The concept of democracy as it is commonly understood is a myth. Rousseau’s claim that “a true democracy has never existed and never will exist; for it is against the natural order of things that the majority should govern the minority,” With the possible exception of ancient Athens, the cantons of Switzerland, and the early New England villages, “men have never experienced anything near genuine political democracy. What we have had are republics, and they have usually disintegrated into some form of benign, elective monarchy or oligarchy.” as a government of laws, not of people.

We see Democracy from its roots in ancient Greece to its contemporary manifestations in the home, workplace, courts, marketplace, and governments of modern society.

“the tyranny of numbers” — the search for a balance between majority and minority in a democracy; the perils of bureaucracy; civil rights and the treatment of minorities; civil disobedience; lawyers and the courts; crime and punishment; the free market economy; all of them perpetrate so called inequality among the masses albeit de facto – The will of the people.

Social and political realities today further confirm that democracy is at best an elusive ideal. Politics has become the domain of a professional elite, in corporate committees, in state legislatures, often without the consent — sometimes without the knowledge — of the governed. The family and workplace are dominated by strict hierarchies, free enterprise is dominated by stifling bureaucracies, legislation is dominated by lobbyists and special interests. In short, while the liberties we do enjoy in our democratic republic are probably greater than anywhere else in the world, there is no shortage of threats to true democracy in our lives as social and political beings. “The `people’ have very little power and certainly in nearly all cases they don’t rule.”

In sum, democracy is “a form of government which has never actually existed anywhere in the world, doesn’t today, and, undoubtedly, never will!”