Research Paper on:
US Democracy's Shortcomings

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
is inextractibly tied with that of democracy. Democracy, that grand and glorious concept which has been pursued by countries around the world, purports to represent the ideologies of the  people. Democracy as a concept encompasses many other concepts such as morality, ethics, and basic human rights. It calls to mind such basic premises as equality and, indeed,  a number of universally valid principles which were applicable to all aspects of man kinds existence, particularly to the concept of whether one man should rule over another. Our  founding fathers put in place a government which was designed to effectively address those concepts and concerns, a government which was designed to change over time as new concerns and  ideological directions surfaced. Some contend, however, that this government has remained essentially unchanged. To evaluate the question of whether our government has changed or remained static even in  the presence of stimuli for change, we must evaluate the basic premises of democracy itself. The concept of democracy is not a  new one, of course. Indeed, the modern concept of democracy has benefited from the attentions of the greatest minds in the world. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle alike all  mused on the principles of democratic rule. Even Machiavelli, the Sixteenth Century Italian ruler, would consider the basic premises of democratic rule. These philosophers would be followed in  history by the Western Enlightenment where one writers and philosopher after another philosophized on such concepts. The ultimate test of the concept of democracy would, of course, come with  the advent of the United States. Without the philosophies of those that lived in the centuries prior to the U.S. Declaration of Independence, however, democracy in this country would