Commentary 2: Democracy and the Declaration of Independence
Democracy
Websterís dictionary defines democracy as ìa form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.î2 With this basic definition, two types of democracy emerge: direct democracy and indirect or representative democracy.
- Direct democracy: The classic definition in which the supreme power of the land is exercised by the people. Cities in ancient Greece were once ruled directly by the citizens who voted on all issues of government.
- Representative (indirect) democracy: The form of government in which supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them indirectly by a system of representative delegates.
Some town meetings in New England carry on the practice of direct democracy today. The rapid advance in technology in the late twentieth century could enable the people to play a more active part in democracy by voting on key issues such as a balanced budget amendment, national health care, or welfare reform. Such direct voting would be via touch-tone telephone, e-mail, Web site, or other emerging technologies. This evolution could one day move the United States towards a direct democracy where the citizens vote on key issues such as tax cuts. In the event this evolves, the people would regain, to some extent, the current power delegated by the people to Congress.
Seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke (Two Treatises of Government, 1689) and Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations, 1776) both believed that the key to democracy was preserving the right to property (which in their day meant life, liberty, and estate). Eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau countered in the Social Contract that property is the first inequality of a society that leads one to the notion of strictly doing for oneís self. He contends that the attitude of self needs to shift towards the social nature of man.3 These opposing views are still argued today.
2For other meanings of democracy, see Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (New York: Random House, 1989), 384.
3See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the origin of Inequality, On political Economy, the Social Contract, trans. G. D. H. Cole. In Great Books of the Western World, ed. R.M. Hutchins (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952).