What is democracy - III (#331, Topic P)

When I am using my computer, I usually have TV in the background. Last night, PBC showed a BBC segment on Russian President Vladimir Putin at the international security conference in Munich. Today, the Washington Post has this as its lead story, quoting Putin as saying: "Russia is constantly being taught democracy, and the people who try to teach it don't learn it themselves." I must admit that, though I have tried, very hard, to learn what democracy is, I have never been able to put my hands on a book on what democracy is. I have to infer that democracy is easier said than done. Indeed, while reading today's WP story, I thought, maybe, I should compile one myself, using what I have gathered in recent months as a starting point. I was thinking of the following entries. "(1) Democracy means voting. (2) A precondition to voting is to have a campaign chest -- for the 2008 election, the minimum is $50 million; $100 million is better. (3) Because voting is expensive, it needs to be done only once every four years. (4) After you have voted, retire and come back in four years; your vote is valuable." Then, in another section of today's WP, I read another lead story, by a retired Army lieutenant general who also was a former director of the National Security Agency and now is a Yale professor -- certainly much more authoritative and, indeed, sober. He wrote, inter alia, the following: "First, the assumption that the United States could create a liberal, constitutional democracy in Iraq defies just about everything known by professional students of the topic. ... [Neoconservative agitators] ignored our own struggles over two centuries to create the democracy Americans enjoy today. ... Second, to expect any Iraqi leader who can hold his country together to be pro-American, or to share American goals, is to abandon common sense. It took the United States more than a century to ge over its hostility toward British occupation. (In 1914, a majority of the public favored supporting Germany against Britain.)" The last sentence, in brackets, is certainly a revelation. After reading it, the quote I frequently make comes to mind again: "Do what I say; don't do what I do" -- or, what I did, for that matter.