Democracy argumentative essay

Blog entry II

Democracy creates stability in a society?

Democracy is a system in the government, through which the wills of different groups of people living in the same country are voiced out and represented. In this system the people have great influence over their government. Ideally it can be interpreted as people are ruling themselves, but if it is assumed that therefore democratic government creates stability in a society. I disagree.

Many may agree with the statement saying that democracy can give us a stable society. This is because it empowers every individual in the society, and allowing them to have the rights to what they want to live with. For example, in the 1960s, the people of Singapore had voted for the merger of Malaya. The supportive votes for merger empowered the PAP and entrusted it with the nation’s faith, meanwhile the communists just lost its grip over Singaporeans as they were no longer representing the will of the people. This showed that the government is the people’s voices and hands, they should be satisfactory of what they have and thus the society is stable.

However, different groups of people in a society have different interests. In the voting system, usually the majority group of people will get what they desire. That is not the will of the whole population. The minority gets deprived of their interests and even discrimination. For instance, In Sri Lanka the Sinhalese make up more than 70% of the whole population. They feel threatened by the presence of the Tamils who are only 30% of the population. After independence, the Sinhalese got into power and implemented many discriminative laws against the Tamils in areas such as education, employment and so on. The Tamils have to live under-privileged because they are the minority in the nation. Their votes would not help their leaders in getting a key position in the government so that they can make a difference for the Tamils. In this case, democracy is a double-edged sword that serves the majority of the people and yet intensifies the hatred between groups of people, which in turn causes instability in the nation.

Lastly, the system of democracy makes the assumption that the people are intelligent enough to make the most correct decision for themselves. This can be proven wrong in many cases. Hitler was an excellent politician who was capable of controlling and using the faith the people had in him. The Germans voted Hitler into the government through democratic means. Instead of bringing hope for the nation, he stirred up World War 2 and brought the Germans a disastrous defeat in the war. Hitler was obvious the wrong person that the Germans had trusted. This shows that democracy has too many crucial variables that are not in control of the people. The people have to make insightful judgments based on solely promises from politician instead of concrete facts. Therefore if the judgments made by the people have low credibility, we have to gamble to trust that democracy can bring stability to the society.

In conclusion, I feel that democracy is an ideal system of governance to bring about a stable and satisfactory society, only if many assumptions such as just judgments and intelligent decision by everyone in the society. Realistically speaking, I think it is not yet achievable to have such an ideal democratic government due to the egocentric human nature, which will greatly affect the judgment of every individual.