In Australia one does not need to be a woman, a slave or a descendant of a foreigner for their votes to count for naught: suffice that you live in a non-marginal electoral division!

While your vote matters not, your neighbour across the road, on the other side of the invisible electoral line, may have a very strong voting power just because their grandparents happened to built their house on the "right" side of the street while yours built your house on the "wrong" side.

Dear Yuyutsu,

If the prime minister were elected by a popular vote it wouldn't matter which side of the electoral boundary you lived on. Montesquieu recommended separate and independent executive, legislative and judiciary branches of government. Australia avoids that by having the executive part of parliament. The US avoids that by the Electoral College.

David F

Most people prefer to use the dictionary definition.

Democracy = "a political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them"

Dear shadowminister,

What is the evidence for your statement that most people prefer to use the dictionary definition you cited? That definition would not apply to the Athenian democracy as it had no representatives. Athenian citizens voted directly. The meaning of words change with usage, and dictionary definitions reflect the usage of the person or people writing the dictionary.

In my opinion subsidies to religious schools violate S. 116 of the Australian Constitution and are illegal. The US Supreme Court operating under the US Constitution which has almost identical wording to S. 116 regarding religion agrees with my opinion. The Australian High Court doesn't. Future judges on the Australian High Court may agree with my opinion and that of the US Supreme Court. In my opinion democracy requires a greater degree of separation of religion and state than exists in Australia. I doubt that most people prefer the dictionary definition you cited of democracy as they probably don't consult the particular dictionary you cited or any dictionary when they refer to democracy.

Dear David,

I completely agree: democracy in Australia and the USA is broken.

Which brings us back to the topic: Israeli democracy, though still imperfect, should be praised as superior to ours.

Regarding your last post to Shadowminister, democracy literally means the rule of the [majority of the] common people. Should the majority of the common people want to subsidise a religion (or more accurately, whatever passes for "religion" in their minds), then this would be a legitimate part of the democratic process. We may not like it (albeit you and I would probably oppose it for different reasons), we may call it by many bad names, but "undemocratic" is not one of them. It could however make us wonder whether democracy is a good idea to begin with.

Dear Yuyutsu,

I also question whether democracy is a good idea. However, I don't think I disagree with you for the reason for separation of religion and state. I don't believe religion is necessarily bad, but power corrupts. The union of state and religion puts the power of the state in the service of religion. I think that corrupts religion. Do you agree?

Putting the power of religion in the hands of government corrupts government. Do you agree?