Is there a key?

The key to democracy is dissent.
Another person might say vigilance.
Another, freedom of speech or civil rights which reflect and respect human rights.

One thing that is certain is the key to democracy is not more law. It is not punishment.
The more people are forced to act as cogs in a wheel, the less democratic a nation becomes. Unlimited enforcement of laws will not allow democracy.

American Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy stood before the American Bar Association in Honolulu Saturday and said:

"Make no mistake, there's a jury that's out. In half the world, the verdict is not yet in. The commitment to accept the Western idea of democracy has not yet been made, and they are waiting for you to make the case," Kennedy said in an address to the American Bar Association.

Kennedy, 70, said he fears many parts of the world are not yet convinced that the American form of government as designed by the framers of the Constitution guarantees a better way of life.
"Our best security, our only security, is in the world of ideas, and I sense a slight foreboding," he said.
...
He said the rule of law has three parts: it must be binding on all government officials, it must respect the dignity, equality and human rights of every person, and it must guarantee people the right to enforce the law without fear of retaliation.
"Americans must understand that if the rules of law have meaning, such as hope and inspiration for the rest of the world, it must be coupled with the opportunity to improve human existence," Kennedy said.
...
"For us, law is a liberating force. It's a promise, it's a covenant that says you can hope, you can dream, you can dare, you can plan," he said. "We must explain to a doubting world where the verdict is still out."

(from "Jury's Out on US Democracy" 1010 radio news, Hawaii)

The key to democracy may be simply empowering citizens. Empowering citizens to the point that they know they are more important than any person or department of the government.

A fair question is whether the United States is succeeding as an example for the world.

Is law a liberating force in America?
Is law a liberating force in Australia?
There are few who have experienced the Family Courts or the bias of Intervention Orders who would say it is. To do so, they would have to deny their own experience and cling to their hopes and beliefs in what can sometimes seem like desperation.

The challenge of Islamic terrorism has highlighted questions about the validity of democracy, even amongst those who live in western democracies.
One Australian friend recently said he could understand why Muslim countries had forbidden women suffrage for centuries. The comment made my head spin, but he continued to make the argument at length.

"The best possible type of economy is one in which most people don't know where their next meal is coming from. That would keep them on their toes and stop them getting lazy".

You cannot help but wonder sometimes what history will make of these times. Is this the beginning of a new age of enlightenment? .. or will people choose to live their fears and take the world into an age of oppression?
I suppose the answer to all these questions is really another simple question: What do you choose?

Today is near the American national holiday, Martin Luther King's birthday. SBS is running a documentary about the American Civil Rights Movement. Watching the aged faces of the leaders of that movement, memories drift back into my mind of that time.
Most o those around me were sympathizers, although it was a confusing time in America. No one was prepared to hear that America was a place where segregation had existed for a hundred years after the bloody carnage of the Civil War.

There was a white man so desperate to understand what it meant to be black, that he had his skin permanently altered. He wrote a book, "Black Like Me", and described his experiences both as a white man and a black. For the first half of the book, he told of how he had returned as a black man to places he had visited as a white only a few months before, and how differently people reacted to him.
I read the book with youthful zeal, anxious to try to understand what prejudice meant. But the words could not convey the meaning really.

It took coming to Australia and experiencing how people treated me after false allegations of abuse had been made into Intervention Orders to feel what prejudice meant, viscerally.

As the author of the book had said, there are two sides to prejudice: one, the demeaning attitude of disgust for your existance by the bigots; and two, the pity that others express towards you in their well-meaning efforts to make things better.

I learned what it meant to be victimized by prejudice in Australia.
I made my choices to obey the law and never be violent towards anyone, but you wouldn't know if from the record, -- unless you look for any proof.

I wish I were alone in that experience. I am not. No person in Australia enjoys the equal protection of the law. It is a farce perpetrated on a frightened populace by an cynical government.