What do we gain by having a vote?

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
-Winston Churchill, 11 November, 1947

-Andrew
 
coberst said:
Information is in the form of fragments and must be gathered together into a coherent package before it can prove useful in comprehending what the world is about. Only a sophisticated intellect can provide the means for such a task.
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Er, no.

Unless you consider a newspaper editor a "sophisticated intellect," in which case a single "sophisticated intellect" can serve an entire community of unsophisticated but well-informed intellects.

In either case, it is neither necessary nor appropriate for every intellect in the community to strive to become "sophisticated."
 
coberst said:
What do we gain by having a vote?

It seems to me that what we gain depends upon what we invest. If the vote is not accompanied by an investment of time and intellect directed at comprehending our self and our world then the vote becomes somewhat like our vote as to what is the best football team, ours or theirs.

Because our citizens invest little of themselves into our democracy it is a shallow popularity poll. Those who run the country give us these political teams that we can choose one or the other to be ‘our team’ and we can battle ‘their team’ and shout and laugh and rage at one another all to no avail because those who run the show use all this just to keep us happy with ‘bread and circus’.

I think that our (US) democracy is a shallow popularity poll. What do you think?
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Let me translate this....

I'm a liberal and we keep losing elections and I want a new system so we can win....

How about getting a good candidate? LOL!!!

And instead of blaming the people, let's blame the media and the Democratic Party.

The elite media is so liberal and is basically a propaganda machine for the Democratic Party.

The Democrats simply don't tell what they really think, they just say what they think they need to say to get elected.

If they said what they really believed, they would never win elections.

And I doubt you really want people to be more informed, you just want them to vote liberal. Much like when people say we need to get more people registered.
 
New Ager said:
The elite media is so liberal ....
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Not sure what an "elite" medium is, so I'll let that word pass.

Accepting as a given that the media is "liberal," I wonder what the news would be like if instead the media were conservative? Just how much information would we actually get? How much would be censored?

And no, I'm not suggesting that either form of media is more accurate, but only that with a liberal media, it seems you'd at least get more info, and less censorship.
 
(slingblade)

Not sure what an "elite" medium is, so I'll let that word pass.

(New Ager)

I'll help you out. Elite as in top TV stations, newspapers, etc.

(SB)

Accepting as a given that the media is "liberal," I wonder what the news would be like if instead the media were conservative?

(New Ager)

More interesting. Rush, Hannity, etc...

(SB)

Just how much information would we actually get? How much would be censored?

(New Ager)

I wouldn't think any censorship. Liberals are the ones that like to censor or better yet, not report.

Good example today is all this fawning over a terrorist group rebuidling Lebanon, but hardly any stories about America rebuilding Iraq and what a great job we are doing.

(SB)

And no, I'm not suggesting that either form of media is more accurate, but only that with a liberal media, it seems you'd at least get more info, and less censorship.

(New Ager)

That's just part of the liberal template. No way to know that.
 
New Ager, I'm not going to ask you to prove anything or provide any evidence. I can already tell we would just get into a non-productive argu-tantrum, and I am not able to sustain such a conversation at the moment.

I shall only say that to this point, we disagree.
 
New Ager said:
Let me translate this....

I'm a liberal and we keep losing elections and I want a new system so we can win....

How about getting a good candidate? LOL!!!

And instead of blaming the people, let's blame the media and the Democratic Party.

The elite media is so liberal and is basically a propaganda machine for the Democratic Party.

The Democrats simply don't tell what they really think, they just say what they think they need to say to get elected.

If they said what they really believed, they would never win elections.

And I doubt you really want people to be more informed, you just want them to vote liberal. Much like when people say we need to get more people registered.
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That's just sooo... ignoring the OP. The OP could be transplanted to the Clinton years into the mouth of someone pissed that a filanderer was in the White House. It's a valid question to ask regardless of who's in office at the time.
 
coberst said:
What do we gain by having a vote?

It seems to me that what we gain depends upon what we invest. If the vote is not accompanied by an investment of time and intellect directed at comprehending our self and our world then the vote becomes somewhat like our vote as to what is the best football team, ours or theirs.

