Quote Originally Posted by Eric C. View Post
The people CAN control the authorities, and when they do, it's democracy. I'd even put it the following way: when the government makes the people scare, it dictatorship; when the people make the government scare, it's democracy.
The problem is people CAN'T truly control the authorities. The can sway it sometimes but only to a certain extent, and never in something that is crucial to the said authorities. The difference between democracy and dictatorship is that democracy foolls people with an illusion of control (and boasts endlessly about it), and dictatorship does not bother with such niceties. But if you dig deeper, it's pretty much the same, and the USA is almost as much a police state as any so called dictatorship - in some cases even more due to the better financing of controlling and "security" organizations.