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If surveilance threathens your choice, then it's a threat to the democracy, but then US has never been a real democracy, but a representative one. As such it's
by malkia 13y ago
If surveilance threathens your choice, then it's a threat to the democracy, but then US has never been a real democracy, but a representative one. As such it's congresmen and senators that might be threatened by it since the do our real voting for us.
- alexqgb 13y agoUh, thanks, but intelligent, educated people who are attentive to civic life (e.g. a significant portion of the HN readership) don't need to have the difference between a pure democracy and a representative one spelled out in detail each and every time the word "democracy" comes up in conversation.
- slg 13y agoI think it is important in this instance because that is the real heart of the problem. The US government is increasingly making decisions that go against public opinion. Something like PRISM would have a much higher chance of getting through Congress than being approved by national referendum. It seems like at some point the US government has gone from ruling on behalf of the people to simply ruling the people.
- malkia 13y agoI agree with you, but I've recently (few years ago) learned about the difference. I was born in Bulgaria, and I thought we were democratic back then when communism was "all good" :) (lol, how wrong was I).
- gnaritas 13y ago> but then US has never been a real democracy, but a representative one. A representative democracy is a real democracy; it's just not a direct democracy. Please stop this nonsense of thinking that only direct democracies count as democracies.
- alan_cx 13y agoI think only direct democracy is a real democracy. No need for "direct", just "democracy" will do. The fact that so call democratic countries need a modifier before the word "democracy" tells you that it is not real, as such. A representative democracy is really a practical alternative to a real democracy which would have been hard to implement. That doesn't make it real though. Its just the practical best one can do, probably. That abstraction layer of representatives, who get a free reign, gets in the way, rendering it no longer a real democracy.
- gnaritas 13y agoIt doesn't matter what you think, words aren't defined by personal opinion but by common usage. They are used to communicate, and what you want to call a real democracy everyone else calls a direct democracy. So if your intention is to communicate effectively, don't use your own definitions for words because you like it better because it'll just continually ensure you're misunderstood. Direct democracies are not the only real democracies and it makes you look foolish and uneducated to insist it so.