What is Democracy?

The recent problems in Wisconsin are raising the question, What exactly is Democracy? Is it simply going with the majority? That can't be right - we say that slavery was wrong, even when the majority would have chosen it. But what is it, then? What do we do when budget cuts cost people not just luxuries, but their livelihoods? How many people must be crushed underfoot before a regime has become undemocratic, and how does their pain compare with the "majority" opinion of what is to be done? If most public school teachers make too little to be able to afford benefit cuts and still eat, is that too many people hurt? How about if a quarter of them? The handful beginning their careers in Milwaukee? Do they only have rights if the rest of the state is informed enough to vote in their favor, to realize that these people asked to "tighten their belts like the rest of us" already chose a stricter lot simply in taking up their career, their service to a community which more than ever proves the need of education? Do they only have their lives if their "representatives" in Madison pay attention to economic realities? But why stop at these budget cuts - what about those who have had these problems all along, but never had the solidarity, the security, or the space to say anything? How many have gone unheeded all along, whose lives have been so consistently hampered that they have not been able to point to a law which would change it for the worse?

Democracy must be for the people. And when the people cannot give two seconds to think about their neighbor, when they cannot bring themselves to be informed, when they cannot turn and face the world in front of them beyond their fences, it must be against the majority.