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Democracy - refers to people ruling themselves
Thu Aug 7 15:40:37 2003
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Democracy in its most basic meaning refers to people ruling themselves
http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/preface.htm

Democracy in its most basic meaning refers to people ruling themselves. The forms democracy may take are varied, and run from simple, direct town meetings of a few dozen people to elaborate schemes of popular representation for millions. A democracy may take the form of a republic or of a limited monarchy, and the ways in which the people's voices are heard and their will carried out are numerous.

For Americans, democracy is not only government, as Abraham Lincoln put it, "of the people, by the people, and for the people," but it also involves limits on majoritarian rule. Because the Unites States was founded by settlers coming from other nations, because these men and women had different political, social, religious and economic beliefs, the country, in order to become a nation, did something no other society had ever done -- it recognized pluralism not as a curse but as a blessing, and set up elaborate safeguards to ensure that the majority did not become a tyrant by force of numbers. This is the ideal, that out of many will emerge one, and that the ideal has not always been met. Instead of being tolerant, Americans have at times been hostile to people who had differently colored skins, different religious beliefs and different cultural backgrounds. But to see only the good, or only the evil, is to see only part of the portrait. It is to miss the essential idea of American democracy, that of many peoples seeking to find common ground.

This book consists of documents, or readings, relating to that search, and the notion of what constitutes a "document" is broadly interpreted. There are a number of traditional documents -- court decisions, legislative acts and presidential decrees -- and these are important. Documents such as the Declaration of Independence and Constitution are the bedrock of American political democracy.

But there are also letters, essays, surrender speeches and even poems. These are also "documents," in that they chart America's search for itself, a process that has continued for almost four centuries. It is a search that has had its moments of despair, its dark sides, acts that Americans remember with shame. But is has also appealed to the nation's higher ideals. If one is saddened by the way America has at times treated its minorities, one can also rejoice in the nation's efforts, even if not always successful, at redressing those ills.

To look at American democracy then, is to look at a country in process, in a search, and that is a process that many believe can never stop. Democracy is not so much the end, but the way a nation and a people seek that end.

In 1778, the French statesman Turgot wrote:

This people is the hope of the human race. It may become the model. It ought to show the world by facts that men can be free and yet peaceful, and may dispense with the chains in which tyrants and knaves of every color have presumed to bind them, under pretext of the public good. The Americans should be an example of political, religious, commercial and industrial liberty. The asylum they offer to the oppressed of every nation, the avenue of escape they open, will compel governments to be just and enlightened; and the rest of the world in due time will see through the empty illusions in which policy is conceived. But to obtain these ends for us, America must secure them to herself; and must not become, as so many of your ministerial writers have predicted, a mass of divided powers, contending for territory and trade, cementing the slavery of peoples by their own blood.
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BASIC READINGS IN U.S. DEMOCRACY
http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/demo.htm

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THE ATLANTIC CHARTER

The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world.

First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other;

Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned;

Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;

Fourth, they will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity;

Fifth, they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security;

Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want;

Seventh, such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance;

Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Winston S. Churchill

Source: Samuel Rosenman, ed., Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol.10 (1938-1950), 314.
http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/53.htm