Jeremy Mohler of the organization “In the Public Interest” wrote this reflection on the meaning of democracy:
The word “democracy” either fires you up or makes your eyes roll.
It’s so overused that even Donald Trump is wielding it to ramp up support for his administration’s meddling in Venezuela.
There’s even a new documentary out called What is Democracy? by filmmaker and activist Astra Taylor, who interviews everyone from philosophers to factory workers to get at the answer. The conclusion? There’s no definitive single answer to the question.
Maybe all we can say is: you know democracy when you see it.
I certainly see a refreshing example of democracy on display in the growing public school teachers movement. And it’s the real thing—not the electoral kind that we’re used to.
It’s called “bargaining for the common good.” The gist: teachers and other government workers use their ability to negotiate for better wages and working conditions to also improve the lives of other people in their community.
Some recent examples:
In January, striking teachers in Los Angeles won better wages and benefits but also 300 more nurses district wide, more green space at every school, support for immigrant families, a stop to random police searches at schools, and more.
In Oregon, the state’s largest unions came together a few years ago to collectively win higher wages, paid sick days, better retirement security, and nondiscrimination protections for most full-time workers statewide.
The Chicago Teachers Union is considering demanding the city’s board of education support rent control efforts and new taxes on corporations and the wealthy to fund more affordable housing.
And it’s not just happening in blue cities.
In March, West Virginia’s teachers shut down a bill that would’ve allowed charter schools to open in the state. Having witnessed the pain caused by the opioid crisis, job losses, poverty, and homelessness to their students and families, they argued that privatization isn’t the answer.
It just makes sense, right? Government workers often live in the communities they serve and therefore share many of the same interests.
That’s what makes bargaining for the common good so refreshing and potentially powerful.
It’s a direct counter to the past four decades of conservative attacks on government and corporate “trickle down” economics. And it’s a crystal clear example of what democracy actually looks like in action.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
of course this is posted t https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/What-Is-Democracy-Bargain-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Common-Good_Democracy_Diane-Ravitch-190810-462.html#comment741599https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/What-Is-Democracy-Bargain-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Common-Good_Democracy_Diane-Ravitch-190810-462.html#comment741599
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I have noticed that some conservatives recoil at the term “democracy.” They remain that we are a representative constitutional republic. This way they can justify states rights over the federal government. Yet, we elect our representatives, and it doing so, we are exercising democratic rights. Too many representatives today are beholden to “big money.” When representatives no longer represent the interests of the “common good,” it is up to the voting citizens to unseat them.
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I have already had an email complaint about my use of the word “democracy”
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Yes, right wingers and libertarians hate democracy, they don’t want too many people voting. They say they hate the government and yet they want to give more power to the government and less to the actual populace; case in point: libertarians would love to repeal the 17th amendment or the popular election of senators. They would rather have state governments select the senators, as it was before 1913.
A republic IS a form of democracy, it’s a representative democracy. As others have pointed out, we have direct elections for just about every other office.
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Thomas Jefferson wrote something to the effect that it was good to have revolutions periodically.
It has long been understood that this country is a representative form of democracy, not a direct democracy. Decisions are not made regularly by plebiscites (when all citizens vote). It also has a federal form of government–something that has always been taught in a US history course–which means a central gov’t and state govts. We pay taxes to both. Canada also has a federal form of gov’t (central govt and provincial govts). So what?
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Thomas Jefferson wrote something to the effect that it was good to have revolutions periodically.
It has long been understood that this country is a representative form of democracy, not a direct democracy. Decisions are not made regularly by plebiscites (when all citizens vote). It also has a federal form of government–something that has always been taught in a US history course–which means a central gov’t and state govts. We pay taxes to both. Canada also has a federal form of gov’t (central govt and provincial govts). So what?
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Who mentioned direct democracy?
A referendum is direct democracy, and the oligarchs always lose.
Like the AZ voucher referendum.
