Yes. America is a democracy
Don’t trip up as you walk in here: there’s two related arguments.
We hear the argument from some people that America is not a democracy because the Constitution doesn’t include the word “democracy.” That’s idiotic. It’s like saying a horse is not a horse because it doesn’t walk around with the word HORSE written on it.
This nation is a functioning democracy because it contains the mechanics. The Constitution says the people own the place. And the people run it. Except that since there’s acres of people, it’s a two-step process: we vote for representatives, they carry our wishes to the big decision-making buildings in DC, if we don’t like what they do, we vote them out. That happens.
Next. If you voted last time, you acknowledged that process. You used it. You use the democratic machinery, you have to admit it’s a democracy. Like if you use an elevator, and you say, “this is not an elevator,” then we’ll have to find a new notch on the IQ scale just for you.
Yes, this is a democracy, and the way it works, all the mechanics of it,
the representative workings the system is specified in the Constitution, so if you can read all that and still say America is not democracy, you’re no friend of reason.
But people do that. They insist it’s not a democracy, that it’s a republic. Do they realize what an insult that is, because if America is just a republic it gets classified with the likes of The People’s Republic of China, or Zimbabwe — which are republics only for the sole definition: they don’t have royalty running the country. We’re not like those. Also, we choose not to be run by the military. Not to be run by a church (well, except Utah). Not to be run by the ultra-rich who nobody voted for. Not by technical specialists who nobody voted for – because all of that is unconstitutional. And we cannot have no government because that is anarchy (although we have Libertarians, who are like anarchists with cars).
So if you have ever voted, don’t say this is not a democracy, that’s like riding a bicycle and saying, this is not a bicycle.
Listen, if you’re conservative, last eight years, you voted for Bush. Twice. Remember him – the one with the smirk on his face on television while he talked about killings? We all watched that smirk thinking: somebody put the right string on the wrong yo-yo. But you remember what he said? Said he was bringing democracy to 
foreign countries. Now. Would he say that, if America itself wasn’t a democracy? Obviously not. So the man you voted for, Mr. Bush, believed in democracy here.
And you voted.
Next. The second related argument is a bit different. It says: America may be a democracy, but it should not be. At first when you hear that, you think, that idea is off the short bus.
We’re not done. No, as unAmerican as it is, that’s an argument you
hear. The argument says that American is worse because it is a democracy. They say, beware mob rule, saying he nation would do better is it was run by an elite, who got up there by survival of the fittest.
That is not from the Constitution. Because the framers of the Constitution believed in the greatest good for the greatest number. It’s an argument from Social Darwinism, and it says life is a struggle and physical survivors are the leaders we want for this nation. It’s an argument that says, it doesn’t matter what method the fit survive, they are still the best. The argument never did made any sense, it’s a bitchy, saturnine point of view that competition is brutish, the idea that strength is more important that goodness.
Wrong. The fittest members of society are not the best. They are only the strongest. So, you want the nation should be run by weightlifters?
But these people keep running their argument ‘America should not be a democracy.’ Some survivalist ideology so scrappy it almost looks like dragged through a Tijuana animal shelter. You read their websites, your computer starts blinking red. – In some ways, however, if they do read blogs and spray their vapid opinion around, they are at least stirring the information part of democracy.
Then they tell you it’s not a democracy.
These are people who tell you America is not a democracy, and then they’re first in line at the polling booth. Who does that? They followed the candidates, talked up the one they like, trashed the one they didn’t like, voted and then: it’s not a democracy.
Gears jammed.
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Keeping the pilot light on
Since the late 1970s and Ronald Reagan’s inauguration we’ve seen supply side economics, deregulation, an explosive growth of free markets, the sapping of union power.
The Left’s objective is still vague. Liberalism gets its spirit from equity, justice, and collective action. That spirit is all but broken, witness the precipitous inequalities in America, witness the virtual disappearance from our language of terms like “the common good,” witness unions at their all-time low memberships, witness the Supreme Court retreating from enforcement of anti-trust laws.
During the Bush administration, the Left’s tolerance melted into passivity. Energetic leftists of the 1960s, once in the media spotlight, grew wealthy and cautious.
Not just that. Any spirit on the left was also broken down into fractions. Watch a peace march, a good place to find leftists, and you saw a sea of different banners, for as many different causes. All of them good. But there is no center.
The left reached another crisis point. Since then, an agitated search for what’s to blame.
It’s partly the money. The left needs to find something else besides wealth. Today, everybody in America sleeps safe under a star, the idea that one day, they will be rich. Americans navigate their whole lives by that star. So commercialism dominates everything – and it has saturated even the left. Commercialism everywhere. Lefties worry about their credit score and worry about security.
Sold out.