Because our citizens invest little of themselves into our democracy it is a shallow popularity poll. Those who run the country give us these political teams that we can choose one or the other to be ‘our team’ and we can battle ‘their team’ and shout and laugh and rage at one another all to no avail because those who run the show use all this just to keep us happy with ‘bread and circus’.

I think that our (US) democracy is a shallow popularity poll. What do you think?
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I think that the US system of democracy isn't very good when compared to other systems of democracy in the world.

Still, almost any essentially democratic system of goverment is better than any non-democratic alternative. Even the US system.
 
DanishDynamite said:
I think that the US system of democracy isn't very good when compared to other systems of democracy in the world.
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For the 100,000th time, we ARE NOT a democracy.

That's not political opinion -- that's fact.

Were we a democracy, Gore would have won in '00.

Geez.

You may think it a small point. That there is no difference. But Bush/gore '00 proved otherwise.
 
Rob Lister said:
For the 100,000th time, we ARE NOT a democracy.

That's not political opinion -- that's fact.

Were we a democracy, Gore would have won in '00.

Geez.

You may think it a small point. That there is no difference. But Bush/gore '00 proved otherwise.
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For the 100,000th time, I know the US is not a democracy, but a republic. And, for the 100,000th time, it is an irrelevant point to make.
 
DanishDynamite said:
I think that the US system of democracy isn't very good when compared to other systems of democracy in the world.
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Okay, you agree that our system of democracy (which is not a democracy) isn't as good as systems of democracy (which only pretend to be democracy) when comparied to others.

Please define your metric.
 
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Almo said:
Originally Posted by Bob Klase
The OP didn't ask for constructive criticism- it asked what we got. I think Cylinder provided an answer- what we get is better they got in Iran, Syria, Egypt, etc.
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It's clear what Cylinder meant from his statement though: "Don't bitch."
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It's clear what Cylinder meant from his statement: "Don't bitch... if you're in Iran, Syria, Egypt, etc". That's an obviously implied answer to what we get here- the righ to bitch.
 
Rob Lister said:
For the 100,000th time, we ARE NOT a democracy.

That's not political opinion -- that's fact.

Were we a democracy, Gore would have won in '00.

Geez.

You may think it a small point. That there is no difference. But Bush/gore '00 proved otherwise.
Click to expand...


Several months ago I began hearing "This is a republic and not a democracy" routine. This has all the earmarks of a Rush 'ditto-head campaign'. Was Rush your inspiration? It would help everyone if one of you who complain about this mistake would explain the difference in a manner that we could all comprehend why you find this to be important.
 
I don't know. People on the Internet tend to be pretty pedantic, and since the founding fathers very clearly did not want to create a government that was a democacy as the word meant in their days, so people with an originalist bent might have an additional motivation to point it out. As a result, I think it's quite possible that the meme developed organically, and did not need someone like Rush Limbaugh pushing it into action. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.

That said, saying "America isn't a democracy, it's a republic" has felt like saying "a thumb is not a finger." A THUMB IS A FINGER, and a democracy is "government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives."
 
coberst said:
Several months ago I began hearing "This is a republic and not a democracy" routine. This has all the earmarks of a Rush 'ditto-head campaign'. Was Rush your inspiration? It would help everyone if one of you who complain about this mistake would explain the difference in a manner that we could all comprehend why you find this to be important.
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You should have heard it in high school.

Why is it important?

Ask Al Gore.

Search the threads in this forum regarding the various ways to do away with the Electoral College.
 
coberst said:
Several months ago I began hearing "This is a republic and not a democracy" routine. This has all the earmarks of a Rush 'ditto-head campaign'. Was Rush your inspiration? It would help everyone if one of you who complain about this mistake would explain the difference in a manner that we could all comprehend why you find this to be important.
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It has had added saliency recently because of recent policy to promote democracy in majority muslim countries, where parties seeking to impose sharia (islamic law) tend to do well at the polls. To the extent that America wants to evangelize its form of government to other countries, America would do well to call its own government "liberal republic" rather than a democracy.
 
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