[coliveira]

If people are in the street demonstrating, this is a sign that something is not right. Unless there is some mental disease going on, people will not let their fulfilling lives to be protesting against living conditions. This is a sign that something is broken and should be fixed, which is the whole of government, even if that government is not the one that I voted for. This is democracy 101.

[gwright]

This is a confused argument to me and I think many other comments in this thread are similarly confused. By confused I don't necessarily mean "wrong" but more like "muddled" or hard to understand.

I'm coming at this from a US point of view but would be interested in hearing other perspectives.

In casual use I think "democracy" is best understood to mean the more technically accurate concept of "democratic republic" and additionally that there are a core set of individual rights that are not subject to infringement by the majority via legislation. One of the primary roles of the government is to protect those individual rights.

The right to peaceful assembly, to free speech, to association, and to petition the government are all protected and foundational to what we might call "protesting" or "demonstrating".

I think "democracy" is generally used as a short-hand to refer to this bundle of ideas and not to the concept of a "direct democracy" where "majority rules" is the operating principle with no limitations.

But those rights aren't absolute and they have to be balanced with rights of others who aren't participating in the protest. If your group is no longer peaceful, or your speech is inciting violence, or your group is unlawfully impeding the free movement of others, or your actions are in fact crimes against people or property then you are no longer engaging in protected activities.

Blocking a public right-of-way without permission (like getting a parade permit, for example) is infringing on other people's rights and is not peaceful. It is not protected activity. It is dangerous and puts other people at risk. Similarly arson, vandalism, and other destruction of property is not part of the idea of "peaceful protest" and is not protected activity.

[sukilot]

What does any of that have to do with democracy? A democratic government can still kill people in various immoral ways. A democracy can have slaves, apparently! Why can't democratic civilians be violent?

[gwright]

Hard to sort out what you are saying.

I was pointing out that "democracy" doesn't mean that "protest" is automatically lawful, which was the confused assertion of the comment I was responding to.

I'm not sure what anything I wrote has to do with government killing people in "immoral ways" or democracy having slaves or civilians being violent. That just seems to be a bunch on non-sequiturs.

I'll attempt to respond though:

Government officials can obviously act in immoral ways regardless of the political system. But that is basically just a statement that people have free will. Laws don't magically make people obey them, so we can have a discussion about what is or isn't lawful but the statement that people can be immoral is just an obvious assertion about humanity without some specific fact pattern to discuss.

A liberal democracy that upholds individual rights (which I claimed was what people mean when they use the shorthand "democracy"), can't simultaneously assert the legality of slaves. That is a contradiction. Of course reality can be full of contradictions and people and governments can fail to adhere to their own laws. Is that some surprise to you?

It is hard to know what "Why can't democratic civilians be violent" means. People have free will so of course they can be "violent" and those actions may or may not be crimes, depends on the motivation and target of the "violence".

[jariel]

Yes, people can protest, nobody is arguing that.

But you can't block the highway, subway, or traffic and it has little to do with 'democracy'.

The only reason people are not cleared out sooner, is because politicians are afraid of ugly images - it's hard to physical move people with someone, somewhere getting hurt.

If there were an easy way to move people, they'd be moved.

People can picket all they want in front of Parliament or wherever, just not on the subway tracks.