this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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This is democracy... manifest.
Technically, gang rape is entirely democratic.
No, it's not. Unless you use the definition of democracy that only fascists use to attack the concept.
Democracy isn't a total dictatorship of the majority. The term implies protection of basic human rights, even if 50+% vote in favor of something that would violate them.
No, you’re confusing the concept with the implementation. Nothing about the concept of democracy says that human rights MUST be protected, it’s just something that enough widespread agreement exists on that we assume it to be universal.
In the US, those fundamental assumptions are protected by the constitution, but that can technically be amended with a large enough majority.
As a more practical example, consider children, who do not have the right to vote and therefore must accept whatever the majority of adults decides. Their human rights only extend as far as the right to free housing, food, healthcare, and education, but they do not get the right to self-determination. As long as their parents feed, clothe, and house them, they can practically and legally keep them as indentured servants until they reach the age of majority. Perfectly democratic.
I disagree completely. Protection of human rights is a fundamental part of the concept of democracy.
A political system that decides everything purely based on majority vote, with no protections whatsoever for minority rights, is NOT a democracy.
You may call it one, but then you're simply redefining the word.
What you're thinking of is commonly called a constitutional democracy.
A pure democracy would literally just decide everything by majority vote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy
What you're calling "pure democracy" is called Ochlocracy or mob rule.
Pro tip: it helps to actually read an article before posting it.
What this is really saying is that there’s merely a fine line of constitutional red tape and governmental procedure that distinguishes democracy from mob rule.
What you call a fine line of constitutional red tape and governmental procedure is the defining difference between democracy and mob rule, and it's not a fine line. It's embedded into every aspect of a truly democratic political system.
And while Wikipedia calls Ochlocracy a pejorative term in the first sentence (which you seem to have read), it was coined by Greek political thinkers who defined 3 "good" forms of government (monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy) and their corresponding "bad" counterparts (tyranny, oligarchy, and ochlocracy).
The difference between "good" and "bad" is whether the system serves the populace or simply those in power. (That's also in the article I linked)
I can't help but notice that each of the latter three is just the dark side of the former three.
The dark side of monarchy is tyranny, the dark side of aristocracy is oligarchy, and the dark side of democracy is ochlocracy.
Interesting.
That's what the author intended.
So we agree then that there is always a danger that if left unchecked, democracy may devolve into mob rule.
That's a danger in all forms of government if a large enough majority wants that.
In which case the form of government would stop being a democracy.
Some nations try to protect against that with additional measures, like Germany where the parts of the constitution guaranteeing human rights can't be changed by any majority, and it includes a right to resistance for any citizen should all legal avenues fail. But ultimately, if everyone in a country wants to abolish the protection of minorities, no piece of writing or procedure can prevent that.
Well, that was sort of my entire point, and the story in the OP is another example of how democracy can fail because the majority opinion is sometimes wrong.