This President has abandoned any serious atteempts at facing up to the banks. It looks like loss of nerve.
Which way to turn?
After Obama took the presidency, the first order of business was the economic collapse – undoing the money mess created by the Bush administration. Rebuilding our infrastructure. Rebuilding our schools. – But all of those had the tone of cleaning up somebody’s old wreckage. Fixing health care. Job by necessary job. But all that is not ‘forward.’
It’s partly that Liberals have lost their ‘forward.’ This is as deep a crisis as our submission to Wall Street. It is a collective loss of nerve.
There’s no fallen flag to grab up in the Liberal movement because there is no longer any flag.
Congress has no unified ‘forward.’ The American people have no unified forward. Once, we had the Occupy Movement. It suffered from lack of any forward agenda, and caved to police action. So now liberals talk about their frightening college debts or get fearful about retirement. Since we have no more effective restriction on exorbitant interest rates, they sap anybody’s courage.
The heart of the matter is that there is no new ideology.
There’s few leftist commentators, talk show liberals who churn the air like windmills.
But no coherent new theory, to unify.
Except here.
Only on this blog can you read whetherexploitation is ethical. Only here can you read about the contradiction between the American workplace – undemocratic and authoritarian – and the surrounding democracy. Read why social inequality is a killer (there’s new scientific evidence). About the long shadow of materialism. On widening corruption. Here the zero-sum concept is explained. Read how, in the long run, exorbitant greed may threaten democracyitself. A brief summary of opposing Right and Left philosophies here andhere.
Opinion is power.
But every year for the last 30 years, debate has faded; the left almost became mute. Liberals have avoided theory confrontations. Not in Congress, not at beer parties.
Every time that happened, the left’s light dimmed.
Left ideology. This blog is where we keep the pilot light on.
[Comments: click on ‘Keeping the pilot light on’ in the Header, or in Pages, below]
How the Right dominates
People are fascinated by conflict.
The Right wing is energetically shoving blame for the national economy onto the Left. One of the right’s bullies, Bill O’Reilly, dealt out his thrashings on t.v.
Right wing commentators run an ostentatious tyranny. It is the source of the public’s fascination with the Right.
The Left considers itself too nice for this bruiser style. The Left simply doesn’t have head-crushers like Limbaugh and O’Reilly. There is no Fox News on the left, and right-wing radio shows vastly outnumber left-wing. The Left thinks that being morally good, maybe showing a tolerant sense of humor, should be enough to prevail.
It is not, and the Left has no real idea how to push back. So the Left, with its natural compassion, its collective action, its trust, its usury laws, are all being put through the meat grinder.
Surviving a reactionary
One look at this man and you know you’re dead: here.
Civil war looming within the Democratic party?
The Democratic party has lost its soul. Here’s why.
If our children are being raised on Ayn Rand, we’re in trouble
– here’swhy.
Left Blog
Left Blog 
Democracy
1 a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
Republic
1 a (1) : a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president (2) : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government b (1) : a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law
Under a democracy, the popular vote would be the final say. However, we all know that it is possible to win the popular vote, but not the delegate count and therefore lose an election. Hence we are a Republic that democraticly elects it’s public officials.
Wow.
You’re argument fails on almost every paeagrapgh you write but let me stick a fork in a few of them to demonstrate – because as a conservative, I have to leave for work to pay increasing taxes for liberal programs, so I don’t have all day.
“We hear the argument from some people that America is not a democracy because the Constitution doesn’t include the word “democracy.” That’s idiotic. It’s like saying a horse is not a horse because it doesn’t walk around with the word HORSE written on it.”
A horse is a horse because that is it’s label. There is no debate on whether or not it’s a horse…or a jackal. You could call a horse a jackal, but they aren’t the same species. The distinction is clearly defined. Labels are not the essence of the substance they represent – they are merely labels we use to differentiate.
There is a marked difference between a democracy and a republic that goes beyond mere labels. A democracy. as demonstrated by ‘Anonymous’ above, is essentially mob rule. In such a situation, the “one man, one vote” apparatus can lead to a very dangerous scenario in which the majority can out-vote (and oppress) the minority. Not a very good substance.
A constitutional republic (which we are, like it or not) consists of representatives who are DEMOCRATICALLY elected (one man, one vote) that make decisions for his/her whole body of constituents. The system of laws set in place by such a government restricts the representative from voting in a popular “whim-of-the-moment” that a vocal majority of constituents may appear to favor but may be detrimental to the whole.
“if America is just a republic it gets classified with the likes of The People’s Republic of China, or Zimbabwe – which are republics only for the sole definition: they don’t have royalty running the joint. We’re not like those”
No, we’re definitely not like those.
But we are only “classified with the likes of” the PRC and Zimbabwe if the classifier is of the intelligence level to believe that labels equal substance; which you appear to be.
