Challenges of a Democracy

Some challenges to a democracy are government and people.  Democracy by some has been described as mob rule or the tyranny of the majority.  This leads me to the first challenge that a democracy has to overcome.  How do you keep the majority from trampling on the rights of the minority?  If a government does so, then how do you keep the majority from thinking they are being ignored and that the minority has more say than the majority? 

Another challenge is a well informed voter.  When I say well informed I don’t only mean knowledge of how government works.  I’m talking about being familiar with how the economy works, how business works, understanding that money does not grow on trees.  People need to be well informed on these matters and not listen to a thirty second ad, once every two years, to explain how the economy works.  This in turn leads to a third problem with a democracy.  I am very surprised by the American public and how they think that the President of the USA is almost like a King.  What he says goes? 

When the voters are uninformed then the government steps in and starts promising voters, the stars, the moon, and the sun.  Now we he have turned a democracy into a contest of which person/party is going to give me more for nothing.  This only leads to even bigger and greater problems as was seen by the events that happened in Greece in the spring/summer months in 2010.

I think that James Madison described democracy really well with this quote, “Democracy is the most vile form of government... democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: 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.”  For those reasons I am very glad that my parents, with me and my brother escaped from communist Poland in the 80s and brought us here to the land of opportunity.  The United States of America, a Republic.