Hahaha, hilarious. And whatever the complexities of American constitutional design, Lincoln insisted, “the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible.” Indeed, Lincoln offered a definition of popular government that can guide our understanding of a democracy—or a republic—today: “A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and limitations, and always changing easily, with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.”. Due to a long-standing American tradition of “corporate personhood”, corporations are to a very significant extent recognized as legal “persons” in the US. Not just as legal entities, but as persons who enjoy certain rights and freedom under the US constitution, including freedom of speech and religion, just like flesh-and-blood-human-being kind of persons. Za'atar Vasarnamis (author) from Netherlands on May 29, 2017: @John Welford Thank you for your comment. It is not a coincidence that these regulations have in practice mainly discouraged voting among certain minorities, elderly people and poor people, all of whom tended to vote for the Democratic Party. Today, California is roughly 78 times larger than Wyoming. So the next time an American president takes the stage at the United Nations to brag about his/her magnificent "democracy" while bashing all the evil authoritarian states out there, the representative of all actual, full democracies should just tell the POTUS to pipe down and leave all that boasting about “democracy” to the experts. I would recommend reading the following article which deals with this question and which I personally found quite insightful: http://bit.ly/ARepublic. The United States was not the only country to be downgraded by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which titled its report “Revenge of the ‘deplorables.’” 72 countries had a lower democracy score in 2016 than in 2015, compared to just 38 that improved upon their ratings. Share. Madison nevertheless sought to defend popular government—the rule of the many—rather than retreat to the rule of the few. The greatest shortcoming of the American experiment was its limited vision of the people, which excluded Black people, women, and others from meaningful citizenship, diminishing popular government’s cause. Similarly, the 52 Republican senators who voted to confirm Barrett represented 17 million fewer people than the 48 senators who voted against her. If the polls are any indication, more Americans may vote for Vice President Biden than have ever voted for a presidential candidate, and he could still lose the presidency. In the past all school children had some idea of this when they learned the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. Meanwhile, many of us just have to deal with the embarrassment caused by idiotic statements about how we are "the best". It is not a Democracy, but today could be called a democratic Republic, which has a curious definition suiting the purposes of some. American constitutional design can best be understood as an effort to establish a sober form of democracy. The images below are a visualization of the undeniably undemocratic impact Gerrymandering can have in a hypothetical area which is to be divided up into five voting districts and which encompasses 15 predominantly Democratic neighborhoods and 10 mainly Republican ones. It is no wonder then that in the US, voter turnout tends to be way lower than in many established democracies, with only about 55.7% of eligible voters casting their vote in 2016. EC members are elected on a state-by-state basis in such a manner that, generally speaking, the candidate who gets more votes than any other candidate in a certain state, wins all the EC members for that state, rather than the candidate’s fair share based on the vote share in her or his state. If President Trump is reelected, it will almost certainly be because he once again prevailed in the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. But the problem is of course that such reforms would have to be implemented by US lawmakers, who have no interest in limiting their own power... John Welford from Barlestone, Leicestershire on May 29, 2017: In the UK the shape of constituencies is judged by independent commissioners whose criteria have nothing to do with political advantage. The United States of America is not, in fact, a true democracy. Gerrymandering involves basically two strategies for repainting the electoral map, namely cracking and packing. Indeed, if the United States is not a democracy today, it is in large part due to the fact that it never was one. I have heard this argument before, but I think it is based on a false dichotomy. The precise distinction of the United States as a representative republic rather a democracy is vital to individual freedom because it prevents "tyranny of the masses." Share page. I agree with so much of it without being happy that I do. They have also dispensed with the notion of building democratic majorities to govern, making no effort on health care, immigration, or a crucial second round of economic relief in the face of COVID-19. The United States isn’t a democracy — and was never intended to be. Dependent on a minority of the population to hold national power, Republicans such as Senator Mike Lee of Utah have taken to reminding the public that “we’re not a democracy.” It is quaint that so many Republicans, embracing a president who routinely tramples constitutional norms, have suddenly found their voice in pointing out that, formally, the country is a republic. We get to the bottom of what is true. Democracy was also susceptible to demagogues—men of “factious tempers” and “sinister designs,” as Madison put it in “Federalist No. On a serious note.... America is seriously in trouble! If you think that is ludicrous, you are judging too soon, for the reality is way beyond ludicrous, it’s downright idiotic. Again, I am not making these words up. The Senate Judiciary Committee vote to approve Barrett also illuminates the disparity in popular representation: The 12 Republican senators who voted to approve of Barrett’s nomination represented 9 million fewer people than the 10 Democratic senators who chose not to vote. Today, we elect people to run the government for us. Americans believe they have a right to vote for all elected officials who represent them, including the president. Consider that President Abraham Lincoln, facing a civil war, which he termed the great test of popular government, used constitutional republic and democracy synonymously, eloquently casting the American experiment as government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Subsequent to 1988, the Republican presidential candidate has prevailed in the Electoral College in three out of seven elections, but won the popular vote only once (2004). Thank you Za'atar for this synopsis of "American Democracy". But more specifically, because during that season, Colbert exposed how laughably easy it was for him to legally start his own Super Pac to receive unlimited financial donations and subsequently run for public office after putting his friend and business partner Jon Stewart in charge of the Super PAC. Black people were largely excluded from the terms of citizenship, and slavery was a reality, even when frowned upon, that existed alongside an insistence on self-government. Trump’s 2016 election actually marked the fifth (!) Before we further shred the Constitution, let’s take a step back and examine why the United States is a republic and not a democracy. Wait… did you say legally? However, as the world witnessed with the bizarre 2016 election of one Donald J. Trump, the US electoral system does not actually meet this elementary condition. 14”: “In a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. Cracking means thinly spreading out voting strongholds of one party over as many districts as possible, in order to prevent that party from having the upper hand in any of those districts, whereas packing means cramming together as many voting strongholds of one party into one and the same district, in order to prevent that party from dominating any other districts. I am not an American citizen myself and I had not actually heard about the National Popular Vote Movement yet. At the same time, it has also sought to find the right republican constraints on the evolving body of citizens, so that majority rule—but not factious tempers—can prevail. Sure, except that in reality this has turned elections into corporate mud-slinging ****shows, because corporations and wealthy interest groups have begun campaigning for their preferred candidates through virtually unregulated political donation piggybanks, known as Super PACs. If you want to learn even more about Gerrymandering, please check out John Oliver’s take on this outrageous practice. We should see this as a constitutional failure demanding constitutional reform. – if they simply make sure not to directly coordinate their political communications with any of the candidates in question. The founding generation was deeply skeptical of what it called “pure” democracy and defended the American experiment as “wholly republican.” To take this as a rejection of democracy misses how the idea of government by the people, including both a democracy and a republic, was understood when the Constitution was drafted and ratified. The Republican governor of Texas, in the midst of a pandemic when more people are voting by mail, limited the number of drop-off locations for absentee ballots to one per county. According to the court, such political activities would fall under the freedom of speech corporations enjoy – they are people after all, right? For America, it was a lethal assault on democracy.” This is why today the Guardian is launching The Fight to Vote, a yearlong investigation of the American democratic process and its failures. For while these are all interesting points, they still imply that the US is at least a proper democracy and I respectfully disagree with that statement. Here is one key reason why the United States is not a true democracy: The right to vote is constitutionally limited and has always been challenged. You would think … Politics. Money does mean power, and power corrupts, but by reading the Founders writings you will find that they discussed many warnings for the future citizens of the USA.
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