WHAT IS A DEMOCRACY? TAKEN FROM MIRIAM WEBSTERS' ONLINE DICTIONARY

Main Entry: de·moc·ra·cy Pronunciation: di-'mä-kr&-sEFunction: nounInflected Form(s): plural -ciesEtymology: Middle French democratie, from Late Latin democratia, from Greek dEmokratia, from dEmos + -kratia -cracy
1 a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority
b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
2 : a political unit that has a democratic government
3 capitalized : the principles and policies of the Democratic party in the United States
4 : the common people especially when constituting the source of political authority
5 : the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges

By BeeBee: Starting with the first definition, a Democracy is rule by the majority and by the people. Now, I pose the question do we really have a Democracy as this definition describes? Recently, we had Ray McBerry right here in Georgia, a lifelong Republican, who put up nearly $4,000 to run in the Republican Primary against the incumbent Republican Governor of Georgia, Sonny Perdue. Ray McBerry was left out of newspapers, rarely discussed on talk radio and ignored by television reporters. There were some 40,000 people that voted for Ray McBerry, but he was also left off of the State GOP website. Now, in a true Democracy, does it stand to reason that challengers to incumbents should never be suppressed and that the media should embrace anyone that wants to go before the people in an election? If you answered yes to this question then you can surely see that no we do not really have a Democracy at all. And in fact, our United States was never designed to be a Democracy. Our forefathers framed our Constitution as a Republic!

The above also throws water on the second definition that says that a Democracy has its supreme power vested in the people. If groups of people, such as the GOP may leave a fellow Republican off the GOP website, then the majority of the population is excluded from the political process. The main stream media relies on advertising dollars from candidates to advertise, but it is also evident that many politicians are given special preferences by the left leaning press. For instance, WMAZ and the Macon Telegraph give US Representative Jim Marshall ample coverage that shows him in a good light. Jim Marshall (D) is being challenged this November by Republican Mac Collins. Even though Mac Collins has served for years in the US House of Representative, and stepped down for an unsuccessful run for Senator in 2004, the media gives him no free coverage whatsoever in the Macon area. You can pretty much take this statement to the bank that if the situation were reversed and Marshall were the odd man out, that he would still get ample coverage at no cost by the liberal Macon Telegraph. Now, I ask again is this a Democracy?

Now, I will skip down to definition number 4: The common people cannot define what a Democracy is if all of the above have been proved to be false. Now, sure the common people can go cast a ballot between a couple of candidates on election day. But, as you can see if the media and groups of people have narrowed down the choices to only two or three choices, then is it common people or the well-connected and eltitists who decide who will be elected?

So, the next time you hear that we are the spreaders of Democracy around the world to all of the so-called suppressed peoples in various countries, ask yourself will they be better off after we force our form of limited government on them with bombs? Or would peace actually be the better choice?