Democracy is difficult to define. Not that its various meanings have changed throughout history. Rather, it is that the challenges of governments and its citizens in creating stable environments require alternate emphasis. Perhaps one needs to begin with a remarkable quotation from one of America's founding fathers, John Randolph: "I love liberty...and I hate equality" (Lerner 362). What this refers to, as Lerner (1957) explains it, is that there are really two meanings for the concept of "democracy." One is a sort of egalitarian principle as the American Declaration of Independence states- namely, that all men are created equal and that their government provides certain safeguards for their well-being. This is offset by another definition namely, where "the emphasis is on natural rights of the individual and the limited powers of government" (Lerner 362). In a sense this also explains the difference between a democracy, where the individual is omnipotent and a republican form of government which limits the powers of the governed. In essence, therefore, the U.S. is a republic with democratic principles involved, but our Constitution limits the power of the government. It is the democratic principles of a republican form of government that will be the focus here.
One can observe these different approaches to the meaning of "democracy" in today's American political climate. On the one hand, following Civil Rights legislation beginning in the 1950's, equality and non-discrimination for Americans regardless of ethnicity, religion or gender is the law of the land: Egalitarianism, if you will. On the other hand, currently the conservative dissent for such issues as health care is based on the idea of limiting government control and regulation of the daily lives of citizens. This notion of limiting government involvement brought the Reagan Administration into eight years of power. And today, many political conservatives still ...