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The moment the "House of Representative" changed from representing the people to representing just a few we should have realized our Democracy is changing to an

• rosser 13y ago
  The US is not a "Democracy", and never has been. It's a Republic. You conflate those two things at your peril.
  • arjie 13y ago
    A curious distinction. To me it appears as if the US is a constitutional democratic republic and an indirect democracy. The two terms are not in opposition.
    • rosser 13y ago
      The point of making the distinction is to emphasize where the power actually lies.
      • alexqgb 13y ago
        There is no "the power" in a system of divided government. That's the whole point of a system of divided government. Power is distributed. The people have some, their representatives have some, the judiciary has some, the executive has some, the press has some, etc. Ideally, the distribution is designed in a way that maintains a stable set of checks and balances between the various centers. More to the point, "Democracy" has a fairly broad meaning, and encompasses a range of systems and traditions. You'd have to be exceedingly pedantic to insist that using it to describe any form aside from a pure, direct democracy is a misuse of language.
      • baddox 13y ago
        Anyone can argue all day over the semantics of "where the power actually lies." I would say that it lies in the hands of people who frequently use physical weapons to harm and threaten to harm others, which for the most part is government.
    • jetti 13y ago
      The CIA World Factbook[1] calls it a "constitution-based federal republic" but also adds that it has "strong democratic tradition". [1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
  • mtgx 13y ago
    Which "democracy" isn't a republic? I don't think any country actually has direct/pure democracy. They are all republics and have representatives and Parliaments. That being said, US could use a whole lot more "democracy" into its system. I don't think the delegate system works very well. Gerrymandering has also been abused for decades.
    • rosser 13y ago
      And that's exactly why it's important to make the distinction. Calling the US a "Democracy" suggests the power lies with the people. It doesn't.
      • mindcrime 13y ago
        Calling the US a "Democracy" suggests the power lies with the people. It doesn't. It's supposed to, and if it doesn't, that only tells us that things have gone very wrong. But you don't have to have direct democracy (as opposed to representative democracy) to adhere to the idea that the ultimate political power rests in the hands of the people.
        • CapitalistCartr 13y ago
          Supposed to, according to whom? In the original constitution, members of the Senate were chosen by State legislatures; the president was chosen by the members of the Electoral College who were not simply tokens, but really had the choice. The vote was restricted to white male landowners. Most importantly, the point of having a constitutional republic is the constitution protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority.
      • baddox 13y ago
        Actually, calling the US a republic suggests the power lies with the people. That's what "republic" means, and is why the last six letters of the word are "public."
        • marshray 13y ago
  • pvnick 13y ago
    Well if you're going to be pedantic than so am I. The US is a "representative democracy" in that we collectively vote on those people who make decisions, the idea being that average citizen is a better judge of character than of policy. So yeah, still technically a democracy, just not a direct democracy.
    • rosser 13y ago
      It's not pedantry. Calling this country a "Democracy" suggests that the citizenry has the power. We don't.
      • sopooneo 13y ago
        Will you challenge us to find quotes from major figures of American history referring to the nation as a democracy?
        • rosser 13y ago
          It wouldn't do very well for American politicians to point out the power imbalance that happens to be in their favor...
    • trippy_biscuits 13y ago
      We said the following in grade school on a daily basis, long ago. "I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Finding democracy is an exercise left to the reader.
  • chris_j 13y ago
    Would you mind precisely defining what you mean by "republic"? Growing up in the UK, I was taught that a republic is a country with a non-hereditary head of state. Under that definition, the USA would be a republic, as would China and Russia, whereas countries like the UK, Spain and Thailand would not. However, it sounds like it has a subtly different meaning in this and other online discussions and I'd be very grateful for help in understanding that meaning.