The PRC has democratic elections but the pool of electable candidates all come from the same party – the Communist Party. We are, essentially, only one party away from being like them but hopefully this will change in the future. The PRC is ‘republic’ in name only; we are republic by Constitutional decree. (substance)
“Listen, if you’re conservative, last eight years, you voted for Bush. Twice.”
No I didn’t.
I’m conservative and voted for Bush the first time because I saw him as the lesser of two evils (Gore). When I saw he was a idiotic Globalist lackey posing as a RINO (Republican In Name Only) I voted for Peroutka of the Constitution Party.
Hell, I gotta run….
But remember: rely on yourself and your own abilities. Expect NOTHING from society. There are no guarantees in this world but death and, thanks to Leftists like yourself, taxes.
If you were to be able to keep all that you earn – and those who were too lazy to work could starve to death – think of how much richer our societies could be? Sure, we should have some form of social safety net for the most vulnerable members of society: abandoned or neglected children, the disabled and elderly…but thanks to Socialists, people can jump on this gravy train and ride it for generations burdening everyone who has to work for a living.
Examine your beliefs and be certain that they are truly yours and not those of people with an agenda who influenced you earlier.
Now quit reading and GO TO WORK!
Near the end of your long-winded gibberish, you wrote “Expect NOTHING from society.” WOW, how anti-American can you conservatives get? If you want to move to a country where you can pay lower to no taxes and yet have all the great liberties and freedoms that the patriotic liberals have given you throughout the history of the USA, well then quit your job and move to that Banana Republic.
I’d write more but I have to go to my non-union job where I work 12 hours a night.
I thought this article was saying Ronnie and his republicans usurped the nation by selling the Darwin, Friedman, Rand, Greenspan philosophy of government.
The United States certainly is not a democracy. It is a representative constiutional republic. The founders of this country were all totally agsinst democracy. Go read a history book, make sure you do not get it from a public school.
Um, sorry to tell you, but we are a Republic. We don’t make the decisions, we elect people who make the decisions.
Sorry, but America is a Republic. Just look at the Pledge of Allegiance, … and to the Republic for which it stands. Seems to me it’s pretty clear. As for your comment about the founders believing in the “greatest good for the greater number”. Wrong again. The men who drafted the Constitution believed in individual freedom and individual rights. You liberals always want to interpret things the way that suits you. If you don’t like the U.S. maybe you should move instead of trying to convince the rest of us we’ve been misreading the Constitution for the last couple hundred years.
A pledge written a hundred years after the country began is not a good argument.
You are correct the drafters of the Constitution believed in individual freedom and rights, but they also believed people’s rights should not infringe upon others’ rights.
Several of them also didn’t think the Constitution would last any where near as long as it has – especially considering the Articles of Confederation still had ink drying on them. The Constitution is a pretty solid document, but still flawed as evidenced by the large number of paragraphs rendered moot by various amendments.
The last two sentences make no sense. There have been two major factions throughout US history battling over what has been and has not been allowed by the Constitution; what power the branches of government have and what power the people have. Always has. Always will.
The only caveat is that the country as a whole has shifted left as we’ve realized its wrong to own other human beings, that everyone should have a right to vote, that we’d prefer it be illegal to work people to death and make faulty machinery that can kill us.
We are a Republic (capital R), a representative democracy (small d).
A Democracy is two hundred men and one hundred woman stranded on an island, voting on what they will do tonight!
Any writer can rewrite history and jumble words to achieve the intended result!
The closer power is to the individual, the more freedom we have. You can write a letter to the Washington and your odds are better at winning a $6,000,000 lotto, than your letter being read or having ANY impact!
You can however call or write your City council member, or State Representative and YOU will get a response!
The Statist move to Centralized Government will only minimize each and every one of us!
The ONLY winners in the end will be POWERFUL POLITICIANS…. at our expense!
Look, I’m as left as they come, however this is not a democracy. I am a historian and I promise you that the US is not a democracy. A republic with democratically elected representatives is more apt. History will show that: “‘Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.'”
The US, in theory, is a democratic republic.
Your story sucks, I stopped at the pi$$-poor horse analogy.
Go back to grade school and take social studies, you obviously failed.
“The people” DON’T own the place. Try missing a few property taxes and see how long you can stay in your house even though it’s ‘paid for.’
Federal Reserve and it’s equals around the world own the world because they use fractional banking.
Say 10 people each deposit $10,000 into Bank A. Bank A then gives out $200,000 in loans. If all 10 of those original clients wanted to withdraw their original $10k, the bank wouldn’t have it.
The Federal Reserve is the reason we have income taxes, property taxes. Again, see how long you ‘own’ your house once you stop paying property taxes.
