The Pros And Cons Of American Democracy

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In the modern world, democracy is one of the most popular forms of government. Its attractiveness comes from the freedom of the majority to make changes to policies. The United States of America popularized the concept, which was then adopted in different ways by countries around the world. Part of its attractiveness to groups from various backgrounds is that it can also adjust to the needs of the people. Despite its popularity, democracy has both positive and negative outcomes in response to what is desired. These negative consequences make this form of government difficult to manage; however, many still consider it the best option. While the ultimate outcome that people desire is the freedom to make their own decisions and control their future. …show more content…

In this case, he says that information and technology are also a result of democracy. By giving the average person access to more information and more efficient technology, it allows anyone to express their ideas. He states that “today’s information revolution has produced thousands of outlets for news that make central control impossible and dissent easy” (332). Here he says that with the advancement of the internet, anybody can express their opinions whether true or false, and with the nature of the internet, it is impossible to control. This then leaves the discernment of truth to the people. He considers this form of unregulated democracy to be foolish, because of the lack of rights and representation. This also leads to the democratization of violence from more readily available weapons and plans, that with some time and effort can be used for violent means. In addition to violence, unregulated information rapidly changes the ideas of the people who will listen. When enough people agree with what they see or hear online, the perspective of the people can be influenced, quickly changing society. An example of this can be found in China. In mainland China, popular media sharing websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are blocked to prevent ideas from spreading too rapidly. It is mostly used to prevent activists from sharing their information with each other or negative political …show more content…

While true democracy allows for the complete freedom and well-being of the majority, liberal democracy sacrifices a few of the freedoms of choice to prevent the misuse of power on others. Each of these has both positive and negative impacts for the people, with differences on the majorities and minorities. The issue with true democracy lies in its unregulated nature. When faced with rules by majority, one can sometimes find cases where even large groups of people can make incorrect or illogical assumptions. By having regulation on the choices of the people, there is a smaller chance of making such mistakes. In one instance the Indian state of Kerala had democratically elected to become communist. From this decision, their local government became a mix of communism and democracy. With the cost of some freedom, they created rules which help to increase education and literacy in the state, while still being able to choose when they wanted to move to another system. In this case, the increased regulation allowed the people to become better. However, when too much power is given to the government, the freedom of choice for the people is taken, causing them to think of their government negatively. Zakaria uses this example, “Dictators such as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe go to great effort and expense to organize national elections – which of course, they win handily. When the

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