    • sirclueless 13y ago
      A republic is usually defined in positive terms: any government that is determined somehow by the public. That's basically equivalent to your definition that it is any government that is not private property to be handed down by heredity. Some people use the term "republic" to imply "merely a republic" in the sense that the country in question is not a direct democracy. I am not sure whether this betrays that they think of government as having one dimension of variety from hereditary monarchs to direct democracy, whether they think that republics and democracies are incompatible forms of government, or whether they realize that democracy is merely one form of a republic and choose to simplify for effect when they say things like "The USA is not a democracy, it is a republic." As usual, wikipedia is pretty good on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic
  • mindcrime 13y ago
    It's loose use of language, but given that we are a democratically elected representative republic, which has Enlightenment ideals baked right into the founding documents, I think using "Democracy" to refer to the US is "correct enough" in most contexts. Certainly we aspire, at least nominally, to "liberal, democratic ideals" where "liberal" refers to the "classical liberal" mindset, not what passes for liberalism today.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • staunch 13y ago
    I think the single biggest thing technologists could do is try to turn the US into a direct democracy. It's probably the only way out of the downward spiral we've found ourselves in.
    • tbrownaw 13y ago
      Because direct democracy has worked so unbelievably well in the past, yes?
      • staunch 13y ago
        No one has ever had the ability to do it like we could now.
        • tbrownaw 13y ago
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City-state#Historical_examples_of_city-states http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City-state#Historical_examples_...
      • epsylon 13y ago
        It's a moot argument since we do not live in the past. The context has changed, technology has advanced, and we don't have to replicate strictly identically the structures of the past.
    • dragonsky 13y ago
      And have the majority voting for what ever is pushed on Fox news? Direct democracy can only ever work when a significant majority of the population is well educated and engaged in the process of government. Anything else and they will vote for what every makes their immediate lives more palatable. It is very rare for somebody to make a decision that will make life more difficult in the short term in anticipation of the greater good in the long term. The whole point of representative democracy is that our representatives are supposed to be wiser than the majority of the public, and therefore be able to make the difficult decisions on behalf of the people, whilst understanding that the people themselves may not, due to self interest, be able to make those decisions themselves. Even in Ancient Greece, the bastion of all things democratic, only a very small part of the population were able to vote. You had to be a landholder with a fair amount of money. Sound familiar? I would love to live in a world where individuals were able to take the long view and vote based on the greater good. Unfortunately we are a long way from that. What we have, whilst suffering form increasing influence from well funded interests, is the best that the world has seen.
  • w_t_payne 13y ago
    Democracy is not an either/or label; it is a term that encompasses a range of different systems and cultures. For example, the US system is definitely more "democratic" than the Iranian system, although they both involve voting. Conversely, the Swiss system is arguably more democratic than either the US or Iran. However, it is worth noting that attempting to rank systems by quantity-of-democracy-nature stops being useful pretty quickly, and it becomes helpful to introduce other terms/variables/factors/axes along which to measure and evaluate political systems. Equally, once certain baselines are met, the exact mechanics of the system quickly stop being as important as less tangible factors such as civil society mechanisms and cultural biases:- Particularly the professional culture of the legislature:- Ability of legislators to set aside party politics to work in the national interest; To preserve the integrity of the political system from corruption, and maintain the ability to make decisions without bias in the face of attempts to lobby and influence behaviour.
  • shadowfox 13y ago
    Maybe I don't completely understand the distinction. Care to elaborate?
• protomyth 13y ago
  I would contend[1] that the biggest problem is actually the Senate's not directly representing the states. This has caused quite a bit of foolishness from the Senate (particularly for regulation implementation). The House is more a problem of districting psychosis. I don't think the House was ever really that pure[2]. 1) I'll skip the whole republic / democracy argument until there is an actual democracy in the world. 2) read some stuff from the early 1800's, some Representatives didn't have a good opinion of those they represented
  • jrs235 13y ago
    Which is why we need to repeal the 17th amendment.
    • tg3 13y ago
      I disagree. Having one of the most powerful legislative bodies elected by the state governments further concentrates power in the hands of a few. The 17th amendment made this country more democratic, not less, and it hasn't hade too many ill effects on the Senate itself.
      • protomyth 13y ago
        The 17th amendment lessened the power of the state and allowed for the current regulatory environment. We have Senators who have no caring or knowledge of what their actions do to the states. It broke the balance of our government. It didn't make the US more democratic, it increased the power of the two parties in Washington DC and allowed for them ignoring their local feelings. It concentrated power wonderfully.