Quick: Name a "Democracy"

[NYcarbineer]

This might better explain to all but the most ineducable why we are in fact a democracy:

Direct & Representative Democracy, PS201H-2E2

Excerpt:

6. Direct Democracy and Representative Democracy Contrasted:

Direct democracy is characterized by direct participation of the general citizenry in governmental decisionmaking on matters of public policy. Representative democracy, on the other hand, operates on the principle of popular control over--rather than popular participation in--the public-policy decisionmaking carried on by government.

Direct democracy operates on the principle of direct legislation--direct exercise of legislative authority by the general adult populace comprising the political community. Laws are enacted either by a mass assembly consisting of the adult citizenry as a whole or by the voters voting in an election--a plebiscite, or referendum.

Systems of representative democracy are based on the principle of political representa- tion--exercise of legislative authority by a representative assembly elected by the voters. Representative democracy is characterized by the existence and operation of representative policy decisionmaking institutions consisting of public officeholders popularly elected, at relatively short intervals, on a broad electoral franchise.

In brief, governing authority in a representative democracy is not exercised directly by the whole body of adult citizens, as is the case in a direct democracy. In a representative democracy of the pure-type, where there are no concessions to direct democracy, statutory laws are made neither by plebiscite nor by a mass legislative assembly of the general populace. Instead, the general voting populace elects a smaller body of representatives who constitute the legislature and make laws for and in the name of the entire community.

 

[editec]

It's a SHAMocracy at best.

 

[peach174]

In the 18th century democracy was a bad thing.

But today, in the 21st century, democracy is what protects us from Hitler and Stalin.

No it doesn't.
We have a whole bunch of Liberals - aka Progressives, in our government, who use some of the principals of the political ideology of Hitler and Stalin. Like Collectivism, government assistance programs, unions for government workers, redistribution of wealth.
What held the complete government control over the American people was our Constitutional laws.
Today you are seeing it completely ignored by our government. This administration is violating our civil rights of our bill of rights.

The word Democracy was never used to describe our system of Government.
Right after the Civil War the Democrats started using the words, that we are a Democracy.
It really caught on and was being used throughout the 20th century and still continues to today.
Why?
Because the Progressives in both parties wanted more power for our Government, rather than the limits, that our Constitution could grant to them at the Federal level. Our Feds were scared of the increasing power of the people, thus the birth of Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive party was started and has continued with both Parties.
They slowly started taking away the rights granted to the States and made it into the power of the Federal Government.
They have been slowly turning us into a Social Democracy rather than the Republic that we are suppose to be, for the last 100 years.
This is why so many think that we are a Democracy and not a Constitutional Republic.
They have not been taught about it, for such a long time, as to what the difference is between a Constitutional Republic and a Democracy.

A Constitutional Republic limits the power of the Federal government and gives the respective power to the States, by the people of each State, with limitations on both Federal and States by our bill of Rights.
We are going completely opposite of what our Republic is suppose to be.

 

[legaleagle_45]

According to the US Government, the US Government is:

Constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition

 

[PoliticalChic]

According to the US Government, the US Government is:

Constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition

The devil is in the details....

Which constitution is it?


1. “Theodore Lowi, a political science eminence at Cornell University, years ago drew a bead on what was wrong with the American polity. In his The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States, he claimed that the Founder's constitution of 1787 had been surreptitiously replaced with a new one by the FDR administration, and no one had actually noticed it for seventy-plus years. In current argot, we have been operating under US Constitution, 2.0 since the Roosevelt era. The contours of the constitution of this "Second Republic" as he deemed it, bears some scrutiny, as the Obama Administration and the 112th Congress go to work bringing even more change--possibly US Constitution 3.0. The preamble and first article of the actual constitution we have been living under, which Lowi acutely discerned, suffice to show where an Obama constitution will be taking off from. Archived-Articles: America's Third Republic?
.
___________________________________________________________
2. Though the Constitution of the Second Republic is unwritten, here is Lowi's "sketch" of its essential outlines
PREAMBLE. There ought to be a national presence in every aspect of the lives of American citizens. National power is no longer a necessary evil; it is a positive virtue.

Article I. It is the primary purpose of this national government to provide domestic tranquility by reducing risk. This risk may be physical or it may be fiscal. In order to fulfill this sacred obligation, the national government shall be deemed to have sufficient power to eliminate threats from the environment through regulation, and to eliminate threats from economic uncertainty through insurance.

Principalities And Powers: Goodbye Liberalism: Hello Socialism

 

[peach174]

According to the US Government, the US Government is:

Constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition

Of course our government would say that.
They are using the party's name affiliation and associating that with our right to vote.
A strong democratic tradition can be surmised to mean that a nation or other entity has consistently enforced the ability of it's citizens or representatives to vote.

Party names like the Federalist Party, Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party, the Whigs which became the Republicans and has become today as the Republican and Democrats has nothing to do with what our Federal Government suppose to be, which is a Constitutional Republic, not a Democracy.

Adding the words - strong democratic tradition completely ignores and helps to confuse the type of Federal Republic Government that is limited by the Constitution.

 

[numan]

In the 18th century democracy was a bad thing.

But today, in the 21st century, democracy is what protects us from Hitler and Stalin.

But it does not protect us from George W. Bush or Obama.

.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Jefferson believed there should be a constitutional convention every generation; he thought it preposterous that anyone would cling religiously to doctrines set down far in the past.

As he put it:

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment....

but to that Jefferson said

...We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

Letter to Samuel Kercheval (1816)

 

[peach174]

To Continue with the Social Democracy we have now is going to bankrupt this country just like Detroit.
It is also one of many reasons that our Founders did not want us to be a Democracy, because they knew that they always fail at some point in time.

 

[NYcarbineer]

According to the US Government, the US Government is:

Constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition

Of course our government would say that.
They are using the party's name affiliation and associating that with our right to vote.
A strong democratic tradition can be surmised to mean that a nation or other entity has consistently enforced the ability of it's citizens or representatives to vote.

Party names like the Federalist Party, Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party, the Whigs which became the Republicans and has become today as the Republican and Democrats has nothing to do with what our Federal Government suppose to be, which is a Constitutional Republic, not a Democracy.

Adding the words - strong democratic tradition completely ignores and helps to confuse the type of Federal Republic Government that is limited by the Constitution.

lol, this would be one of the ineducable posters I referred to earlier.