The core of democratic philosophy is about finding freedom. The idea is, that if you tie yourself to the law, and make those laws yourself, that is, the people make them. Then you are free.
This is it. The tradition harks all the way back to Greece where Athens was the democratic ideal. But it also has a more folkish root in the old viking societies called “Freestates”.
French and American democratic unions are a mix of these two. The philosophers are talking about all the greek things. The people remembering the freestates as their ideal. Making a practical mix for all to understand and use.
The opposite of freedom is tyranny. But what is tyranny really? I have given that discussion quite a bit of thought. Both because we have tyranny at hand called islamism, that is a caliphate and an added law state called Sharia. And because I have lived under one of those tyrannies for the last ten years, trying to quell my voice.
As Hammurabi says in his first definition of law as such. Law is the protection of the weak against the strong.
What is it that it is meant to protect? It is meant to protect the life and virtues of each citizen. In a democracy, the first virtue being the freedom of each individual. The ability to talk freely on subjects, and the ability to be free from physical threats to ones political views.
In a state that I am living in, that is a de facto police state, because if you say something that the police disagrees with, it will start harassing you, and trying to shut you up. The law has lost its meaning.
It was supposed to protect the weak, and protect my freedom. When it is doing the exact opposite, it is no longer a police force, but mercenaries of tyranny.
Add to this a press that works a bit like a choir of ducklings. If one duckling decides that some other duckling are no good, all the other ducklings appear to agree. Making a de facto censorship of writers they disagree with.
Then you get a system that is in name democratic, but in action tyrannical.
It is not islamic in the sense that it gets its justification from G-d, but just bureaucratic in the sense, that the bureaucracy has no qualms about right or wrong, or the source of justification. The continuation of the bureaucracy, and the threats to it, is all justification it needs.
When it, again in practise, allies itself with IS, it has become absolutely corrupt. Taking away the freedom of the intellectuals, supporting a sharia driven law system with endless human pain as the result.
This is what a modern tyranny looks like. A veneer of democracy, with a base in islamic political ideas. A pro forma democracy. Parading with all the supposed virtues of democracy, doing the exact opposite.
This alliance of abomination, of true evil is what we fight.
G-d bless the will to be faithful and honest in the face of democratic destruction.
