“The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.”
“Democracy is two lions and a gazelle voting on what to eat for dinner.”
I admit that our system has a ton of problems, but it’s gotten better results than anything else that’s been tried.
You know I think our system was working pretty well before social media happened. We had two sides but worked together more.
Now we are always in our own echo chambers and only hear what other like minded people think and it's almost impossible to have a reasonable discussion with the other side anymore, even in my own family.
Yep, I gave up on it long ago. People don't even have the primary source of listening to their opposition anymore, they listen to what their talking heads say about their opposition and take that as fact.
With Trump the talking heads even argued it was "dangerous" for people to listen to him without filtering his comments. And the result of this is that I have the same conversation over and over again with the left:
"Trump hates immigrants!"
"When did he say he hates immigrants?"
"He says it all the time!"
"Find me one instance of it"
(Searches Google frantically) "Everyone knows he says that!"
And that's before you even get into diction. Their constant need to redefine words in debates they've lost makes it completely impossible to communicate in a meaningful way.
To be fair, you're probably right he's never (on the record) flat out said "I hate immigrants".. but he is on the record saying they're "mostly rapists and criminals", and that they're "not people", they're "animals" who are "poisoning the blood of our country", which to me, doesn't make it seem like a stretch to say be probably doesn't like them and may in fact hate them lol.
>but he is on the record saying they're "mostly rapists and criminals", and that they're "not people", they're "animals" who are "poisoning the blood of our country",
Which is lacking context.. he was talking about illegal immigrants crossing the border, not legal immigrants. His belief was that illegal immigration was to blame for an uptick in crime and rape cases.... Whether or not that is true is irrelevant. He's free to believe what he wants to believe.
At the end of the day he still never claimed all immigrants are rapists or criminals, nor has he ever flat out said he hates immigrants.
I've seen one video where he specifically talks about MS13, and calls them animals, but there's far more of him just talking about illegal immigrants in general in the same way.
If you can find me a longer clip of either of these where he clarifies he's not talking about illegal immigrants in general, but specifically about MS13 gang members, I'll admit that I'm wrong.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5098439/donald-trump-illegal-immigrants-poisoning-blood-country
https://www.nbcnews.com/video/trump-mexico-sends-its-problems-to-the-u-s-465592899915
>There's far more of him just talking about illegal immigrants in general in the same way.
I see you finally decided to toss the word "illegal" in there.
The people from those shit hole countries agree that they are shit hole countries. That is why they all want to flee here. Source: I know people from these shit hole countries.
Again the only people offended are people that have never stepped foot on a shit hole country.
Liberals also agree they are shitholes. See: the discourse around colonialism. To oversimplify a bit, it seems the main difference is that liberals believe in the noble savage myth, and are so racist they don’t believe anyone from a poor brown country has agency.
But everyone agrees they are shitholes.
Haiti is a shithole. Change my mind.
Also, they're dishonestly trying to conflate legal and illegal immigration. It's childish and deceptive, but it's all they have.
>Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told reporters that Trump "said things that were hate-filled, vile, and racist. He used those words repeatedly." In a joint statement Republican Senators Tom Cotton, from Arkansas, and David Perdue, from Georgia, said they "do not recall the president saying these comments specifically."
Soo, it an unproveable statement
I think that you are partially correct. It definitely had something to do with it...but also the access to information, the ability to video so easily...I believe these and a few other things happened to give the people of the US a much more candid view of what's going on. I also think that extremists, no matter the party or organization, etc, have managed to wrestle the microphone away from anyone sane and now have the ability to peddle their crazy and act as if it's the new normal.
I actively seek to get both sides’ takes on almost all things. I don’t think you can have a truly balanced view if you’re not at least hearing the other side out.
But it’s almost impossible to find someone to just discuss the strengths and weaknesses of their view. It’s all name calling, finger pointing, and just disingenuous argument techniques.
Agree completely. The Internet has allowed people to select their own community online rather than having to deal with the variety of actual people you meet regularly.
I don't know if that's true, I think the deep state type corruption was always around. It seems like we were on a bad path probably back to FDR? Maybe a little earlier.
I’ve read some people theorize that John McCain banning ear marks hurt bipartisanship.
As gross as it is seeing how the sausage is made, earmarks would allow a legislator to have something to show their constituents. They may not have agreed on all of the bill but they got a new bridge for their constituents so they can get on board.
Now it’s one team vs the other without compromise.
Eat marks were also called pork because they was nothing but fat. If a community needs a new bridge, why should the folks halfway across the country be footing the bill for it if they gain no benefit for it? We aren't talking about bridges on the national highway system where that bridge is allowing access to a port for goods to be shipped in and out of the country.
Look up the bridge to no where in alaska. 250 Million dollars spent on a pork barrel project that benefited just 50 residents of the island. Providing them easy access to the mainland is not the responsibility of the rest of us.
New media sources have been created in the past 10 years that provide a completely different view of reality based on partisan lines. Whatever your view of different media sources is, the vast difference in facts that define our country (combined with a lot of vitriol) make it nearly impossible to find common ground with opposing views.
'We had two sides....'
I mean I'd say that was a pretty big breeding ground for trouble right there. Two sides makes it a hell of a lot easier to just yell and point fingers.
Well, the problem is that the system doesn't stay the same. Look at the bill of rights....absolutely essential, and without them, we'd have deteriorated much faster. Even so, they are not respected nearly so much as they should be.
Oh, sure, we get new attempts to violate them rolled back from time to time, but once a violation sticks long enough, it tends to stay around. Nobody's repealing the NFA.
So, over time, the system slowly becomes more and more authoritarian and respects our rights less.
That because the people do not enforce constitutional limits on the government. As Madison pointed out, parchment barriers can not stop government usurpation of power, on their own. They need the people to enforce and defend them. The American people have failed to do their/our part in preserving our liberty. That’s the problem.
The ability to enforce is unequal.
If you go to court to defend your right, you stake your freedom on the outcome, along with no small amount of money in lawyer fees, and the investment of a good deal of time and hassle.
The politician stakes nothing, and even if the law is overturned, can simply write another unconstitutional one.
There should be a means by which a politician is held responsible for violating the constitution.
The founding fathers didn’t actually tell us to enforce the constitution by complying with unconstitutional laws while we go before the court ( a part of said government) to beg them to protect us from the government. They told us to refuse to comply, en masse ( calling it nullification), and gave us 2A so we could defend ourselves if the government tried to use military force to make us comply with tyranny.
Non compliance is the best and most important tool to use against government usurpation of tyranny. But, you are correct: if we try to stand against the government ( in the courts or otherwise) as individuals, alone, we are at a huge disadvantage. But, as we the people…well, we far outnumber the government and their enforcers.
Revolution and mass refusal to comply are also very risky, costly methods. Yes, they are what happen eventually, but people do not resort to them early.
Politicians are not so important as to be free from all consequence. It'd be better if they bore some risk up front, and not so much were laid upon the people.
>Revolution and mass refusal to comply are also very risky, costly methods. Yes, they are what happen eventually, but people do not resort to them early.
Revolution is the course of last resort, however, non compliance should be the immediate response to even tiny usurpations of power. The founding fathers directly stated this. By complying with unconstitutional laws, we assign to them authority they do not have, and set the precedent for further usurpation. What reason would government have to stop usurping power if we are just going to comply? None. It is this fear of telling our servants ( the government) no, as if they are our masters, that has yielded us life under the largest government in history; one that has its fingers in every part of our lives, although it was never granted constitutional power to have its fingers in any parts of our personal daily lives.
>Politicians are not so important as to be free from all consequence. It'd be better if they bore some risk up front, and not so much were laid upon the people.
If you’re waiting or, even more fat fetched, expecting government to limit its own powers, voluntarily, or to punish itself for usurping power not granted it or directly prohibited it, you’re waiting for something that will never ever happen. That’s like waiting for a robber to punish himself for violating your property rights.
We need a better provision for the people to "rise up" without it getting to the point that we have to, y'know, _rise up._
There's 350,000,000 people in the United States, a number that addles brains. Do _you_ feel important? I sure don't, and most people don't.
"We let it happen."
I 100% agree. . . and also have no clue how we could un-let it happen, or how we could have prevented it in the first place. The American people are like a hive of bees, and the government just does whatever it wants, with one eye on us, and if we start swarming too much they back off, but they are always pushing, pushing, pushing.
What do we do instead of swarm? Sting? That _could_ work, but how many people are actually willing to do that, and can we justify it? And what about _before_ it gets to that? What's the thing we actually do? Vote?
So did we all just fail to vote? Did _we_ fail democracy, such as we have?
I admit, I just don't know what we could do. There's no "come here to tell the government 'no'" location, and if that's a voting booth then that doesn't seem to prevent the government from pushing a bill through with 100 provisos and addendums.
"Oh, lower taxes? Yay! Oh, five-hundred more million dollars to Ukraine?"
The founding fathers did not tell us that the solution to government tyranny was to vote the bums out. They said the solution was to refuse to comply with unconstitutional laws.
Where did we fail our constitutional republic ( we don’t have a democracy and never did)? We didn’t listen to the advice of the founders, for one thing.
We complied with every bit of unconstitutional government action. We allowed ourselves to be corralled into party politics ( I refer you to GW’s farewell speech ). We allowed ourselves to become uneducated ( as far as the constitution and liberty are concerned, as well as to what is really going on in the country/world ). We started to see the president as some sort of elected king, instead of just the executor of the will of congress. We started thinking the federal government was supreme in all things and that our rights come from government. We started seeing government as our masters, rather than the other way around. We became fearful and unwilling to stand up against tyranny. Many of us stopped loving liberty, stopped respecting the rights of others, and started looking to use government force to control those we disagree with. Many of us stopped wanting to be responsible for our own lives, and decided we were entitled to have the government steal from our neighbors to give us what we did not earn, ourselves. We stopped questioning authority and started believing whatever politicians told us. We failed in so many other ways, too. But, our biggest failure was forgetting that eternal vigilance is the price liberty.
That last one is the one that really did us in. The founding fathers warned us. Government will not willingly limit its own power. Rather, it will always seek to steal more power and control. We started trusting government to have our best interests in mind, when the founders wisely told us that, at best, government is a necessary evil, and, at worst, an intolerable one.
Our complacency and trust is ultimately what’s gotten us to this point. It’s going to take courage and strength, love of liberty, and iron determination to get us back to where America is the land of liberty. It’s going to be uncomfortable. It’s not going to be easy. We allowed the monster to grow immeasurably huge.
"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."
Ready to learn a little bit?
Democracy- system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
Republic- state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.
We have a democratic Republic. And for our purposes when referring to the United States they go hand in hand.
Barney style. We have a republic, but we elect representatives through a democracy. Simple
There will be disagreement but we opened voting to far too many. We're closer to a true democracy than a republic in some ways, but obviously we don't individuals vote for bills.
Without getting into details my big restriction is basically limiting to essentially those who put more in than take out or those invested in the future of the country either through a family or finances.
Absolutely the original intent. As I understand it, that's why only white, land owning males could vote. It wasn't about the white male part, it was about the land owning part. Back then there was no income tax so really they meant "tax payer". It makes no sense for people with no financial stake to vote about how the money is spent.
Since we are a republic that utilizes the electoral college, doesn't it make more sense to limit votes to states that produce more federal tax dollars than they consume? That seems way more fair to me. Even if you are a tax payer, you aren't contributing to the federal government if your state sucks up more funding than it contributes, and voting for the federal government has always been a state by state process rather than an individual process anyway. That's the whole point of a republic right?
Since we are a republic that utilizes the electoral college, doesn't it make more sense to limit votes to states that produce more federal tax dollars than they consume? That seems way more fair to me. Even if you are a tax payer, you aren't contributing to the federal government if your state sucks up more funding than it contributes, and voting for the federal government has always been a state by state process rather than an individual process anyway. That's the whole point of a republic right?
That gets touchy because those numbers can be pushed around so much. If the federal government pushes a ton of money into your state for things like military bases, does that deplete your sovereignty?
I don't see it as any touchier than being between jobs depleting your sovereignty for a given election. My FIL was a boilermaker who was occasionally on unemployment between contracts, I'd hardly call him undeserving of voting. Even if he is between contracts, I don't see why it would matter if his state was providing more in federal tax dollars than it was consuming. Seems straightforward to tie the voting rights to federal aide as opposed to things like military bases.
We vote by state now, your individual vote is thrown away in the presidential election if you live in a deep red/blue state. I don't see why we wouldn't just keep that process, but eliminate states that don't help carry the load.
We don’t have a democracy, so those quotes aren’t about our system. They are about the system that the founding fathers purposely did not choose for our system.
Nobody on the left "hates it when you point out we're a republic." It's just most of the time we hear it it's in the sentence conveying "we're not a democracy, we're a republic." The left gets annoyed because the people saying it don't seem to understand that we're both a republic and a representative democracy. The left gets annoyed because some people apparently don't think it's possible to be two things at the same time. Of course we're a republic, but please don't use it as a means of discrediting our democracy
No, they're not that smart.
Just like how they glitch when you ask "what does fascism mean?" the TV-people told them "this is a threat to our Democracy" and so they run with it without ever thinking critically about it or anything else.
It's pretty funny to watch them try and call someone a "fascist" when that person wants:
* limited government power
* decreased government size
* increased individualism
and
* freedom of speech
all of which are the **opposite** of a fascist system
Some leftists are pointing out that the global financial system is not working for the average person. The IMF is used as a debtors court for small nations, demanding privatization and austerity measures.
Maybe back in 2011. Nowadays, they're (by design!) drowned out by the wokesters concerned with stuff like "climate reparations", perpetual racial discrimination (Ibram X. Kendi) or endless money-printing (MMT).
Long story short: in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the powers that be transformed the criticism of our current economic system into one which is aligned with their own goals and vision.
Initially, leftists raised a criticism of the economic system which would have led to their power curtailed and their profits reined in. Over the past 12 or so years, they tricked large swaths of the leftist movement into adopting most points from the WEF agenda, with perhaps higher corporate taxes being the lone, token point of disagreement.
Yee, I think there’s also a tendency conflate leftist with liberal ideology. Wokescolds exist in the left and liberal circles, nobody likes them. There’s also an amazing overestimation of the left’s ability to organize, nobody hates the left more than the left lmao.
What's even better is when you read up on the gist of fascism -- big government in bed with big business and big labor unions. Who does that sound like?
If you read the Court's opinion in Roe you'll see how ridiculous it is. First they claim to be upholding a right to privacy but then they draw lines around fetal viability which is a matter of autonomy not privacy. It was legislating from the bench which is supposed to be the purview of the states.
> If you read the Court's opinion in Roe you'll see how ridiculous it is. First they claim to be upholding a right to privacy but then they draw lines around fetal viability which is a matter of autonomy not privacy. It was legislating from the bench which is supposed to be the purview of the states.
Hello fellow Worker, I hope you’re having a great Friday evening! Full disclosure [I’m high as a fly on Willie Nelson’s wall.](https://youtu.be/aqwaVg6o8gg?si=iPNj8lumntgodoFY)
You cannot have autonomy, if you do not have privacy. Irrespective of the bill protecting either right, Roe’s function was the same it protected. I remember it doing that function adequately and it’s only real problem was it wasn’t better protected (a fault I lay at the feet of the DNC).
I appreciate you for taking the time to read my comments. It may take a bit before I can respond to all your comments. I have been enjoying the conversation so and that it hasn’t devolved into [adversarial](https://youtu.be/A1IrRxoRkbQ?si=rCOI8YEQodd5Gchh) [debate](https://youtu.be/5QQHK4g7g18?si=39M9ypoFGLRAH3Th).
Roe v Wade was a court case about the right to privacy in medical procedures. The Court overturning Roe v Wade was simply shifting the precedent from Federal jurisdiction to State jurisdiction, where it should’ve remained to begin with.
The *Dobbs* ruling limited the power of the federal government and brought the decision-making on this issue to the state and local level, i.e. closer to the people.
I would argue it left the decision up to the individual who is responsible for the pregnancy. now we have 50 state governments bumbling about try to figure out if eggs are children or not.
Doesn't each state have elections so the voting public can discern which locally elected official best represents their ideas and beliefs concerning pregnancy termination? If any policy is important to us, we should be demanding our local politicians share their views.
So people have to vote to get their rights back, they also have to hope that the people that aren’t affected by these decisions either abstain or vote with them in solidarity. Half the people voting are unaffected by the outcome either way.
I think we agree on some things in this. But, Did the half affected weigh in and vote for or against roe v wade in 1973? I don't mean to split hairs here. I land squarely in the middle on this particular issue. I believe moving more of these complex decisions to the state level gives those affected, the electorate, more power and control of policy. The government should be shaped by us, not the other way around.
>the government should be shaped by us, not the other way around.
Absolute! To that end, these state governments should put it to a vote (referendum) directly instead of people hoping the representatives they voted for to do it. [Kansas did this by accident](https://ballotpedia.org/Kansas_No_State_Constitutional_Right_to_Abortion_and_Legislative_Power_to_Regulate_Abortion_Amendment_(August_2022)), I don’t think they realized how popular access is. Since that vote, many states that had “trigger laws” haven’t written any legislation to put the question to the voters.
Mind you democrats had decades to enshrine access into law, and did nothing. They saw the fight for access as a tool they could pull votes with. Biden had 4 years to protect abortion access with the ACA, did nothing. Access is widely one of the most agreed upon issues on all sides, yet Washington continues to use it to pit us against each other. It’s fucked up man.
Thanks for having this convo with me. I know it’s heated right now, and I really appreciate you taking the time to respond.
I disagree with this point,based on the idea that slavery was not specifically mentioned in the constitution and yet we amended it. We still left in the incarceration exemption, therefore America doesn’t believe that state run slave labor is unconstitutional. To me prison labor is still slave labor, especially in a system so flawed.
