surprise: “It was only a child!”
In 1834 everything was finished. “On December 28,” says E. Reclus, “the last natives, pursued like wild animals, were driven to the tip of one elevated cape, and this event was celebrated with triumph. The happy hunter, Robinson, received an estate of 400 hectares and a significant amount of money as a reward from the government.
The prisoners were first transferred from island to island, and then all the Tasmanians, numbering two hundred, were imprisoned in one swampy valley on the island. Flinders. Within 10 years, 3/4 of the exiles died. 
In 1869, William Lanny, the last Tasmanian, died on the shores of Oyster Bay, near Hobart.
In 1860 there were only eleven Tasmanians left. In 1876, the last Tasmanian woman, Truganini, died, and the island turned out to be, in the words of English official documents, completely “cleared” of natives, except for an insignificant number of Europeanized mestizos of Anglo-Tasmanian origin.
“Charles Darwin visited Tasmania during the Holocaust. He wrote: “I am afraid there is no doubt that the evil happening here and its consequences are the result of the shameless behavior of some of our fellow countrymen.” This is putting it mildly. It was a monstrous, unforgivable crime... The Aborigines had only two alternatives: either resist and die, or submit and become a parody of themselves,” wrote Alan Moorehead. Polish traveler Count Strzelecki,
(* Strzelecki Edmund Pawel (1796-1873) - Polish naturalist, geographer and geologist, explorer of America, Oceania and Australia) who arrived in Australia in the late 1830s, could not help but express horror at what he saw: “Humiliated, depressed, confused... emaciated and covered with dirty rags, they - [once] the natural owners of this land - [now] are more like ghosts of the past than living people; they vegetate here in their melancholy existence, awaiting an even more melancholic end.” Strzelecki also mentioned “the examination of a corpse by one race by another - with the verdict: “She died overtaken by God’s punishment.” The extermination of the natives could be considered as hunting, as a sport, because they seemed to have no souls.
True, Christian missionaries opposed the idea of the “lack of soul” among the “aboriginals” and saved the lives of a considerable number of the last indigenous inhabitants of Australia. However
However, the constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, which was in force already in the post-war years, ordered (Article 127) “not to take into account the Aborigines” when calculating the population of individual states. Thus, the constitution rejected their participation in the human race. After all, as early as 1865, Europeans faced with indigenous peoples were not sure whether they were dealing with “clever apes or very inferior humans.”
Caring for “these beast people” is “a crime against our own blood,” Heinrich Himmler recalled in 1943, speaking of the Russians who should have been subjugated to the Nordic master race.
The British, who were doing “unheard of things in colonization” in Australia (according to Adolf Hitler), did not need this kind of instruction. Thus, one message for 1885 reads:
“To calm the niggas down, they were given something amazing. The food [that was distributed to them] consisted half of strychnine - and no one escaped his fate... The owner of Long Lagoon, using this trick, destroyed more than a hundred blacks.” “In the old days in New South Wales it was useless to ensure that those who invited blacks as guests and gave them poisoned meat received the punishment they deserved.” Некий Винсент Лесина еще в 1901 г. заявил в австралийском парламенте: «Ниггер должен исчезнуть с пути развития белого человека» — так «гласит закон эволюции». “We did not realize that by killing blacks we were breaking the law... because it used to be practiced everywhere,” was the main argument of the British, who killed twenty-eight “friendly” (i.e., peaceful) natives in 1838. Until this massacre at Myell Creek, all actions to exterminate the indigenous people of Australia remained unpunished. Only in the second year of Queen Victoria's reign were seven Englishmen (from the lower strata) hanged for such a crime as an exception.
However, in Queensland (northern Australia) at the end of the 19th century. невинной забавой считалось загнать целую семью «ниггеров» -мужа, жену и детей — в воду к крокодилам… Во время своего пребывания в Северном Квинсленде в 1880—1884 гг., норвежец Карл Лумхольц(*Лумхольц Карл Софус (1851—1922) — норвежский traveler, naturalist and ethnographer, explorer of Australia, Mexico, Indonesia) heard the following statements: “You can only shoot blacks - you cannot treat them differently.” One of the colonists noted that this was a “hard... but... necessary principle.” He himself shot all the men he met in his pastures, “because they are slaughterers, women - because they give birth to slaughterers, and children - because they [will] still be slaughterers. They don’t want to work and therefore are not good for anything except getting shot,” the colonists complained to Lumholtz.
“Where are we going with the end-to-end snout and the cloth row!” V.I. Dahl
On March 16, 2013, activists of the “Essence of Time” movement in the UK attempted to distribute informational (we emphasize informational, not propaganda) materials - AKSIO leaflets with the results of a survey of Russian citizens regarding the de-Sovietization campaign imposed on society in the interests of the ruling circles, during the pompous and already traditional celebration of Russian Maslenitsa in Trafalgar Square - in the very center of London - the cradle of selfless love for the Russian people. We hurried to go to the center of events in order to conduct a survey of our compatriots and collect the signatures of everyone under the resolution of the All-Russian Parents' Congress. It turned out that the entrance to the festival area, carefully fenced off with a steel turnstile by someone’s prudent hand, lies through a cordon of inspectors - employees of a private security company. However, during the personal search to which everyone who wanted to go to the place of celebration - the center of the square, was subjected, while passing through the security cordons, the attention of the guards, let us emphasize once again, representatives of a private security company, was attracted by a word that was deeply seated as a sore thorn in the subconscious of the European man in the street. This word printed in red is USSR. The unconditioned reflex worked instantly and we were quickly taken aside so as not to embarrass the few of our compatriots and just onlookers who came to the center of London on this unspring-like cloudy day for this strange event organized by Russian oligarchs with the support of the London mayor's office. After all, there are so few idiots left to support the rapidly decrepit economy of this “New Babylon,” and “Russian” money smells no worse than others.
