usa is not a democracy

 

The history of democracy as grasped by the Founders, drawn largely from the ancient world, revealed that overbearing majorities could all too easily lend themselves to mob rule, dominating minorities and trampling individual rights. In the 1790 census, taken shortly after the Constitution was ratified, America’s largest state, Virginia, was roughly 13 times larger than its smallest state, Delaware. 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. Alternatively, if “greatness” refers to country size, Canada clearly takes the cake, and if it refers to population size, India gets the top spot. But the Founding Fathers did not want the United States to be a direct democracy, which is how they understood Athenian democracy, to be a purely direct form of democracy. When founding thinkers such as James Madison spoke of democracy, they were usually referring to direct democracy, what Madison frequently labeled “pure” democracy. Another messed up consequence of this legal arrangement is that presidential or other political candidates can easily feel themselves indebted to the wealthy supporters who helped them get elected, and therefore have an incentive to adjust their policies according to the preferences of their benefactors. USA! Share. If this all sounds a lot like an oligarchic system, that’s only because that is exactly what the US system resembles, an oligarchy behind a democratic facade. But nowhere does the Constitution guarantee that as an absolute right. The Fourteenth recognized that all persons born in the U.S. were citizens of the country and entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizenship. A republic may be extended over a large region.” Both a democracy and a republic were popular forms of government: Each drew its legitimacy from the people and depended on rule by the people. The people we elect do not, for the most part, run the country in the interest of the people; they run it in the interest of themselves. Therefore I'm afraid the current congress will not be willing to change anything, and I don't have much faith in the Supreme Court either. I have heard this argument before, but I think it is based on a false dichotomy. Many Republicans are actively embracing this position with the insistence that we are, after all, a republic, not a democracy. In practice, this means that a very small, elite minority of rich guys can influence election campaigns and therefore election outcomes to a shockingly large extent. After all, Trump “won” the election, despite the fact that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, who got over 3 million (!) ‘America Is a Republic, Not a Democracy’ Is a Dangerous—And Wrong—Argument George Thomas 11/2/2020 Senate Republican says U.S. police reform proposal may be done in week or two If we don't do something about gerrymandering nothing else will improve. Some on the right are making the argument that the U.S. is not a democracy, but rather the republic. Za'atar Vasarnamis (author) from Netherlands on May 29, 2017: @John Welford Thank you for your comment. Gerrymandering can clearly lead to some messed up outcomes if you believe in proportionate representation. In 2020, Trump is the first candidate in American history to campaign for the presidency without making any effort to win the popular vote, appealing only to the people who will deliver him an Electoral College win. close. 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. Madison nevertheless sought to defend popular government—the rule of the many—rather than retreat to the rule of the few. Trump’s 2016 election actually marked the fifth (!) I am not an American citizen myself and I had not actually heard about the National Popular Vote Movement yet. That such a ridiculously undemocratic election outcome is possible in the US, has to do with the rather bizarre way in which American voters elect their representatives. But the centrality of states, a concession to political reality, was balanced by the House of Representatives, where the principle of representation by population prevailed, and which would make up the overwhelming number of electoral votes when selecting a president. I could go into detail here, but I don’t really want to, and believe me, you really don’t want me to, so in order to spare us both a torturously boring lecture, I will focus only on presidential elections in my explanation, while ignoring many peculiarities of the US electoral system. Matt Dorfman. Let me tell you why. 51,” the seminal papers, Madison argued that a large republic with a diversity of interests capped by the separation of powers and checks and balances would help provide the solution to the ills of popular government. Though it is commonly denied, the United States of America was established as a Republic and it remains so. 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. We’re not a “direct democracy,” but we are a “representative democracy.” This is where our history education might add some confusion. That can be accomplished through your state legislature if you put enough pressure on them to sign up for it. 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." USA! Madison made the distinction between a republic and a direct democracy exquisitely clear in “Federalist No. Winning candidates cannot secure their re-election in the way American candidates do, Surely the UK system is far healthier than the US one? I agree with so much of it without being happy that I do. 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. Sadly enough, it is very easy to find instances of US politicians implementing laws and practices that make it difficult or outright impossible for certain people to vote. It is not only the flaws of the electoral system that can open the door to the White House for presidential candidates who fail to win the popular vote, Gerrymandering certainly plays a part in that as well. According to Lincoln, extending meaningful citizenship so that “all should have an equal chance” was the basis on which the country could be “saved.” The expansion of we the people was behind the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments ratified in the wake of the Civil War. 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). How the United States lost the faith of its citizens—and what it can do to win them back. Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy. High-minded claims that we are not a democracy surreptitiously fuse republic with minority rule rather than popular government. 