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Before the U.S. Constitution was written, Thomas Jefferson wrote from France that “[T]he tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants” in reaction to Shay’s Rebellion. He was trying to calm Americans who were spooked by Shay’s Rebellion into calling for a strong national government that would maintain a huge standing army in peacetime for safety’s sake. Jefferson did not believe, as many leaders did at the time, that states had to fear small rebellions or threats from England, Spain, or Native Americans. Alexander Hamilton wanted to completely eliminate state governments and establish a life term president with near monarchical powers.
Hamilton and Jefferson had their great rivalry, and through a whole bunch of arguing, and campaigning, and voting, and some compromising, and ratifying, and afterward even some pistol dueling, we have the system of American democracy that’s lasted two hundred thirty years. The varying levels of indirect representation of each of the three branches is supposed to keep a balance of power among merchants, farmers, manufacturers, and bankers. The system is not, however, immune to corruption. There are still tyrants.
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“Alexander Hamilton wanted to completely eliminate state governments and establish a life term president with near monarchical powers.”
He didn’t get his first two wishes, but he did get his third.
The serious (perhaps even fatal) flaw in our system is becoming more apparent with each passing day.
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“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb, voting on what to have for lunch.”
– Most-often attributed to Benjamin Franklin
Our nation is not a democracy. It never was, and it never will be.
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It is a representative D E M O C R A C Y! Always was and still is.
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Ben Franklin once said to be careful believing quotations you find on the web.
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Come to think of it, the two wolves and a lamb quote sounds less like something Franklin would write and more like something someone working for Putin would. I don’t know…
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Actually we are living through a Trumpocracy or kakistocracy. Please USA, vote this horror clown out of office in 2020, for pity’s sake.
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Absolutely correct term for this particular admin, govt by the worst, [gr. kakistos worst, from kakos, bad, from kakka, PIE for POS].
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“Democracy is a Republican, a Democrat, and a lobbyist voting on where to go for lunch.”
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That’s about the sum of it nowadays.
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Democracy is collective action.
Democracy is governance of demos, people, not of billionaires.
Democracy is having a local school board seat you can run for without five million dollars.
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Some claim we have a “representative democracy” but what we actually have is a “reprehensible democracy”.
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Honestly, this shouldn’t be hard.
As (conservative) constitutional scholar Eugene Volokh has written,
“the American form of government has been called a ‘democracy’ by leading American statesmen and legal commentators from the Framing on…’representative democracy’ was understood as a form of democracy, alongside ‘pure democracy’: John Adams used the term ‘representative democracy; in 1794; so did Noah Webster in 1785; so did St. George Tucker in his 1803 edition of Blackstone; so did Thomas Jefferson in 1815. Tucker’s Blackstone likewise uses ‘democracy’ to describe a representative democracy, even when the qualifier ‘representative’ is omitted.”
“James Wilson, one of the main drafters of the Constitution and one of the first Supreme Court Justices, defended the Constitution in 1787 by speaking of the three forms of government being the ‘monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical,’ and said that in a democracy the sovereign power is ‘inherent in the people, and is either exercised by themselves or by their representatives.’ And Chief Justice John Marshall — who helped lead the fight in the 1788 Virginia Convention for ratifying the U.S. Constitution — likewise defended the Constitution in that convention by describing it as implementing ‘democracy’ (as opposed to ‘despotism’), and without the need to even add the qualifier ‘representative.’ ”
The terms republic and democracy have been used interchangeably, but if we want to be more precise, we can use the term democratic republic.
Still, as some commenters have noted, Republicans do not like democratic governance, nor do they really the Constitution and its provisions for equality and justice and freedoms for ALL citizens and its provision(s) for promoting the general welfare of the country.
Republicans are all about oligarchy, voter suppression, greed, and white nationalism.
