The 8 rules

1. Democracy and liberty are not directly related (democratic governments can as easily abuse rights and liberties as non-democratic systems / need for balance of power).
   
2. A government respects liberty to the extent that  it does not restrict individual behavior beyond what consensus considers just (consensus should decide what liberties we should have).
   
3. Democracy follows from the golden rule (democracy is not "two heads are better than one" but rather the consequence of the idea that we should no sooner rule another without consent than we would wish to be ruled by another without our consent).
   
4. The degree to which someone can contribute to the creation of a law is the degree to which they can justly be held accountable to that law (franchise).
   
5. Representative government is only democratic to the extent of the representatives' ability and inclination to determine their constituents' consensus and use that consensus to impact governance (representation is not any more democratic than voting for your tyrant).
   
6. Voting is only a measure of consensus (voting is only part of the consensus-forming process and should only happen when consensus cannot be determined in any other way).
   
7. Informed consensus is better than uninformed consensus (if you let stooges create laws, you'll get bad laws).
   
8. Political party platforms can at best haphazardly represent consensus (one-size-fits-all parties are unlikely to represent your opinion on any given topic).