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. Therefore, the Monopoly men behind big corporations and wealthy interest groups (for they are mostly old, white men) can finance ad campaigns promoting their candidate of choice and/or criticizing certain rival candidates. No exaggerations, no stretches of the imagination - this country is at the precipice of its demise (if you lived here, you'd understand). I agree with you and I think that in order to improve the US system it is necessary to introduce reforms which will put independent commissioners in charge of determining the shape and size of electoral districts, similar to the UK system. This is by no means an exhaustive analysis, but rather a simple philosophical examination using Plato and Socrates who, among others, greatly influenced our … Consequently, Democratic lawmakers have been using Gerrymandering tactics in order to turn traditionally red (Republican) districts blue (Democrat), while Republican lawmakers have been trying to achieve the opposite. We want the human condition to flourish. Since the US political system is basically a two-party system with the Democratic Party pitted against the Republican Party, people holding public office in each party have a strong interest in redrawing the electoral maps to maximize the number of voting districts where their party has a good chance of winning. 10” and “Federalist No. FYI, if I was going to make up a word like that, I would have gone for something way cooler, like Jerry-Maguiring. Enabling sustained minority rule at the national level is not a feature of our constitutional design, but a perversion of it. This last condition certainly does not reflect the situation in the United States of America, where the almighty dollar reigns and money really is power, because corporations are people. In 2014, a Princeton study by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Who counts as a full and equal citizen—as part of we the people—has shrunk in the Republican vision. In fact, it is the best, most glorious democracy that ever was and ever will be. As Adam Serwer recently wrote in these pages, “Shelby County ushered in a new era of experimentation among Republican politicians in restricting the electorate, often along racial lines.” Republicans are eager to shrink the electorate. If you wish to fully appreciate this hogwash, please check out the table below which describes the results of a hypothetical presidential election where candidates A, B and C are running in two states; state Q, which contributes 50 EC members and state Z which is good for 30 of them. On a serious note.... America is seriously in trouble! In a representative democracy you would also expect all citizens to be able to elect their representatives – okay, maybe not exactly all of them, but let’s say at least all of the (more or less) sane adults among them. Accordingly, they came up with an interesting variant to democratic governance which is based on a kind of “reciprocity” between voters and their representatives. In the 2010 landmark law case “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission”, the US Supreme Court decided that, in accordance with the First Amendment, corporations (and other legal persons who aren’t actual persons, such as interest groups) have the right to spend unlimited amounts of money on political advertising for or against candidates for public office. Today, California is roughly 78 times larger than Wyoming. There is some truth to this insistence. It did so by embracing representation, the separation of powers, checks and balances, and the protection of individual rights—all concepts that were unknown in the ancient world where democracy had earned its poor reputation. They do so in at least two ways. In addition to being extremely dangerous, more democracy will only exacerbate its problems. But even if it does, the US will still not be a proper democracy in my book. I would recommend reading the following article which deals with this question and which I personally found quite insightful: http://bit.ly/ARepublic. Story by Yascha Mounk; March 2018 Issue. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. Yes, that is an actual word. The notion that citizens of the United States don’t actually live in a democracy has been picking up steam for decades, with scars from economic, social and political decay inflicting themselves ever more deeply into our psyches as the years move on. There are many in America, such as myself, who are well aware of how farcical the notion of "greatest democracy" is; and furthermore, aware of how significantly worse it's becoming. In the past all school children had some idea of this when they learned the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. Of course America is a full democracy. 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. Eric Zuesse, originally posted at The Saker. American constitutional design can best be understood as an effort to establish a sober form of democracy. Arguing against statehood for the District of Columbia, which has 200,000 more people than the state of Wyoming, Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas said Wyoming is entitled to representation because it is “a well-rounded working-class state.” It is also overwhelmingly white. Democracy was also susceptible to demagogues—men of “factious tempers” and “sinister designs,” as Madison put it in “Federalist No. [George Packer: Republicans are suddenly afraid of democracy]. The Constitution was meant to foster a complex form of majority rule, not enable minority rule. The large republic with a diversity of interests makes this unlikely, particularly when its separation of powers works to filter and tame such passions by incentivizing the development of complex democratic majorities: “In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties, and sects which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place on any other principles than those of justice and the general good.” Madison had previewed this argument at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 using the term democracy, arguing that a diversity of interests was “the only defense against the inconveniences of democracy consistent with the democratic form of government.”, [Jeffrey Rosen: America is living James Madison’s nightmare]. 