Dr. J.W. Smith
July 1, 2007

An internet search using the keywords “republic, not a democracy” is an education. Though America is always describing itself as a democracy, conservatives openly state this is a republic and that it was never intended to be, and it is not today, a democracy. Of course word meanings change over time. If a majority of the people perceives that a word means something, that becomes its new meaning.

Western nations have described themselves as democracies for so long that their citizens—and the world—take it for granted that that is what they are. However, in their original meanings, most “democratic” governments are actually representative democracies.

But even that meaning, as understood by their citizenry, does not, and never did, conform to reality. Most voters think the winners of those elections are representing them. But that is seldom true. Winners of elections at the state and national levels, where those crucial laws are enacted, are normally determined by who spends the most money and who controls the various media. Thus, at most times, the winners of elections represent wealth and power far more so than the citizenry at large.

On the other hand, the Soviet Union, under hostile conditions of foreign imperial powers bent on their destruction, had a participatory democracy. That they were true democracies by that word’s full meaning has been kept out of Western media coverage and history books. Under those participatory democracies, suggested laws were discussed within the communities and a representative was sent to the legislatures with specific instructions to vote yes or no on each aspect of each law, not to decide on his own how to vote.

Scholars at the North American/Cuban Philosophy conference in June 2002 were mesmerized watching the nation shut down for three days as Cuban citizens of all ages gave impassioned speeches over the TV on the pros and cons of changes in their constitution. Modern communications permitted them to practice direct democracy. These participatory democracies and direct democracies being dictatorships are only imprints on the Western mind placed there by propaganda.

Though the words are never used within an empire’s mainstream media or educational system, the world has many imperial democracies. These too are supposedly elected by the citizenry but, just as most candidates in representative democracies being picked by powerbrokers essentially disenfranchises the electorate; the same powerbrokers picking the candidates within those imperial centers have control over who can run for puppet governments on an empire’s periphery.

As the citizenry believe they have democratic rights, both representative and imperial democracies have the potential of becoming true democracies. That, of course, would be ballot box revolutions restructuring authoritarian nations into true democracies.

The entire world understands how the citizenry within imperial democracies are disenfranchised, but few understand how they too are similarly denied true representation. To maintain such democratic fictions, all powerbrokers insert massive propaganda into their media and educational systems.