First off, I'll try my best to make these debate questions as different as possible from a similarly titled thread in this same forum. Ok...this has been bothering me for awhile. U.S. Presidents love to spread democracy around the globe. "Bring democracy to these people and bless those people with the gift of democracy." Reagan said it, Bush I said it, Clinton said it, and now Bush II says it (the only Presidents I can remember in my life). However, we live in a republic, that is we elect members of our population to represent us in the government. We do not, nor have we ever, lived in a democracy. A democracy is a system where every member of the population votes upon the issues at hand. I can't think of a single nation past or present that has a system like this. What I want debated is this: 1. When our politicians speak of spreading democracy, do they actually mean spreading republicanism? 2. Do you like our republican form of government, or would you prefer it if we had a democratic form of government? 3. Anything else you think will constructively add to this debate, add it.

When someone says "democracy" in the USA, they generally mean "representational government" as opposed to "authoritatian government." I can't see how the USA could possibly be a true democracy. Let's go out on a limb here and say that, at some time in the future, technology allows every citizen to vote on every issue that comes up. The result would be sheer chaos, I think. If this was somehow avoided, I still think it would be a bad idea. 51% of the citizens would have the power to oppress 49% of the citizens. (Maybe this sounds better to some than having 1% of the population repress 99% of the population, or 99% of the population repressing 1% of the population, but they all sound equally bad to me.) There is no such thing as a "good" form of government, but a representational republic, with minimal power, might be the least bad.

"Democracy", in popular use, means "a democratic (i.e. representative) government.

No one advocates a pure democracy in groups larger than about 435, I'd say...

The federalist system that the US is based upon is a good model, when the government's power remains limited. Our current federal government forces its member states into compliance through economic blackmail, however, which is never good for individual choice.