Can there be any true enabler of human freedom than democracy?

Answer 1

Democracy is the best political system where human freedom is institutionalized. However, the officials in government must not abuse their power to deprive people of their rights.

Answer 2

"Freedom" means being self-directed. None of us are, or will ever be, totally free in the physical universe. You are always influenced, or outright constrained, by something. Our effective freedom increases the more we learn about what influences us and can influence back at it.

Therefore, government best enables human freedom to the extent that citizens are informed about actions and decisions that affect them, and have a say in those actions and decisions. In general practice, the system in which all people in a country are supposed to have equal rights and equal say in decisions that affect them is called a "democracy."

You can call it a democracy, a republic, or chocolate. A system maximizes human freedom to the extent that it is democratic in *action* -- not in theory or terminology. Where all citizens had equal rights, resources would be distributed fairly, nobody's basic needs would go unmet, everyone would have equal power at the bargaining table, and everyone would have equal representation in court.

Human history has been a long process of distributing power; pushing down the pyramid: taking more power from the king and distributing it to the aristocracy; taking more power from king-and-nobles and distributing it to merchants-and-landowners; taking more power from king-nobles-and-wealthy and distributing it to everybody-else. At the same time an equally natural counter-process goes on, as individuals seek to accumulate wealth and respurces and then use those to maintain what they have and get more.

The democratization of society is best viewed as an ongoing process; we will never be "there" for once and for all.

Answer 3

Democracy is the best system under which one could live and exercise his freedom of speech, conscience, spirit, religion, mobility, etc. How'er it also has it's limitations, i.e., some freedoms are limited in varying degrees throughout the world in order to protect the greater good.

In some ways, anarchy would be better but the absence of government would result in chaos and in 'survival of the fittest' which could spell the end of civilization / culture that we have.

Democracy is still the best.

Answer 4

There simply has to be a better way to enable human freedom than democracy because from where I am standing democracy only seems to afford freedom to those who can afford it.

How many people in our societies do you consider to be truly free? Most of us have to make huge sacrifices of our time and effort simply to ensure a decent standard of living and our choices of what we can do in the remaning time available to us are restricted by a number of factors and tend to be determined by the resources available to us after attending to our basic needs. In this respect freedom is relative.

In addition to this, freedoms in our democratic societies are awarded by a select group of individuals who have managed to gain control of our institutions through the democratic process. Invariably they proceed to award greater freedoms to certain areas of society at the expense of freedoms available to other areas of society. In this situation democracy ceases to exist and the interests of cartels begin to take over.

Because of this problem the effectiveness of democracy to ensure human freedom depends mainly on the ability of our elected representatives to make decisions on the basis of democratic principles.

In theory democracy is capable of ensuring the maximum freedoms for all citizens in all walks of life. In reality the freedoms of certain citizens are severely restricted in order to afford greater freedoms to the privileged few.

On the basis of all this there has to be a better form of social organisation, perhaps based on democracy, perhaps not, that will afford greater freedoms to a great many more people.

Answer 5

democracy is only effective in the presence of an informed citizenry.....we live in a republic , by the way.