Democracy: More of a means, or an end?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I run through this debate a lot in my head, and once tried to prompt discussion on it in a prior thread some years ago. Decision to re-open Pandora's Box was prompted by an OSR comment relating to his view that democracy was important insofar as it ensured certain liberties (and as such, democracy was in itself not important). Obviously, if The People decide to vote in favor of nuclear Armageddon, that is bad--but all political statements must have their caveats. So which claim is less bad? WHAT SAY THE CROWDS!?

[John Dule]

It's not particularly preferable from either perspective.

[Blue3]

Means… because a democracy that doesn’t guarantee rights, allows slavery and discrimination and harassment, rejects science and medicine for local superstitions, etc. is bad.

[Mr. Smith]

It's not particularly preferable from either perspective.

And yet neither is it's polar opposite.

[OSR stands with Israel]

I would say it’s definitely more of a means than an end . The most important thing imo is protecting individuals rights such as free speech , religious liberty , due process etc and a democracy is just clearly the best way to accomplish such ends cause the biggest threat to individual liberty is the consolidation of power which is basically what dictatorships are about .

That doesn’t mean democracy is more important than all those individual rights I mentioned cause even in many democratic systems including our own , we have seen a majority can vote to take away those rights from others which is horrible too . In some cases for minorities it is possible a democracy can be worse than a dictatorship like the Middle East has shown .


Which is why the best system overall is a constitutional democratic republic like ours where our constitution which clearly outlines what are a list of things that the government cannot do even if a majority wants them to be able to do it . Which is why at the end of the day I think our system in the long run is better for individual liberty than a British system

[CEO Mindset]

none of the above

democracy is criminal mishebavior

[Antonio the Sixth]

People who say it's a means should probably specify what they think it's a means to, because the past 2 centuries seem to suggest that most of the hopes for what democracy would bring about have been dashed. Not to say that democracy doesn't tend to foster beneficial ancillary effects, but they're not nearly as assured as we might have assumed.

No, democracy must be an end in itself. It is the necessary conclusion proceeding from a genuine belief in the equal dignity of all human beings.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Both.

[OSR stands with Israel]

People who say it's a means should probably specify what they think it's a means to, because the past 2 centuries seem to suggest that most of the hopes for what democracy would bring about have been dashed. Not to say that democracy doesn't tend to foster beneficial ancillary effects, but they're not nearly as assured as we might have assumed.

No, democracy must be an end in itself. It is the necessary conclusion proceeding from a genuine belief in the equal dignity of all human beings.

Depends what you mean by democracy . If you mean a constitutional democracy like ours where our rights cannot be eliminated by majority vote than I agree with you but  if you mean majoritarian rule than that’s definitely not an end  .

This is how I rank things from importance to least :

1. Basic Individual  Rights are protected

2. Have a strong democratic system

3. Everything else

[Del Tachi]

Option #2, of course

[Ferguson97]

Both.

[courts]

closer to an end i guess

[Statilius the Epicurean]

People who say it's a means should probably specify what they think it's a means to, because the past 2 centuries seem to suggest that most of the hopes for what democracy would bring about have been dashed.

Relatively free and prosperous societies? OK we don't have flying cars I guess. But it seems pretty obvious to me that our existing representative democracies are generally more liberal and better governed than non-democracies. It's also pretty obvious to me that the UK (or any other representative democracy I can think of) would not be freer or wealthier if we junked elections. That's good enough for me.

If democracy really did lead to impoverished and totalitarian societies it would be stupid to nevertheless support the idea on principle.

No, democracy must be an end in itself. It is the necessary conclusion proceeding from a genuine belief in the equal dignity of all human beings.

People who say democracy is an end should probably specify whether they support direct referenda on every single act of government. Because that's the only system consistent with the idea of egalitarian democratic representation being an end in itself. Any sacrifice of an absolute principle of direct governance by every single citizen is a concession to some means.

It was this problem that led Rousseau to say, probably quite rightly, that true democracy was impossible outside of a small city state.

[Vosem]

Means; it is the only known stable system which allows for poor national leaders to be removed without violence. This is the great advantage of democracy over other systems; both the reason it has outcompeted other systems and the reason it has been embraced by so many different cultures.

Policy outcomes in democracies are not as good as in some authoritarian systems, but they are also nowhere near as bad. There's far less variation. This is a good thing, since ultimately downsides of bad governance (genocide, famine) are much worse than the upsides of good governance. This is why authoritarianism is undesirable.

I am right-wing.