10”—who relied on “vicious arts” to betray the interests of the people. The United States is not a direct democracy, in the sense of a country in which laws (and other government decisions) are made predominantly by majority vote. We are going to have to challenge and fight through the courts to get congress to change the rules they benefit from, I'm afraid. Which is quite embarrassing for myself, considering how recently you all have gotten a glimpse into the American psyche via our - let's say - "troubled" ambassador (whom amazingly still has a job). Yes, the United States is a democracy, since we, the people, hold the ultimate political power. While it may be difficult for people, especially political scientists, to agree on the exact set of conditions which must be fulfilled in a given country so that it qualifies as a “representative democracy”, most people would probably agree that the country should be governed by representatives of the people, in the sense that people elect representatives among themselves by some kind of principle of majority voting (the candidate that gets a majority of all votes wins) or at least plurality voting (whoever gets more votes than any other candidate wins). Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. As Madison argued in “Federalist No. Photograph by Stefani Reynolds / Pool / Shutterstock 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. The point is not that the US system always produces (highly) disproportionate results, but that it can, and it has. It misses, too, how we understand the idea of democracy today. That said, issues you mention, such as gerrymandering, are not problems exclusive to America, but are widespread among nations large and small. Lee claimed US ‘is not a democracy’ during Wednesday debate Mike Lee wrote: ‘Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. Furthermore, you would think that those representatives simply serve the people for a limited term before handing their power back to the people so that (more or less) all of them can once again decide which representatives they wish to serve them for a limited term. Pieces of global opinion. Microsoft and partners may be compensated if you purchase something through recommended links in this article. For one thing, the US doesn’t even get close to being the “greatest democracy” in comparative rankings of democracies like The Economist’s Democracy Index (21st in 2016) and Freedom House’s Freedom in the World (45th in 2017). © 2021 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. Before I go on, I want to emphasize that none of my claims have anything to do with the way in which the strongman-shenanigans of Donald J. Trump currently seem to be gradually turning the US government into a kind of colossal, warmongering family enterprise. 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. The United States of America is not, in fact, a true democracy. Sadly, we have seen those warnings ignored. 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. 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. Enjoy your beautiful country - I covet the notion; because, see, over here, it's NOT the Netherlands, you don't have to answer questions... Peace. This is in stark contrast to the US system, under which B would actually be the winner with 50 EC members, almost double the amount of runner-up C, while A would be left empty-handed. Yet while dependent on the people, the Constitution did not embrace simple majoritarian democracy. Equally fascinated and disturbed by how we choose to live. 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. Progress has been slow—and sometimes halted, as is evident from current efforts to limit voting rights—and the country has struggled to become the democratic republic first set in motion two centuries ago. Published 17 April 2014. States controlled by Republicans, such as Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, have also closed polling places, making voters in predominantly minority communities stand in line for hours to cast their ballot. The Fifteenth secured the vote for Black men. Similarly, in the Electoral College, small states get a disproportionate say on who becomes president. According to the court, such political activities would fall under the freedom of speech corporations enjoy – they are people after all, right? Like us on Facebook to see similar stories, US travel restrictions state by state during Covid-19, Australia to Boost Childcare Subsidies in Women-Friendly Budget. I do so for at least three reasons, which I discuss below. Behauptung: The United States of America is a type of Democracy (not a pure direct democracy, as is the classical meaning of the term, but a mixed-Republic many democratic elements and a democratic spirit). In 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder, the Court struck down a section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that allowed the federal government to preempt changes in voting regulations from states with a history of racial discrimination. This sort of disparity has deeply shaped the Senate, which gives a minority of the population a disproportionate influence on national policy choices. It is not a Democracy, but today could be called a democratic Republic, which has a curious definition suiting the purposes of some. image copyright Thinkstock. time that a winning US presidential candidate lost the popular vote. Hahaha, hilarious. 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. As a result we get genuinely marginal electoral districts that can determine who wins and loses general elections. Hopefully, that Tweet-fueled train wreck of an administration will burn out before long. Loving, with a population of 169, has one drop-off location; Harris, with a population of 4.7 million (majority nonwhite), also has one drop-off location. For example, the Republic Party is facing Demographic trends that might prevent it from ever winning the presidency again if the system is changed so that future presidents will be elected by popular vote rather than the EC. Meanwhile, many of us just have to deal with the embarrassment caused by idiotic statements about how we are "the best". Many US citizens like to pride themselves on living in what they consider to be the “greatest democracy in the world.” To the rest of the world, this is obviously a nonsensical claim, on many levels. Also, I recommend you to watch some episodes from the 2011 season of Stephen Colbert’s old show, the Colbert Report.