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Thanks Bernardo for a wonderful, well though out answer
I would really love to think that the majority of people would vote like you suggest and take all the aforementioned into consideration.(and to ansteyg).
However, I am far to cynical for my own good.
One of my points - not really made is that if you are actually idealistic or if you are not in a political party, you cannot actually change anything.
To take your quote though..."democracy does not mean that the government..." democracy is defined in the Oxford Minidictionary (the only dictionary I can lay my hands on at the moment) as: "government by all the people usually through eleceted representatives".
Surely if the elected people are not getting their way, this cannot be democracy. Surely the technology is available that people could vote online or via their phone etc and we could have a referenedum on most things.
Or can we not because people are not intelligent enough to make decisions like this. A classic example would be the Euro debate. How many people actually understand whether the Euro would be a good move for Britain. Do people really understand the economic issues? If not, they are swung by the papers/media. Does this then mean that the editors/owners control the "mass" and therefore, again, democracy is not about the people but about people being manipulated by "those in power".
Again, CAN democracy actually work?