We have here, with this forum, and besides with Postmasters, the opportunity to have a free speech field, in a democratical spirit. But what does it mean for you?
A travers ce forum, et surtout avec Postmasters, on dispose ici d'un espace de parole libre, dans le plus pur esprit démocratique. Mais qu'est-ce que cela veut dire pour vous?

Good idea for a topic, ferenk. I too would like to know what ideas people have for words like "democracy" and "free speech". I think there must be many interpretations. What do you think?

Democracy is good if people are educated and smart enough to understand the facts and truth. Else its as waste as bad dictatorship.

So true. If people are not educated in democratic processes, they cannot conduct democratic discussion, deliberation or decision making processes.

An uneducated person becomes an emotional fool in the hands of a polititian. Polititians make use of this to fool them with false promises by becoming their so called "Gaurdian" and later nobody is their to wipe your tears in the time of atrocities.

I am interested in how to apply practical democratic principles to an online group.

This is a public forum… So I guess an important question is: where does our intimacy begin? (Or: Where does it end?)

@AGG - Why do you ask this question? How does it relate to democracy and free speech?

@myself - This is a public forum for the purpose of promoting a private association called "Postmasters" (See: Art. 3). Every Postmasters club is required to maintain a free speech forum for the public, in accordance with Article 2.

"To achieve our purpose Postmasters provides for the public an open circuit, free speech zone and offers The Discussion Workshop Series."

@Artie: Because freedom of speech means as well being able to avoid saying things (your values, things about yourself, etc…) which are very dear if you don’t want to put them at risk. There are many values which are related to “our democracy” and which are neither undemocratic nor democratic. The problem is to know when democratic values need to prevail. I give you an example: Challenging (yourself or somebody else) puts intimacy at risk and, without context, is neither democratic nor undemocratic. It is a very common value. Could it be undemocratic? When? Then: Could it be more important than any democratic value?

@AGG - The word "intimacy" almost always indicates a love relationship, in American english usage. You are free to use any words you wish, but to deepen the reader's comprehension, you might say "intimacy and understanding". Even so, the word "intimacy" can be misleading. You could get by fine by substituting it for "understanding".

If this is what you mean - if you mean to say "understanding", then I am ready to address that issue in the following posts.