What Democracy Means?
«The three great objectives -security of the home, the security of livelihood, and the the security of social insurance - are, it seems to me, a minimum of the promise that we can offer to the American People. They constitute a right which belongs to every individual and every family willing to work»Democracy means political freedom. It is a free speech and a free press, religious freedom, justice under law, the rights to vote and have a meaning ful choice whenvoting.
(Franklin D. Roosevelt,Message to Congress, 1934).
Democracy also means social equality: a way of life consistent with our creed that « all men are created equal».
It is equal rights and respect for womens as welle as men, poor as well as rich, Negro as well as White, foreign-born as welle as native-born, Muslims or Jewish as well as Christian, etc. It means equal opportunity for an education or a job, the chance to live in any neighborhood and go where the next man may.
Then, too, democracy means economics security: a good chance to succed in the «pursuit of happiness».
Democracy is also a dynamic way of life that encourages efforts to make society and government always better.
Indeed,
the democrat must believes that human nature is improved as man's envionment is perfected.
Democracy means the right of all citizens to experiment and seek to improve society; it welcomes the reformer who offers new ways to solve our problems. Or, to show another way of viewing democracy, we may say that the democrat recognizes all of the world's people as his brothers, equally good and equally deserving. He recognizes the rights of the people of other lands to decide for themserlves the way of they prefer.
So, the democrat must believe in International co-operation and peaceful world. He knows that people in all lands have participated in the struggle to establish just societies, and every societie have gained much from other peoples in their own effort to establish a democratic way of life.