The American system is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. A democracy, if you attach meaning to terms, is a system of unlimited majority rule; the classic example is ancient Athens. And the symbol of it is the fate of Socrates, who was put to death legally, because the majority didn't like what he was saying, although he had initiated no force and had violated no one's rights.Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom....
The American system is a constitutionally limited republic, restricted to the protectrion of individual rights. In such a system, majority rule is applicable only to lesser details, such as the selection of certain personnel. But the majority has no say over the basic principles governing the government. It has no power to ask for or gain the infringement of individual rights.
--Leonard Peikfoff
When the leaders of a constitutional republic run the country by polling focus groups, it degrades into a democracy.
That was the original idea...but so many words have been re-defined over the last two+ centuries that our Constitution retains little of its original intent. This change is, IMHO, the result of human nature, which always (eventually) responds to the siren call of socialism. It is unfortunate that mere humans inhabit the Supreme Court.
I'll have to disagree with that statement. The counter examples in our own Republic are enough to point out the fallacy of such a statement.
I wonder if Mr. Lucas is a product of the public school system?
5.56mm
But I would quarrel with Lucas's statement that all democracies turn into dictatorships. There has never been a historical example of a democracy that lasted more than a couple of centuries, but the classical example of pure democracy, ancient Athens, did not really turn into a tyranny. Athens did have a number of tyrannical episodes in its history, especially in the early decades of Macedonian dominance at the end of the 4th century B.C. But, with the exception of those episodes, Athens in form was still a democracy and in fact was a plutocracy until Sulla, at the beginning of the 1st century B.C. After Sulla, Athens lost its democratic forms and was now a plutocratic oligarchy in both reality and form. So Athens is one democracy that did not turn into either a dictatorship or a tyranny.
And dictatorships and tyrannies can arise from other forms of polity than democracies. Like the United States, the Roman Republic was not a democracy. It was a ploutocratic constitutional republic with certain democratic features. So, although there's a lot of truth in calling the Roman state under the emperors a dictatorship and a tyranny, that system did not arise from a democracy.