Has Our Idea of What Democracy Means Become "Black Boxed"?

Article found on Star Tribune's Website
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/116088034.html?page=1&c=y

The real issue I see with science today is that even our educated professors and researchers are falling into traps that lead them into discounting possible systems that can work and instead arguing that what is today should be tomorrow based solely on the fact that it works. When looking at something as complex as freedom of the press you can't compare it to something as simple as "hard science" the article I found is about how failure to implement freedom of the press in egypt and other middle eastern emerging democracies will result in a failure to establish a long lasting and stable government.

The issue I see with science isn't just how it related to technical fields such as biology, chemistry, and computer programming but rather how ideas pertaining to how our society is run are percieved similarly and people draw false conclusions between the mathematics and logic in these fields and how politics and government should function. Normally when you are learning about these fields you are studying methods of arriving at conclusions based on black and white systems set up like the circulation system and evolution in biology, atomic structure and reactivity in chemistry, and language coding in programming. (perhaps even I am guilty of "black boxing" these sytems by referring to them this way) The disturbing trend I see now however is that our idea of what a democracy is and isn't is increasingly becoming "black boxed". We tend to forget that 400 years ago it was considered natural and even a god given gift to be ruled over by kings and queens and until the enlightenment and restoration ideas such as these that were grounded in economic and religious institutions so firmly that people skipped over thinking about why the system was present today and instead skip to how they should implement it. As an example of our "black boxed" idea of what a democracy is we can look at the healthcare reform bill that met heavy resistance from the political right this previous year. I believe people have the misconception that free markets (a.k.a capitalism) and democracy are inescapably interwoven institutions when in reality they are not and several countries around the world have benefitted from a hybridization of several different forms of government while still maintaining a rule of the people, for the people, by the people.