What Is Democracy?

Today, I attended a screening and a Q&A with Astra Taylor, the film-maker, of What Is Democracy?, a documentary. It’s a hard question to answer and the movie takes a thoughtful approach to exploring the inherent paradoxes of democracy and how that plays out with real people. As Cornel West explains in the movie, “Plato’s Republic provides the most powerful indictment of not just democratic practices but the possibility of democracy.” It will ultimately end with tyranny, Plato thought. And that’s a challenge that democracy must continually face.

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