The Founders envisioned a democratic society “in which the common good was the chief end of government.” They agreed with John Locke’s view that the main purpose of government –– the main reason people create government –– is to protect their persons through, as historian R. Freeman Butts put it, a social contract that placed “the public good above private desires.” The goal was “a commonwealth, a democratic corporate society in which the common good was the chief end of government.”
Republicans may periodically pay lip service to those ideas, but they don’t really believe in them. Look at who their leader is…the Traitor-and-Grifter-in-Chief. Look at what they’re doing…on a daily basis.
In Politics, Aristotle wrote that “the character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy; and always the better the character, the better the government.”
The “democratic character” doesn’t just happen. It has to be cultivated, nurtured, developed. And public education has a significant role to play here, a role that outsizes the stuff schools focus on now: testing, STEM, Advanced Placement, college “readiness.”
We are where we are because a significant chunk of the American citizenry doesn’t vote, and because another sizable chunk doesn’t actually subscribe to the core values of American democracy, and because too many people cannot distinguish between fact and fiction and outright lies, and because – at least to some degree – public schools have largely abandoned the task of promoting democratic citizenship.
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Sigh, Honestly, this shouldn’t be hard.
As (conservative) constitutional scholar Eugene Volokh has written,
“the American form of government has been called a ‘democracy’ by leading American statesmen and legal commentators from the Framing on…’representative democracy’ was understood as a form of democracy, alongside ‘pure democracy’: John Adams used the term ‘representative democracy; in 1794; so did Noah Webster in 1785; so did St. George Tucker in his 1803 edition of Blackstone; so did Thomas Jefferson in 1815. Tucker’s Blackstone likewise uses ‘democracy’ to describe a representative democracy, even when the qualifier ‘representative’ is omitted.”
“James Wilson, one of the main drafters of the Constitution and one of the first Supreme Court Justices, defended the Constitution in 1787 by speaking of the three forms of government being the ‘monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical,’ and said that in a democracy the sovereign power is ‘inherent in the people, and is either exercised by themselves or by their representatives.’ And Chief Justice John Marshall — who helped lead the fight in the 1788 Virginia Convention for ratifying the U.S. Constitution — likewise defended the Constitution in that convention by describing it as implementing ‘democracy’ (as opposed to ‘despotism’), and without the need to even add the qualifier ‘representative.’ ”
The terms republic and democracy have been used interchangeably, but if we want to be more precise, we can use the term democratic republic.
Still, as some commenters have noted, Republicans do not like democratic governance, nor do they really the Constitution and its provisions for equality and justice and freedoms for ALL citizens and its provision(s) for promoting the general welfare of the country.
Republicans are all about oligarchy, voter suppression, greed, and white nationalism.
The Founders envisioned a democratic society “in which the common good was the chief end of government.” They agreed with John Locke’s view that the main purpose of government –– the main reason people create government –– is to protect their persons through, as historian R. Freeman Butts put it, a social contract that placed “the public good above private desires.” The goal was “a commonwealth, a democratic corporate society in which the common good was the chief end of government.”
Republicans may periodically pay lip service to those ideas, but they don’t really believe in them. Look at who their leader is…the Traitor-and-Grifter-in-Chief. Look at what they’re doing…on a daily basis.
In Politics, Aristotle wrote that “the character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy; and always the better the character, the better the government.”
The “democratic character” doesn’t just happen. It has to be cultivated, nurtured, developed. And public education has a significant role to play here, a role that outsizes the stuff schools focus on now: testing, STEM, Advanced Placement, college “readiness.”
We are where we are because a significant chunk of the American citizenry doesn’t vote, and because another sizable chunk doesn’t actually subscribe to the core values of American democracy, and because too many people cannot distinguish between fact and fiction and outright lies, and because – at least to some degree – public schools, and their “leaders”, have largely abandoned the task of promoting democratic citizenship.
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The “Plantation Model” is one we must move away from in order to have a true democracy. The Plantation Model” was surely used in many factories and even now in this electronics world. Whose the Mastah and who’s putting us on this “mice wheel?”
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