[jimmy1]

I don't know what to think either. Thinking about it at a higher level than this:

Some days I really think people don't know how to live under a democracy. There just always seems to be this segment of the population that want to be told what to think (and preferably told things are going well)

Some days I think liberty is the only way to live life, but that people mistake that liberty doesn't come at a cost. Most people don't have enough skin in the game to be willing to accept that cost. The original pilgrims, the founding fathers, and the lot did. There are attacks on our liberities that would have started revolutions (Patriot act being the most egregious example).

Don't know what to think anymore. Politics disgust me. I'm told I'm not even old enough to be this cynical.

[ethbro]

Politics in a democracy has always disgusted everyone.

Per Churchill, "No one pre­tends that democ­ra­cy is per­fect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democ­ra­cy is the worst form of Gov­ern­ment except for all those oth­er forms that have been tried from time to time..."

[Someguywhatever]

US is not a democracy, it's a republic AFAIK. The design philosophy behind the architechture of US Government is explicitly that it is not a democracy.

[TheCoelacanth]

The US is both a democracy and a republic. The terms are not mutually exclusive. To the contrary, it is much more common to be both than to be just one or the other.

[kipchak]

>Most people don't have enough skin in the game to be willing to accept that cost.

This reminds me somewhat of the argument over voting rights during the founding of the Constitution, ultimately being left up to the States. The argument for restriction was that those dependent on the wills of others are not independent or privileged enough to act in a way other than securing their own interests; the argument against this idea is fairly obvious.

From William Blackstone's Commentaries of the law of England is the most concise summary of the pro I'm aware of.

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_2_1s3.h...

http://www.vindicatingthefounders.com/library/property-requi...

[RobertoG]

"I'm told I'm not even old enough to be this cynical."

Don't worry my young friend: if you think, as it seems by your comment, that there was a golden age in the past where people was better, you have a lot of way to go in your cynicism.