I have some questions regarding Democracy and Freedom.

[KlatooBNikto]

1. Is Democracy defined by holding elections every so often under
conditions acceptable to the U.S.?
2. Is Freedom defined only by economic freedom,i.e. Capitalist economic system and not by one in which certain products and services are publicly owned?

3. If the U.S. political and economic system is not perfect, how come the U.S. takes it upon itself to decide whether a country's system is acceptable or not? And worse, why does the U.S. believe that it can launch a military action to cahnge the regime that it considers unacceptable?

4. Why are certain tyrannies and dictatorships exempt from the U.S. doctrine of regime change?

5. Why does the U.S. claim Democracies as defined by the U.S. do not launch aggressive wars?What about the wars that the U.S. has launched since WWII?Under what category do they come in?

6. Why should a country like Venezuela or China or any third world country where the majority of the citizens are poorly educated and poorly fed be asked to reorder their priorities in health, education and housing in order to allow global corporations to saddle the country with enormous debt as happened in Argentina, a debt that proves crushing.?

[wtbymark]

1. we are neither democratic nor free

we live in a corperate-fascist system and are at liberty to do nothing.

[bryant69]

4. Idon't know that we are at liberty to do nothing

I mean we can post messages on Democratic Underground. We can be active in the various movements. We can listen to Gorrilaz.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[SteppingRazor]

2. I got another question.

Why do people insist on asking rheotorical questions? ;)

Kidding aside,I think you already know the answer to these questions. Democracy (at least democracy as we know it, that being representative democracy) means leaders elected to represent the will of the people and make decisions on their behalf.
Freedom is, of course, a lot more than economic freedom, and should not be beholden to corporate interests.
We coddle certqain dictators because we believe it's in our national interest to do so (see: realpolitik)

I imagine your answer, after seeing the answers that you already knew were coming, would be -- then how can we say what we say and yet do what we do, given the hypocrisy between the two extremes? (or something along those lines.)

I think the best answer to that is the one Bill Clinton gave for why he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky -- Becasue he could.

We demand other contries follow our example because we can. We coddle some dictators and overthrow others because we can. We saddle third-world countries with massive debt and make them slaves to American corporations because we can.

What other reason is there?

[KlatooBNikto]

3. I thought that if we raised these questions and not follow the unwritten

laws of our discourse, we can open up some minds to the insidious ways these have become acceptable to us, our Press and our Congress.The rest of the world certainly knows that we are hypocrites but do we? That is the question I would like to see raised more often.

[SteppingRazor]

5. Granted, but...

I think you'll find very, very few people on this forum who are not already convinced of the bottom-feeding hypocrisy so brazenly on display on Washington today.
In fact, I'd say you'll find none at all. Not that there's anything wrong with preaching to the choir.
Amen!

[The2ndWheel]

6. Ambiguous words

You're supposed to be consuming goods and services. Stop asking questions.