Winston Churchill’s View on Democracy

A democracy is controlled by the people. The people as a whole vote on the issues at hand and the majority vote wins. It can also meant that the people have voted on who they would like to represent them. Meaning that during the person's campaign, whom ever voted for them agrees with the majority of the things said and felt as though the person they voted for would best represent their needs and wants. Churchill says, “Democracy is the worst form of government on earth except for all the rest.” In this quote he expressed that although a democracy is terrible, it is not as terrible as the rest of the forms of government. He had a strange way of saying it but compared to the other types of government, a democracy isn’t the worst. He also said this because around his time he never experienced a good type of government.

Fourth, the definition of the word "democracy" has changed. The way Americans see the word doesn't refer to a static system as it once did, it is ever changing and improving.

Democracy is first stated in the chapter by Hofstadter, democracy is evil according to our founding fathers. Men are selfish and argumentative. Hofstadter says, “Calvinistic sense of humor, evil and damnation.” Basically saying that our democracy is bound to fail. It also has been said that the most seen dangers rest in the democratic parts of America’s constitution. Our founding fathers believed that democracy could potentially be the root problem in our country. During the time period democracy wasn’t seen as a political party that brought progression to our country and didn’t last very long. Elbridge

“Hence it is that such democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

Before pondering the extent of democracy one must determine what the term “democracy” means. Democracy is a “means of selecting

“Thus Dewey sought to conceptualize democracy as a mode of being a way of life, or as a personality formation. He argued that even if all of the right external structures were in place if there was little to no prior development of the democratic moral ideals within persons that make up American Democracy, more and more of its people would devolve into mere empty-shelled democratic citizens.” (John Dewey)

“The Framers did not intend to create a ‘pure democracy’ - one in which the people rule directly. For one thing, the size of the country and the

American politics has proved to be flawed in structure over, and over again. Although our founding fathers had the best intentions when they implemented democracy, they like most modern day politicians, failed to actually make things better. Yes we gained our Independence, but with the ability to make our own choices we tend to make childish and impulsive decisions. The election of Donald Trump stands to be the most recent of those mistakes, and the politicians who work for him are either blinded or full of regret. Poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Robert Lowell paint vivid pictures of these very mistakes that seem to recur with the thought of democracy.

Aristotle says that justice is thought of as equality among all, there is a disregard to merit (p.172). In a society, there is usually more poor people and because there is this demand of equality then the majority rule (p.174). Mob rule is then authoritative. All governments have their forms, which are good and are bad. Democracy to Aristotle is not the best regime because it is ruled by the poor or the ones that need from the government. Government is not chosen by those who pursue virtue, but instead pursue wealth. The democratic principle is that of freedom, wealth, and birth. Not virtue. He believes the best regime would not be exactly a democracy but a polity that would be a combination of freedom, wealth, birth and virtue. The best regime has ideal conditions in which it becomes a predictable regime and consists of values, choices, the inanimate, elements of the class of workers, and the education of rulers. Democracy has a big defect in that it does not have intelligence or wisdom. It is the rule of many. It is based on the idea of happiness by following pleasures (p.48). Democracy comes into play when the majority revolt against the oligarchy because of the ideas of freedom. The problem with it is that people are pursuing their pleasures, not thinking of the state as a whole. There is unity based on pleasure. Before long, everyone is pursuing their own pleasures and there is an undermining of authority

It was by the rule of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union that Ukraine was hit by the famine. As terrible as it is, to this is not the only time the totalitarian rule has caused people to suffer, the most current example being North Korea and Kim Jong Un

A government is a legal system that controls its citizens or community within a certain geographical area. Moreover, forms of governments can vary and range from a monarchy to a democracy. Whichever form of government a country chooses to utilize, may be based on the country’s history and view of law. Some countries have similar views and some countries have different views. This is because the various countries view the purpose and function of law in a different context, mainly different from the purpose and function of law that emerged in the west (Terrill, 2016). One form of government in particular that illustrates this is the Islamic law. Many countries in the east have and still are utilizing this form of government because they want to establish a theocratic society, where priests rule the land in the name of a God (Terrill, 2016). When compared to the United States form of government, I find the countries that use the Islamic law form of government to be the most contradictory because of what each

A weakness of democracy is the “Tyranny of the Majority”. This is an inevitable pitfall, because in a democracy, the power is vested foremost in the people the constituting the society itself. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote on this concept:

To conclude I feel that although democracy has its obvious flaws like all political systems it is most probably the closest that we have yet achieved in creating a perfectly fair system of shared power. Those who live under a democracy have the responsibility to ensure legitimacy through their active involvement in making decisions by voting and talking to

Winston Churchill once remarked that “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried”. In agreement with his statement, this paper will examine the problems of democratic governments using specific examples, and compare it to the failure of fascist governments in Nazi Germany and Italy and communist governments in the Soviet Union and China.

Throughout history different types of instrumental regimes have been in tact so civilizations remained structured and cohesive. As humanity advanced, governments obligingly followed. Although there have been hiccups from the ancient times to modern day, one type of government, democracy, has proven to be the most effective and adaptive. As quoted by Winston Churchill, democracy is the best form of government that has existed. This is true because the heart of democracy is reliant, dependent, and thrives on the populaces desires; which gives them the ability for maintaining the right to choose, over time it adjusts and fixes itself to engulf the prominent troubling issues, and people have the right of electing the person they