One of the major purposes of the U.S. Constitution was to guard against the US becoming a democracy. Democracy was not seen by the founders as good thing, and there are numerous anti-democratic provisions in there, plain for all to read. The US isn’t a non-democracy because of the greed of whomever; it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. The US can’t be turned ‘back’ into a democracy because it never was one to begin with.
there are many princes of industry, there is no king. the membership requirement costs billions. as i predicted some while back the new frontier=membership, possibly as soon as 1 generation hence, will be in the trillions
Yes this is interesting. I hadn’t looked into American political life or thought very deeply until fairly recently. It was after reading some of the work of Sheldon Wolin where he examined the constitution and The Federalist Papers that I learned what you are here mentioning, that it was a built in feature of the republic from the start and not a development over time. I don’t think that is common knowledge though, and I am fairly sure there is something of an effort to have people believe they are living in a democracy (in America and elsewhere) when they truly (or technically) aren’t.
I think there is even, in theoretical circles, some confusion about how exactly to define a democracy — for example, should it be defined as a form of government where the governing body is made up of the demos themselves? Would such a thing be possible? (Perhaps on a small scale.) In The Social Contract by Rousseau, under the chapter called Democracy, he says:
That’s fine. Just know that the electoral college is in the Constitution, and so is the idea of a bicameral legislature which includes a Senate composed of two members from each state regardless of the population of the state. The Supreme Court- appointed for life by the President, and in charge of interpreting the Constitution- is in the Constitution as well. These are the anti-democratic elements I have in mind.
Devil’s advocate :
Why care about those that refuse to help each other and demand that some faceless government support them? The masses fight and harm each other or ignore each other. Why care when they do not?
Again, I am not aware of everything in the U.S. but I hear that damned near all of your senators and governors are almost always re-elected and to me that shown an unthinking electorate or a system that has been bought.
The fact that you also have outlawed a third party adds to that thinking.
I’m certain what you’re putting here is true enough (from Oxford’s online dictionary if I am not mistaken), but it is still nonetheless one definition of democracy.
In the Federalist you find lines such as:
You bolded the word Republic in the Oxford definition of democracy, but it is clear from the words of the writers of the Federalist that they were conscious and clear that the republic they were building was not a democracy…
Another question which might be asked is, what is a definition really? And to anticipate, how are they formed?
This is very close to the capitalist defense. Accumulation of capital controls society in ways that befits a social contract best, especially in an increasingly close knit, informational world. lack of ideology, which seems to be increasingly the case, would create a vacuum filled panick, no government could tolerate. that’s what happened, for instance to
pst fascist Italy, they went through governments more often then did people changed shoes.A political vacuum is a dangerous thing, if not let to be governed by ecenomic expediency. Besides, fortunes are made and lost, and only a handful of big capital remains in private hands. The argument is kind of convincing, any refutation?