Conservatives are boring... truly, I mean nothing really happens if conservatives get their way...

You can be like "let's do it this way!"

and they'd be like "nah... let's just stick to what always works...",

"but this other way works just as well if not better!",

"nah, it's too much work to change things...",

"but we might learn something new in the process!",

"nah, there's nothing new, it's all been done before...",

"C'mon! It'll be fun!",

"Nah.. it's cool... umm I mean it's ok, that's what I mean, I don't like fun anyways... you go ahead"

That's the stupidest question I ever hoird!

I mean it doesn't matter if God exists or not, if we can't have a conversation with him or if we don't have any way of learning anything about him because he is not of our world, then how can we answer the question of WHO made God????

The question is unanswerable.

You are too kind, sir :)

I do try to compose a well thought out reply to people who put in an effort to compose a good argument. Although yours was a lengthy post, it was an excellent read.

All in all, you have a great point about the government being responsible to the people, even if the majority of the people may be clueless. So while it would seem that democracy in its purest form may never exist and probably shouldn't, Representative Democracy is probably the next best thing... although something definitely needs to be done about its negative aspects such as:

- manipulation of information

- control of politicians by corporates.

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Upvote reciprocated!

You're right. It was wishful thinking though because I don't think the people can ever be informed... We may have some luck with choosing a good representative government though... maybe.

so what you're saying is during war times, a democracy can't exist, or shouldn't exist... I'm actually saying that a democracy can't exist and probably shouldn't exist, period.

So, in this representative democracy that is the USA, if a person plots against the government, he/she is left alone? I doubt it very much! The CIA will be breathing down your neck, making your life and those of your family members a living hell!

Cuba is a Socialist Republic and is ruled by a dictatorial regime. It is a communist country. It was the second largest prison for journalists in 2008 (second only to China) and is well known for its human rights abuses. The US should go in there and free the people there, except it'll get nothing in return for its troubles... so why bother?

I agree that for democracy to exist, firstly the people need to control information. That's a challenge in itself.

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Secondly (and just as big a challenge), the people need to be able to process and make decisions based on those information. Given that most people care more for their lawns and cars and don't care, don't know much about, and probably don't want to know about politics, how are they going to make decisions regarding the welfare of the country and how to relate to other nations?

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The fates of the masses will probably always be at the whim of elite groups that control information. Hopefully we can somehow control those groups...

You used Rome as an example of a successful democratic society and that at the pinnacle of their success they were most democratic. I would like to challenge the claim that Rome (and any other ancient societies for that matter) was ever a democratic society based on the following:

For democracies to exist, the people must rule either directly or through some form of representative government and can make changes to this representative group if they wanted to. For the people to exercise this power, they need timely and accurate information. Given the modern technologies available today, we're still struggling to get good information to the masses, so I doubt the people of the past had access to good information, if any at all. If information was available, accurate and timely, this would only be available to a very limited few. So in those days, when people were more superstitious than the average modern witch, when they were more prone to fears of the unknown, fears of attack and invasions, when the powerful were those with weapons and were more ambitious than the most powerful leaders today and human lives were nothing to them, who do you think were really running things? The scared little people with no information or those with weapons, great ambitions and a willingness to kill, scare and intimidate the masses using fear to rule them?

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Today, by all standards, we're more "democratic", but are we really democratic, could democracy actually exist and does it actually work? The 3 sources of frustration noted by you are important considerations, but the following 2 factors are more real and important:

a) Information availability and

b) Ability to process information and make decisions.

A true democracy assumes rule by the people, but if the average citizen has no access to good information and the majority of them doesn't care for politics but rather what the girl/boy next door is doing, wouldn't know what to do with good information if it was available to them so we can't say that democracy is a good thing. At the end of the day, most decisions are made by our representatives, whose motives are as clear as mud to the public, whose morality are questionable and they relate to each other in a back-scratching culture that gives little to no consideration to the wishes of the masses, we can only hope that our leaders have good morals.

I actually attribute good living conditions of today to the:

- general advances in technologies that makes our lives more comfortable and

- the general increase in empathy and humanity in civilization.

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I suppose a good alternative to true democracy is government by an elite group with the welfare of their people as first priority. Sometimes this system exists in our so-called representative democracies, but sometimes it doesn't.

Secrecy is important in war? So transparency is less important in war? If that's the case, what's to stop people going to war based on complete lies?

If good information can't be available to all voters, then democracy is a lie.