democracy?

Today in class, one of the assignments that we reviewed was an essay that discussed whether or not we actually live in a democracy. This essay was a speech from a pro-democracy rally held in Toledo, Oh in 2001; so this essay is obviously biased, and it tried to display a specific idea (that while we are lead to believe that we live in a democracy, we actually do not). As I read through, the essay provided several examples from modern society (relating to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan), and several personal accounts from a man who was a Marine in the early part of the 20th century who claimed that many of the missions that he was a part of in foreign countries only served the interests of big business. Now, I'm not going to write anything talking about my own personal opinions on whether or not the war in Iraq is legitimate, whether or not we live in a real democracy, pros and cons of supporting a free market economy, etc... The purpose of my post is not to provide any of my political opinions. Rather, I just wanted to provide an observation that I made in class today regarding something that I would not have been able to notice on my own. While discussing this essay in class, I had expected that the purpose of this essay was going to be to persuade the people listening to the speech to agree with what the speaker was telling them: that we do not actually live in a democracy. However, Professor Meek pointed out that the actual purpose of the essay/speech was to persuade people to think that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are illegitimate, since the author focuses so heavilly on the wars on the second page. Before Prof. Meek mentioned this, I honestly thought that the author was simply using the examples of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to support the idea that we don't live in a democracy. While I still sort of think that the author is trying to persuade people to believe that we do not live in a democracy, I can definitely now see the possibility that the author could be focusing on the idea that the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan are illegitimate. Learn something new every day!