ABSTRACT
Mark Twain once observed “Everybody talks about the weather but no one does anything about it.” Today that phrase might be altered to “Everybody talks about democracy, but few seem able to define it.” Democracy has become a global buzz word, a concept used to evaluate governments, to condemn those who allegedly subvert or ignore it. Democracy is virtually always praised as an unquestionable good. Terrorists, our leaders assure us, hate democracy, while virtually every politician in the Western Hemisphere today proclaims his or her allegiance to this concept. Yet few ever bother to define democracy or to admit its shortcomings and dangers.
