Shouldn't the flaws in our own Democracy be corrected before interfering with another country?

Even if we fixed our country we have no right to fix any other.

If we wish to show how good a system is, we need only practice it fully. The truth will come out.

Those who want it will copy it. Those who do not will not. That is the essence of freedom-if you truly believe in freedom, you must accept the right of another to not use theirs if they so choose.

Be what you want the world to be.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=201007...

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Yes, it is a nearly universal understanding, but actions speak louder than words.

We can say these things all day, but until we actually live them we are only idealists.

For >100 years now our economic success has depended on importing resources from other countries. We have meddled in the politics of countries all over the world, countries that had resources we wanted. Lately it's been mostly oil, but believe it or not in Central America it was fruit!

Presidents of both parties have supported some of the most brutal dictators and tyrants in history, even armed and trained them to keep their population under control. We call this 'exporting democracy' but you would be unable to point to a single new democracy we've actually created. There have been a few countries that managed to create a democracy only after they threw off the regime we chose for them--The Philippines comes to mind, or Greece--but there is not a single democracy we've actually created. We don't actually -like- democracy. It's messy and unpredictable. You don't always get what you want. We would rather get what we want and then just -call- it a democracy.

Since WWII we have used our military more than 100 times. Not ONCE in a legitimate -declared- war. Not ONCE to actually defend our shores. It's all been about swallowing the world's resources cheap.

BTW, answer to Tom Jr. Democracy and Republic mean exactly the same thing. Rule by the people. I don't know where the persistent meme comes from that democracy means only 'mob rule' or 'the tyranny of the majority'. I'm guessing it comes from the Republican Party in a silly attempt to discredit the Democratic Party.

You make a good point, I think.

I'm not conventionally religious, but your question reminds me of something that Jesus is supposed to have said in the Sermon on the Mount:

http://bible.cc/matthew/7-3.htm

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

I often wonder, when our leaders talk about the US defending "democracy" in some foreign country, exactly what kind of "democracy" they mean? Do they mean a system with unlimited corporate lobbying of the executive and legislative branches of government, and unlimited corporate donations to political campaigns?

Are Americans, who are supposed to have the largest prison population in the world now, supposed to bring "justice" and "law" to other countries which do better than we seem to do, in terms of keeping poor people out of jail?

As a 61-year-old child of the Sixties, I do think that there are some amazing virtues in the US Constitution and in the American political system that I really didn't appreciate when I was a radical college student 45 years ago.

There truly are some aspects of American democracy that we should take great pride in.

But we have so many glaring social and political problems here at home, how can we possibly try to tell other people how to run their own countries? Especially when many of us are pretty uninformed & ignorant about the cultures & the histories of those other countries.

We're not a democracy. We're a representative republic.

in a perfect world.....