Why does democracy have no moral foundation?

Question

Democracy can be anything. I want a government that protects me and allows me to be me. I do not want anarchy, and I do not want a dictatorship. Yet democracy has been both of these. I hate military dictatorships and intellectual dictatorships. Thus, what is the answer?

Wow! I am so far from communism that I was surprised that someone thought I was. I believe in the maximum amount of freedom possible before you reach anarchy. Communism is totalitarianism pure and simple. It is barbaric.

Answer 1

That is why this nation was formed as a Republic, and not a Democracy. Unfortunately, in modern times, we've corrupted the meaning, and have called our nation's government a democracy.

At the close of the Constitutional Convention, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what type of government the Constitution was bringing into existence. Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

"We are a Republican Government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of Democracy... It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity." (Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury to George Washington, author of the Federalist Papers)

"Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." (John Adams, 2nd President of the United States)

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine." (Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States, author of the Bill of Rights)

"Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos." (John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 1801-1835)

NOTE to Mark the Redcuber: There are very few places where communism still exists. Places such as Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, China, and European and American Universities.

Answer 2

Because no two people have exactly the same morals...Democracy is based on the idea that everyone gets a say but if everyone gets a say and everyone has different ideas of right and wrong than democracy cannot have a moral foundation that everyone agrees upon. All that democracy can do is hope to follow the generally acceptable morals of a majority of it's citizens. Thus someone somewhere will always say that the positions taken by a democracy are immoral and should be changed.

Answer 3

The answer is democracy rooted in an explicit commitment to a particular ethical foundation. Only with such a foundation could a democracy avoid the possibility of a decline into authoritarianism or anarchy. If morality is invented by humans, and not discovered by them, democracy has no foundation and no ultimate defense from its enemies.

But that foundation need not be narrowly confessional or dogmatic. A simple, broad, and generous theism, and a recognition of the human person as the inviolable bearer of freedom, would suffice.

Answer 4

You seem to have some interesting beliefs on what democracy is. Off-hand I don't know what that has to do with Religion and spirituality, but to your basic quest my answer is this:
if one elects people with no morals a democracy will not have morals. The foundation in which the US democracy was based on are clear in the constitution.
The real question is how can we ensure that those we have to choose to be elected are upstanding people who will hold to the values they claimed to be for when they were trying to get elected? I don't think there is an answer. I think when it comes down to it, to keep a county safe, it has to be powerful, to be powerful takes a bit of greed. power is nothing with out the knowledge of where it is needed. That takes prying into the goings-on with other countries and groups.... and apparently your own citizens.
In the end the more safe you want the world and yourself to be the less freedoms you can have. Its all about limiting the possibilities for the individual so that those possibilities remaining that are potentially dangerous can be easily spotted and contained. How safe do we really need to be and what are we willing to give up to be that safe? if you think you shouldn't have to give up anything to be safer, think again. They are closely related.
I could probably analyze it further, but do I need to? If you think I'm wrong, perhaps I will then.comment further.

Answer 5

Okay... by definition, democracy is not a dictatorship, and it is not anarchy. A democracy can collapse into anarchy, or be taken over by a dictatorship, and a dictatorship can pretend to be a democracy by having one-party elections or rigged votes. But at the point where it becomes an anarchy or a dictatorship, it ceases to be a democracy.

Answer 6

Many of the founding fathers were convinced that the moral foundation of the people was the life blood of the fledging American democracy and some wrote that without that strong moral foundation our democracy could not long endure.
Contrast American morality with those of Noah's time where "each one did what was right in his own eyes". This was the world that God erased because even in his mercy he could find no redeeming virtue except in Noah. Our culture has reached saturation of the idea that as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone it's OK. Now radical "rights" groups like the homosexual lobby, the "Man, Boy Love Association, and the NEA want to teach even our youngest kids that their way of life is OK (The NEA just voted in the language pushing for mandatory teacher training) and they fight openly for the right to adopt orphans. Homosexuality is dangerous and deadly, it is violent and is based on lust, and they feel they have the right to adopt children!
Our society is pushing laws and "rights" that do hurt others in a big way and the youngest and most defenseless of our citizens suffer the most.
Rampant and unchecked selfishness leads to a breakdown in the family, arguments, pornography, adultery, pursuit of money and neglect of children, lies to oneself and others, failure to pay taxes, theft of the small then the great, and ever increasing compromise. In Such an environment how can democracy endure?
Christians must take responsibility, because it is our duty and because no one else can stop this train, but first we have to stop living like all the rest and serve our Holy God with dedication to Holiness.
2 Chron. 7:14

Answer 7

Democracy is not elections. Democracy is in fact a moral and ethical system of government: a democratic government is one that derives its just powers from the consent of the governed...to be governed by consent, rather than by force, or out of fear or out of some tradition like inheritance of powers, was and is a moral and ethical innovation.

A democratic government also is one that is founded in the first place on the rights, generally and particularly, that are natural to humans beings: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is a moral and ethical choice to embed into a government these values, discarding artificial notions of class and caste.

Democracy gets into trouble when the governed fail to appreciate and, worse, to share these values. Democracy falters when the governed choose security and protection over Liberty, when the governed deny Liberty to some and leave it for others, and when out of fear of Liberty, the governed consent to the dictatorship of the majority.

What has no moral foundation is not democracy, but the people who would corrupt it: people who cannot manage personal liberty, who cannot tolerate other people having liberty, who lack the commitment to defend and protect liberty, who opt for ideological conformity over the free expression of ideas.

The paradox of democracy is that it can vote itself out of existance.

Answer 8

True democracy is a rule by the majority with respect for human rights of minorities.

And the way you get this kind of respect for minorities is by creating a constitution which defines human rights of everyone and prohibits making of laws and regulations by the majority government that will violate these rights.

Rule by the majority has strayed away from true democracy occasionally, when the country's constitution has been either inadequate or not enforced.

Elected governments that deliberately violate human rights of minorities cannot be called democratic. The correct name for such a government is tyranny of the majority.

Answer 9

Democracy was founded on Judeo-Christian morals. Read the founding documents for Canada and the United Stated of America, who are democratic societies.

Answer 10

Bring yourself into combat readiness! Your own private definition of Democracy fails to agree with one found in most English dictionaries and also not found in todays US government without coercion. "Free and equal rights to participate in a system". Give me a break! Anarchy is, in my opinion, a desirable system but not possible in a capitalistic society.

Search the planet. There is a place you seek. Not in the US. Make your mark without religion.