Oh, for goodness' sake. "Democracy", loosely, means "free nation". In that sense the USA is a democracy. "Democracy", strictly, means "nation with a particular type of government structure", which the USA is not. We're having a discussion about the "correct" use of a word. Much ado about nothing.
-
Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more
The United States is Not A Democracy
- Thread starter Bill Thompson
- Start date
-
- Tags
- democracy
Wrong on both counts, I'm afraid. Democracy does not mean "free nation," it means "rule by the people." (The theory, of course, is that rule by the people will result in greater freedom, hence the desire to spread "democracy," but that is not necessarily the case.)
The United States is both de facto and de jure a democracy (what are the first six words of the Constitution again?); we are in particular a representative democracy as opposed to a direct democracy -- but still a democracy.
Darth Rotor
Salted Sith Cynic
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2006
- Messages
- 38,527
try again.
eehh.....wrong.
cwalner
Philosopher
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2008
- Messages
- 6,104
The first seven are "We the People of the United States"
I was thinking 'When in the Course of Human Events' for the first seven, but then realized I was thinking of a different founding document. (Hey, I like Jefferson's writing style)
Um, you already said that, and you were wrong the first time too. We already went over this. Did you ignore posts 60, 62, 63 & 65?
Darth Rotor
Salted Sith Cynic
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2006
- Messages
- 38,527
He had a way with words:
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
An overused quote, but a recognition in practical terms of how hard it is to stay free. It sometimes seems that there is always someone, somewhere, who wants dominion over you.
DR
cwalner
Philosopher
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2008
- Messages
- 6,104
For me
"We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal. That they are endowed by thier creator with certain unalienable rights. That among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
Is just plain amazing. A clear, concise expression of what the core values of his new nation is. An expression, that while not completely timeless, has held its value quite well for over 200 years. In those 200 years, I have not found a better answer provided to the question "What does it mean to you to be an American?"
Bill Thompson
Banned
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2006
- Messages
- 6,171
W lost the popular vote to Gore. THe electoral college was tied. The supreme court appointed W as president. The USA is not a democracy.
Bill Thompson
Banned
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2006
- Messages
- 6,171
And who appointed the Supreme Court justices? And who voted for the people who appointed the Supreme Court justices? There you go.
Are you arguing that the United States was intended to be a democracy but that our democracy fails from time to time (bush v gore) or do you think that it was never intended to function as a democracy?
By what measure?
By what measure?
Last edited:
Upchurch
Papa Funkosophy
Maybe you missed my question from earlier: Who elects Congress?
Aside from the fact that the electoral college was not tied,.... this is still counterfactual gibberish.
Wrong.
Neither Bush nor Gore had sufficient electoral votes to win the presidency without Florida.
Florida had been certified to Bush, but was undergoing a recount. The Supreme Court ruled that recount, and any other recount by Florida of those votes, to be unconsitutional.
As for the popular vote: We don't know how the popular vote went, because the popular vote was not counted with sufficient accuracy to tell. It's assumed that Gore won, but of course since the popular vote doesn't determine the President we weren't looking for an accurate count of that anyway.
Upchurch
Papa Funkosophy
Actually, I think we do. The official numbers give Gore the nod by about 500,000 votes. The relative handful of votes in question in Florida wouldn't have amounted to enough to shift that.
Bill Thompson
Banned
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2006
- Messages
- 6,171
OK. Thanks for the clarification. Even so -- meaning, even with this account of events -- I have to say to those who think the USA is a democracy that they are wrong. A democracy would have waited for the popular vote and/or a democracy would have waited for the electorial vote. A democracy would not accept the input of the supreme court -- in this circumstance -- whose members are hand picked by the president for all practical purposes.
We get a very, very rough estimate of the popular vote from each state. For example, most jurisdictions don't even count absentee votes at all unless the election is close enough for the absentee votes to matter.
Because of the way we elect the President, this inaccuracy is normally entirely irrelevant. But trying to patch together a popular vote tabulation from a set of more than 50 statistics, none of which requires any individual accuracy, results in a figure that is nowhere near accurate to give a final result with certainty.
For this reason, it makes sense to be skeptical of any numerical claim about an election (e.g., "95% of blacks voted for Obama") that isn't required for the purpose that the election was conducted. How do you conclude that one Presidential candidate or another actually received the most popular votes, when many votes aren't included in each tally and the tally itself doesn't need to be accurate?