Upon additional inspection, one of the leaflets was confiscated and carefully studied by a representative of a Polish security company, as strange as it may seem to a reader new to the realities of British life, of origin. After getting acquainted with it, the reader had knowledge of the Russian language, we were told that entering the territory and distributing any printed materials of a political nature is strictly prohibited by the organizers of this wonderful spring holiday. In response to our counter question and comment that we do not see any hint of politics in the content of the leaflet, but only a demonstration of the results of a survey of Russians regarding the Soviet historical period. We tried to convey to the inspector that the leaflet only reports how the overwhelming majority of Russian citizens speak out against revising the role of the USSR in the history of the 20th century. It was categorically repeated to us that the organizers of the holiday do not consider it possible to overshadow this celebration of the victory of spring over winter with anything remotely related to politics - spring, period! Nothing else can overshadow this “bright holiday” in Trafalgar Square. We must pay tribute to the correct form in which this was done, but the fact remains - democracy with the persistent smell of spring - Maslenitsa, it is, as you know, Shrovetide in London. It is worth noting that our appearance itself caused, if not surprise, then definitely understanding on the part of this glorious representative of the Polish national minority in London. The result remained the same: we were banned from entering Trafalgar Square with leaflets. But don’t rush to conclusions, dear reader! A few more words will be said about spring.
Walking around the square in thought, although the word square, in relation to a patch with a fountain in the middle, is too strong a word, on which the “folk festival” should actually take place, carefully fenced, like an impregnable bastion, with a steel turnstile under the heavy protection of employees of a private security agency, which was not much less than the actual “walkers” themselves. Imagine our surprise when the beginning of the big final concert in Trafalgar Square was drowned out by a hysterical, multiply amplified megaphone, a howl that signaled the approach of something clearly discordant with the general atmosphere of this wonderful spring holiday.
In complete bewilderment, we hurried to the noise of the approaching crowd, excuse me, a demonstration, surrounded by a dense ring of good old London bobbies, in which, according to a rough estimate, a little more than a hundred (at most two) demonstrators took part, fueled by the cries of an elderly female individual: “Assad is a murderer! » “Assad is a dictator!” “Assad liberate Syria!” Who exactly were guarded by the imperturbable bobbies: were the “Freedom Fighters” a howling caudlo with banners, of which, to give credit to the organizers of this procession, there was no shortage (despite the fact that most of them were performed in English) and a megaphone from supporters the legally elected President of the Syrian Arab Republic, Bashar al-Assad, who “scour the center of London in flocks,” or the “Russian” Maslenitsa from this menagerie, we do not know for certain.
While the demonstrators continued to chant anti-government slogans with wild fury, we hastened to film the entire procession. We were lucky enough to have a short interview with one of the demonstrators. The “freedom fighter of the Syrian people” readily told us that he demands the overthrow of the “bloody” regime of the tyrant Assad. No more, no less! I wonder who he could have demanded this from, two steps from the British Parliament building and Buckingham Palace!? One thing is clear: this demand was not explicitly addressed to Bashar Assad himself. To whose ears these screams could reach, it was only to the ears of Her Majesty or the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Everything clearly indicated that the defenders of the freedom of the Syrian people categorically demanded immediate intervention from the British authorities. This is what it is - the spring holiday of Maslenitsa, which, on this unspring-like cloudy day, scorched Trafalgar Square with the bloody events of distant Syria.
There is a mechanism to ensure that we are no better managed than we deserve. George Bernard Shaw Democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the others. Winston Churchill Democracy is a process in which people are free... ... Consolidated encyclopedia of aphorisms
Democracy- (democracy) From the Greek word democracy. Since people rarely show uniformity of thought, democracy, as a descriptive term, can be considered synonymous with the concept of majority rule. In Ancient Greece and later, in the XVIII... ... Political science. Dictionary.
DEMOCRACY- (from the Greek demos people, kratos power, government) a form of government in which citizens personally or through elected representatives exercise the right to make (political) decisions. D. is based on the recognition of the people as the source of power and... ... Philosophical Encyclopedia
DEMOCRACY- (Greek demokratia, from demos people, and kratos power). An image of government when the whole people takes part in it, without distinction of rank or status. Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. Chudinov A.N., 1910.… … Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language
Democracy- Democracy ♦ Democratie A political system in which full power belongs to the people. This does not mean that the people rule the state or even pass its laws. This means that no one can govern the state or... ... Sponville's Philosophical Dictionary
DEMOCRACY Modern encyclopedia
Democracy- (from the Greek demos people and...cracy), a form of state-political structure of society, based on the recognition of the people as the source of power. Basic principles of democracy: majority rule, equal rights of citizens, legal... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary
DEMOCRACY- (from the Greek demos people and...cracy) a form of state-political structure of society, based on the recognition of the people as the source of power. The basic principles of democracy are the rule of the majority, equality of citizens, protection of their rights and... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
DEMOCRACY- DEMOCRACY, democracies, women. (Greek demokratia) (book, political). 1. units only A form of government in which power is exercised by the people themselves, by the masses, directly or through representative institutions. In bourgeois countries there is democracy... Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary
democracy- democracy, democratic state; democracy, democracy. Ant. totalitarianism, totalitarian state Dictionary of Russian synonyms. democracy democracy; democracy (obsolete) Dictionary of synonyms of the Russian language. Practical... ... Dictionary of synonyms
Democracy- Democracy. The word D. comes from the Greek dhmoV and kratia, literally democracy. It denotes: 1) a state structure where power belongs to the people, or where the interests of the people are in the foreground, and 2) the masses themselves, since they... ... Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron
