On a related note - can a pure democracy exist, even in theory !?! Surely it is a contradiction in terms. Consider the following chain of reasoning:
1. In a pure democracy, everything is dictated by the will of the majority.
2. A person's rights, however, exist regardless of popular opinion.
3. Therefore, in a pure democracy, there are no rights, only privileges which people enjoy as long as the majority allows them to.
4. If there are no rights, there is no right to vote.
5. If the right to vote does not exist, then the government in power cannot be a democracy.
6. But the government in power IS a democracy.
7. This is a contradiction.
8. Therefore, a pure democracy cannot exist. QED.
Is this proper reasoning !?! If not, what gives !?!
1 comment:
... I don't follow. I think the flaw lies in the definition of a person's rights. If looking at their legal rights then there's not fault in that being dictated by the majority, but you seem to be refering to innate rights outside of popular opinion, which we can never really know because we can only go by popular opinion, not a divine opinion (excuse the run-on sentence). A bigger problem of democracy lies in the fact that the government can never be fully representive of the population. This is why I always have trouble voting in a political party, none of them exactly mirror my or anyone elses political or even moral views. A true democracy would have to have every person voting on every issue facing the country, but that would be a very inefficient system.
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