Democracy is the Most Desirable Form of Government

Responding to my opponent semantics play, democracy has indeed been defined as a “form of government in which supreme power is vested in the people, or exercised by them or by their elected agents under a free and fair electoral system” Note the words electoral system. This implies that this definition talks about democracy as the process of voting and electing, rather than the democratic government that would be established after the elections. Therefore, the conditions for coming as a democracy in this case would be clearly to have a free and fair electoral system; this electoral system may not have to be efficient, but it must be “free and fair” What do we mean by free? Does it mean freedom other interferences? Free in this case means the freedom to choose who they vote for, even if the vote is influenced. Fair, in this case, means equality of every person to choose. The conditions of “free and fair” can be, therefore, placed upon every flawed democracy, making it the opponent’s burden (or if you would like it, duty) to defend both categories. 1R2NRC: The Maximization of Human Rights "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49. " Thomas Jefferson, Third American President and the Author of the American Constitution It is quite ironic for the third president of a very well oiled democracy to say this, but it does represent a very important dilemma in democracy. Democracy, in a non-semantic manner, means the rule of the people; but how are we to judge what the will of the people is? What it is not is clearer to understand, however. The will of the people is definitely not the will of the majority; many times, a politician in a democratic society would look to appeal to a class of people. This creates class conflict within a nation; if we were to look at this from a nationalist point of view, then class conflict will inherently lead to the weakening of central authority. Nevertheless, democracy is the war of the classes; if the majority working class elects a Socialist/Populist government whose aim is to implement progressive tax on the nation, then the minority middle class/elitists would have their own rights violated. This was what happened in India regarding gay marriage; when the Indian Supreme Court ruled that homosexuality was a crime, the minority liberal-minded elites and middle class started protesting. However, since the majority of the Indian population is highly conservative (as the election of the BJP shows), the minority cannot do anything against this so called “acts of injustice” Is this what we call the best and most “desirable form” of government? After this, chaos would be existent, and the democracy would either fall into the hands of an autocratic military government or anarchy. The former was the case of Thailand; when the ruling populist party, the Pheau Thai Party, played the class card by putting tariffs on the rice market and by introducing a campaign of strict government regulation in the market, the middle-class and the higher class, a ever growing class in Thailand, started to launch a six month campaign of disobedience. This disobedience led to many deaths and the eventually military coup that led to the installation of General Prayuth as de jure prime minister. This comes, of course, with implementation of military law and huge strings of mass arrests. [1] Apart from that, the opponent’s argument on corruption, freedom and democracy are (more or less) objectionable. CPI scores could be considered proxy-based; for example, the 13 external sources that Transparency uses are based upon many proxy factors, like economic freedom and press freedom. The Freedom Index also uses many proxy factors; proxy factors are assumption that x would necessarily lead to y being either higher or lower. [2] For example, if one country’s economic freedom rate was low, one would automatically assume that the GINI (Social Inequality Index) would also be low (the higher the better, if class equality is “better”). However, Equatorial Guinea has an EF score of 50.1, an average score, but yet has the highest GINI coefficient in the world. Causation is not necessarily causation. [3] With this said, we can turn to our first alternative government; although this minimalist government exists only in theory, one may assume (and with a really real assumption) that the minimalist government will one day be achieved. Supposed this minimalist government has already been achieved; people would lead a happy and fulfilling life. In this, the adoption of the Christian view of politics (it is a necessary evil) would be needed; if politics is a necessary evil, then abolishing it would be beneficial. Politics, in the modern and conventional sense (politics is how we are governed, politics is how our lives work), does not exist in a minimalist state, because as stated, there would be no need to legislate when the state has no moral obligations to legislate for each individual. Therefore, the full liberty to do anything that one might desire to do is present. At this point, I would like to note that I am arguing from a practical and theoretical point of view. 1R3NRC: Non Democratic Regime and the “Deaths” The opponent brings up a figure, 360,000,000, of the number of lives that were lost because of a autocratic non-democratic regimes have caused. However, I would like to state that they did not do this in the name of anti-democracy. The Nazi Genocide, an incident also known as the Holocaust, killed subhumans in the name of the highly Darwinist racial characteristics that the Nazi government believed in. The Khmer Rouge killed 25% of the Cambodian population, not in the name of anti-democracy, but in the name of the communist regime. Therefore, we cannot say that non-democratic regimes are genocidal in nature because of the fact that they are not a democracy; how do you account for Lee Kuan Yew’s soft authoritarianism, which led to the creation of one of the world’s richest nation-state? Nevertheless, democratic regimes also caused the death of at least 380,000,000 people. Over the last 60 years, America has intervened in many wars in order to establish human rights, or should I say “human rights” In Iraq, they intervened for the good of the “world”; however, they caused huge instability in the nation and installed a sectarian government in a multi-religious country. This conflict alone has led to 17,000 deaths. [4] Other conflicts in this area have resulted in the deaths of 225,000 lives; all this was done in over a period of ten years. [5] Many more examples could be raised; American intervention in Latin America has led to 6,300,000 deaths, both directly and indirectly. [4] American funding of both Iran and Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War led to the deaths of 1,000,000 citizens. However, the United States has never succeeded in creating a well oiled democracy like itself; instead, in the name of the ideology, it ought to represent, it has killed 30 million more people, alone. The figures presented by the opponent would be, I am assuming, of the many non-democratic regimes throughout democracy. This is the true cost of spreading democracy; if democracy was desirable, then why has it caused the many deaths that it has done so? There are two explanations that make it seem true. The first explanation is the concept of corporation control; democracies often come with the need for economic development and “modernity” The people find this only in the seeds of capitalism, not in the burdens of socialism or any other odd economic model. But with capitalism comes multinational corporations, who fund the democratic government in whatever they do. Therefore, democratic governments will gladly serve the interests of the corporations; for example, an arguable alternative explanation for the 2004 Invasion of Iraq was to secure oil for American companies; most notably Halliburton. Perhaps this also explains America’s presence in the Middle East, one of the most oil rich regions in the world. This new form of imperialism, called neo-imperialism, has been present in the United States for many years. Belgium is also another example of this; since the creation of Belgium as a nation-state, the nation has been a constitutional monarchy with a well functioning democracy. Belgium turned Congo into a literal private company for Belgium, with the citizens of Congo slaves to the Belgian elite. The second explanation is more of a historical explanation into the spirit of democracy; since the beginning of democracy, democracies always got itself in wars, often against other non-democratic regimes (but sometimes with democratic regimes too) in order to show the superiority of the democratic institutions over autocratic regime or to implement a democracy over them. From the Peloponnesian Wars, in which Athens got itself into complicated alliances which soon broke, to World War One, when the want for America to gain something from the losing German forces led to the US clearly aiding the imperialists, we can see that democracy will get itself into wars often with enemies of its system. These wars are often caused by national interests and reasons that would relate to diffidence; a pre-emptive strike against one’s enemy would be better than waiting for them to strike first. In the case of the US however, the first explanation stands out; the capitalistic foundations of America causes the government to seek wars to create new markets for American corporations. Conclusion: The Resolution is Negated Citations: [1] . http://en.wikipedia.org...'%C3%A9tat [2] . http://www.transparency.org... [3] . http://en.wikipedia.org...; [4] . http://en.wikipedia.org...(post-U.S._withdrawal) [5] . http://mondoweiss.net...