[foldr]

>No, you're not, unless dictionaries have started specifying what percentage of the population should have the right to vote in order to qualify as a "democracy."

Everyone agrees that there's some requirement. A country of 1 million where 1 person has the vote isn't a democracy. You're right that a dictionary isn't the place to look to find out where to draw the line, but the line certainly has to be drawn somewhere. I'd say most people would agree that a society where people are systematically disenfranchised based on race, property and gender is not democratic.

>It's important to know their history, if for no other reason so you can avoid having boring conversations like this one.

I do know the history, despite your suggestions to the contrary -- which to be honest are a bit patronizing.

>Also, note how ridiculous your use of the term "modern usage" is here.

I mean the usage of the word today, which is what's relevant. Perhaps I should have said 'present usage'. (I have to say though, I think it is quite common to contrast the 'modern' usage of a word with its differing usage decades earlier, even if this isn't strictly consistent with a historian's usage of the word 'modern'.)

[justin66]

> I do know the history, despite your suggestions to the contrary -- which to be honest are a bit patronizing.

What's funny is that the response you saw was edited for politeness.

> You're right that a dictionary isn't the place to look to find out where to draw the line, but the line certainly has to be drawn somewhere. I'd say most people would agree that a society where people are systematically disenfranchised based on race, property and gender is not democratic.

I think I see what's going on here. There are two different issues, the meaning of the word "democracy" and the norms of democracy at any given time.

I think the accurate thing to say with regard to both of these, and hopefully you'll agree, is that the word, its meaning, and the ideal it defines have been pretty constant over time and the degree to which democracies adhere to the ideal of democracy has changed.

(it seems to me a more interesting question is whether America in 1900 would qualify as an "illiberal democracy" under today's emerging definition)

> A country of 1 million where 1 person has the vote isn't a democracy.

More useful examples abound, with all the countries that did not achieve universal suffrage until the 20th century. I think you're staking out a very strange linguistic position if you think those countries, which self-identified as democracies both before and after the change, and which everyone referred to as democracies both before and after the change, could only correctly be referred to as "democracies" after they enacted universal suffrage. It seems a lot more useful to say that those democracies were functioning closer to the ideal of democracy than they had been previously.

A tangent: there's a satirical Asimov story called Franchise about a country where only one guy has the vote. I don't remember much about it except that it was great, like most Asimov stories.

[foldr]

The history of the word 'democracy' is irrelevant. I was using the word in its current sense (as I do with most words!)

> I think you're staking out a very strange linguistic position if you think those countries, which self-identified as democracies both before and after the change, and which everyone referred to as democracies both before and after the change, could only correctly be referred to as "democracies" after they enacted universal suffrage.

I think you're staking out a very strange political position if you're suggesting that it wouldn't be undemocratic to disenfranchise women, African-Americans and people who don't own significant amounts of property.

Self-identification is not a reliable guide. The DPRK presumably self-identifies as democratic.

Now, if you think that (say) the USA should still qualify as an 'imperfect democracy' following a massive disenfranchisement of the kind I just described, then I can't really argue with that, since there's no hard and fast rule for deciding when an imperfect democracy stops being a democracy at all. But personally I would not call it a democracy any longer in that circumstance.

[justin66]

> I think you're staking out a very strange political position

But that's not my political position. I assume for the sake of argument that my political position is the same as yours.

> if you're suggesting that it wouldn't be undemocratic to disenfranchise women, African-Americans and people who don't own significant amounts of property.

Of course it would. I wonder if this is tripping you up: a democracy can do undemocratic things. Doing undemocratic things did not cause Athens, the United States, or dozens of other countries to not be democracies.

> The history of the word 'democracy' is irrelevant.

The history of the word is one of several ways (which you are just not hearing) of demonstrating why what you're arguing is not just wrong, it is nonsensical.

> But personally I would not call it a democracy any longer in that circumstance.

At this point, I have to say, you're welcome to your own definition of 'democracy' or anything else. Use it in good health.

[foldr]

>Doing undemocratic things did not cause Athens, the United States, or dozens of other countries to not be democracies.

You could say the same for the 'D'PRK. Maybe it's just a democracy that does a lot of undemocratic things.