alt Hacker NewsThat index confuses voting or even liberal democracy with democracy.
A multitude of different peoples voting to rule over the others is not democratic and will never be democratic. Just because the voting process is secure does not make it democratic. What makes it democratic is that a people rules themselves, nothing else.
Zulus ruling over Xhosas is not democratic just because the Zulus give the Xhosas votes because Zulus and Xhosas are two different peoples, and contrary to popular belief, soil is not magical and a Xhosa born on territory ruled by Zulus does not make him a Zulu.
Jews ruling over Palestinians is not democratic just because the Palestinians have votes because Jews and Palestinians are two different peoples, and contrary to popular belief, soil is not magical and a Palestinian born on territory ruled by Jews does not make him a Jew.
Reinventing the dictionary will only confuse you, it won't change reality. Nominalism is not only stupid, it's wrong.
Replies
That is only an issue if you have sufficiently deep ethnic divisions within a country that people automatically vote on ethnic lines.
This betrays a simplistic understanding of democracy. In short, its meaning cannot be derived from decomposing its etymology, and your take here is ... certainly unique.
Democracy is not just voting. Actual full democracy is predicated on a fairly large number of fundamental rights, as well as duties. Democracy is antithetical to majority rule, in which the rights of minorities can be ignored or trampled by the majority.
Zulus ruling over Xhosas can never be democratic, because nobody is "ruling over" anybody else in a democracy, no matter their ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, and so on.
Some people call what I'm describing here "liberal" democracy, but that's to distract from the fundamental fact that there is no meaningful definition of democracy that isn't liberal. If we're not free and equal, we cannot participate in democracy, and therefore it isn't democracy.