Well, we aren’t a complete democracy, but it is also a misnomer to say we are a republic. The United States as framed by the constitution is a “Democratic Republic,” which provides part of the etymology for the political party names.
Republicans – The party that wanted to strengthen the Federal Government – make the republic stronger (this hasn’t really changed from a liberal (mine) standpoint)
Democrats – Party of the “people” (as developed from Andrew Jackson) which historically fought for states rights, as well as more power in the people’s hands.
A lack of knowledge of definitions is why so many people think socialism = communism, which is wrong. Part of this lack of knowledge is because we are trying to describe multi-dimensional concepts with one line having a left or a right. Hence why stupid people don’t understand Democratic Socialism.
History and countries misnaming themselves to give an illusion of liberty also contributes to the problem.
We are a Democratic Republic – the people vote for the government what then makes the decisions.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to distinguish our place in the political ideological spectrum. The author of this entry was/is apparently misguided, but I believe (they) had the same good intention as the respondents to draw clearly over a hazy line of thought. I agree with the comments but respect and commend both sides for their efforts to establish truth. I hope this does not come across as immodest as it is not my intention, but I would simply like to ask both parties how well they respond to affronted criticism. You may do it well, but often times we and/or our discussional opposites miss and dismiss a lot of someone’s message when it is so critically stated because we have turned on our defensive mentality upon the first utterance of a confrontational phrase. Yes, presenting your argument civilly may be less effective in getting heard, but isn’t so much more effective in actually reaching your opponent’s thought center where they will actually ponder your point instead of lashing out at it? Again, I apologize if I sound self-important, but I think we can achieve our purposes without much offense on either side, don’t you?
CIA world factbook for United States:
Government type: “Constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition”
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/countrytemplate_us.html
We aren’t a democratic republic. We are specifically a Constitutional Republic in that, yes, the centralized government has power, but that power is lessened by a system where locales, counties, then states have precedent on their own laws before the federal government is tapped. Hung over every politician’s head is our Constitution which was meant to police the government as our forefathers knew that we should NEVER trust our government, leftist, rightest, no one. They made this country, not on a whim, but through extensive research of other governments and systems throughout history.
Socialism doesn’t work because of a power-hungry politicians. Correct. Keywords: It doesn’t work.
Democracy doesn’t work because it quickly becomes anarchy.
The United States’ system of governing is one of the most brilliant. Our problems arise when people try to interpret something that’s fairly black and white. We are created EQUAL, but ARE NOT EQUAL. We will have rich. We will have poor. That is nature and no one can change it.
The Dem vs. Rep fight is a rather laughable ruse as they both are after the same thing; just different means. Every last one of them want to stay in office as long as possible and will do ANYTHING to make that happen including fear mongering, lies, and you all can list the rest.
Work time. We all need to pay for this exorbitant spending we’ve seen steamroll since well before our current and previous administrations.
Cheers.
The argument as to whether the U.S. is a democracy or not does not deal with the political divisiveness that exists. Anyone or organization that advocates the initiation of force in order to gain goals is immoral. A free society is based on voluntary association between people.
Classical liberalism ushered in the industrial revolution. The dominant economic school of thought that existed prior to the institution of the free market was mercantilism.
Mercantilism claimed that the economic health of a nation was based on the monarch holding large quantities of precious metals and gem stones. The monarchs in England granted monopoly privilege to organizations in order to support the monarchs empire building goals. The monarchs supported enslaving conquered people and stealing their treasures in order for them to maintain their control on the position of power.
Adam Smith, who was an eighteenth liberal intellectual scottish doctor wrote a book titled “The Wealth of Nations”.
This book supported the idea that the wealth of a nation should be judged on the ability of an individual to sell his goods and services in the marketplace and receive his rewards based on what he received for them. Adam Smith and other liberal intellectuals school of thought ushered in the industrial revolution.
The collective wisdom of these liberal intellectual thinkers shaped our economic,social and political thought that lead to the “American Revolution”. The U.S. is the only country ever created throughout the recorded history that ever protect and defend individual liberty.
I want people to succeed in life to the highest level that they can. The individuals should have the freedom of choice as to what they consider success. Eliminating barriers are the only way to give people greater opportunities to succeed.
Govenment is a zero sum game. All they can do is redistribute assets. government does not add any economic value. the only way that government can accomplish their asset distribution goals is by stealing from some and giving it to others. Much of the antagonism that exists between individuals is based on who is getting the stolen property and who is having it stolen from them.
As long as the phoney argument is used by the modern day leftist and rightist in order to gain their goals via the iniation of force, then the antagonism will continue.
People will work together for common goals as long as their association is voluntary. When elitist try to superimpose their ideas onto people, this will always lead to the destruction of growth of freedom, peace and prosperity.