Oct. 25.– In the United States we practice representative democracy. In representative democracy we elect representatives who carry out our wishes. The problem here is that we have degenerated to electing “leaders.”
We think of them as leaders. They think of themselves as leaders. While we should be telling them what to do, we ask them to tell us what to do. Then they ask lobbyists what they would like them to do, and do that. This reduces our representative democracy to a feudalistic oligarchy of special interests.
Though many people don’t like everyone participating in government, in a more perfect world we would govern ourselves more perfectly with a participatory democracy.
Participatory democracy is an extension of the representative democracy we practice in the United States. Representative democracy is an improvement on the kind of democracy the United States started with. Then only about 6% of the population got to vote. Many people still resent other-than-wealthy people voting.
The founding fathers were actually hostile to rule by the people. Some referred to democracy as the tyranny of the majority ...
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