Jackson_M

I believe that the meaning of democracy is that the government is run by the people, for the people. In other words, the majority of citizens that can vote can tell the government want they want and have things their way. This usually works in elections. Take the last presidential election for example the majority of the voters wanted Barack Obama as president and that is what happened. This doesn't always happen though. Take the 2000 Presidential Election. The winner of the election, George Bush, had 47.9% of the votes, while Al Gore, had 48.4% of the votes. Sadly we live in America, this means that the election system is only one of many things to reject majority rule. The 2000 presidential is a good example because it is well known to the public. I think that the so called "democracy" that we live in, that is supposedly all about the American people and the majority of voters, is really all about a select group of old money, high class politicians that do things without public knowledge or consent. Think about it, there must have been so many times in American history where the government has done things we never learn about, or covered something up, or they skew the facts so someone else looks like the bad guy. I think that if the government has to go behind the American people and not tell them what is going on, it must be a devious deed. The movie "Lions for Lambs" illustrates how the government can control what you think is going on. In the movie a military plan fails and at least two people lose their lives because a prominent politic tried a new strategy that involved going into territory thought to be empty. Also at the end of the movie, the truth was never told about the new strategy going wrong only that the government put a new military strategy in place.

All I am trying to say is that, even though we think we are living in a democracy, we really aren't. We live in a representative democracy. This means that we choose people to make decisions for us. This, to me, sounds like the opposite of a true democracy where the majority of the people carry out the governing. Of course we can't get rid of our entire government, I'm not calling for a revolution, but we can fix some of the problems. One of the easiest, or most fixable problems is the issue of popular vote in elections. Since we have much better technology now than in the 1700's we can change from electoral votes to pure popular vote. I believe this will make it less important to carry states making each individuals vote count (more like a democracy). The other problem of government officials going behind the publics back, especially in military action, is much harder to solve. Is it even possible? That is for you to decide.