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A Brief Review of Rousseau's Social Contract Before attempting to answer the question of "what is Democracy?" it is important to examine three perspectives. 1. What is the technical definition of Democracy? 2. What does this author think of when the term comes to mind? 4. What does Rousseau think? First, a technical definition. According to The American Heritage Dictionary, Democracy is defined as: 1. Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives. 2. A political unit that has such a government. 3. Majority rule. 4. The principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community. Still, a more in depth definition is given by the Meriam-Webster Dictionary: 1. A government by the people; esp: rule of the majority 2. A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections. 3. The absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges. Certainly, I am not suggesting that anyone strictly adhere to any definitions set forth by any particular text. The purpose of providing a definition is merely to give the most popular, or widely accepted, meaning of the word. It is understood that the actual concept of Democracy goes much farther than what is mentioned above. Before taking this class, I had never really thought about what a true Democracy is, and whether or not there is one in the United States. Whether or not there is a fully functioning Democracy in any country is, in my opinion, an individualized outlook on how a government operates and what the expected outcome will be. Whether our president is a war-mongering hawk or a "good guy", as Dennis Miller recently put it, is completely in the opinion of how one sees the power given to our Commander-in-Chief. Hobbes shares the sentiment in his writings: But these are not three further kinds of commonwealth, but three alternative names, which have been bestowed by people who were annoyed with a government or its members. For men not only indicate things by the names they use, but also their own feelings, e.g. love, hatred, anger, etc; and so it happens that what one man calls a Democracy, another calls Anarchy. Thus it is not different kinds of commonwealth that are designated by these different names, but different sentiments on the part of the citizens about the ruler. The point is, whether or not one thinks of the PresidentŐs policy-making procedures as being justified one way or the other is very important in discovering that there is no definitive answer to the question that asks "what is Democracy?"; because the answer is going to vary greatly from person to person.
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