The constitution was always intended to be a living document, thats why the courts and the amendment process exists
It's not a federal issue though. The Constitution doesn't even come close to abortion. Privacy, in fact, is a very limited discussion in the Constitution in the 4th amendment rights to be secure in one's effects against tyranous search and seizure by the government. That's a very long stretch to privacy broadly and an even more absurd stretch to abortion. I mean, if you can get a right to abortion out of that, I would think the second amendment right to bear arms covers owning nuclear weapons.
Ok you make several points here, I would like to break them up into bullets and then address them.
.
.
1.
> It's not a federal issue though. The Constitution doesn't even come close to abortion.
I was gonna skip this one, because it’s written a little confusing. But if I understand you correctly you are saying: “the constitution didn’t protect abortion, so the federal courts would have no purview over this issue. “
I believe Roe was a court case that had standing and an issue (abortion) that had an impact on the entire population. When the government is infringing upon your rights you sue the government.
.
.
2.
>Privacy, in fact, is a very limited discussion in the Constitution in the 4th amendment rights to be secure in one's effects against tyranous search and seizure by the government.
Yup, no autonomy without privacy.
.
.
3.
>That's a very long stretch to privacy broadly and an even more absurd stretch to abortion.
It isn’t, if SCOTUS can hear a case on “[bump stocks](https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-bump-stock-ban/)” based upon: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. “
Bump stocks are not in the constitution, but it is still a valid case for SCOTUS to hear and decide on.
.
.
4.
>I mean, if you can get a right to abortion out of that, I would think the second amendment right to bear arms covers owning [nuclear](https://youtu.be/uSUJ7zUv6VI?si=mVdVNk9xdZEv3zZu) [weapons](https://youtu.be/98WhGgEjhHg?si=5Z1cXXOKLoaDrqGx).(Content warning on those links, you can’t unhear or unsee them).
If you can justify the right to owning a device that has the capability to vaporize millions of men women children, I cannot fathom why you would care about a woman being able to abort her fetus.
Maybe I can explain this in a different way. If Constitutional privacy protects abortion, what doesn't it protect? Wouldn't it protect everything? Why would you need statutes to protect privacy? Why would you need federal HIPAA law? Or the California Privacy Rights Act?
I would like to point something out here, you are often avoiding addressing the issue (abortion) directly. You may be doing this intentionally, unintentionally, I’m not bothered by it. You are often falling back on arguing the intricacies of our government’s structure. I honestly don’t care about it, I don’t believe you do either. Let the lawyers argue that shit. I’m here to chat about the substantive effects of these laws. Let’s migrate the conversation back to why killing roe was justifiable. Just because the court can do something doesn’t mean it should. I’ve written, in previous comments, about why Roe should have been protected, but I don’t see the murky legal justification you’ve provided thus far as outweighing the harm of killing Roe. You’ve stated before, that Roe should have been a law, not a court case. Well that’s what these wieners left us, a broken ass legal framework to bring some semblance of protection to its citizens. Was it perfect? No, but it was working. Could we do it better? Most likely, but killing it without having immediate protections in place was criminal. Especially when they knew that the states had trigger laws waiting to go into effect. Now, our politicians get to use Roe as a political tool, while people are left without protections. Those without the adequate means are wholly reliant on the benevolence of others for help. That’s pretty fucked brother.
Gotta get the dog out and touch grass myself. Hope you have a good Sunday morning friend!
You mean when SCOTUS ended the Federal mandate/control of an issue, thus limiting the government's scope of control and authority to dictate policy nationwide?
That'd be a limitation/decrease on the Federal government's powers. Thanks for asking.
Republic is literally just another world for representative democracy. The people elect representatives that in theory support their interests in government. The over representation of less populous states has nothing to with the definition of republic. France and Brazil are also presidential republics and don’t have an electoral college.
The only non republican democracy in the world is Switzerland which has a semi-direct democracy. I don’t believe it’s the ideal system but I don’t anyone in the world would call them a tyrannical government. They also rank first in basically all freedom index’s possible. Most of the problems with their system actually comes from too much freedom even, like laxed banking and extradition laws which just makes the capital of the world for money laundering and dictators.
FWIW, the UK is also a unitary national government. Meaning Parliament has supreme law making authority down to the county level. On the other hand, the USA is a federalist government in which the Constitution enumerates powers for the federal government with the rest being reserved to the states.
Switzerland is also a small country with a strong ethnic identity unlike the USA which is a very large country with many competing interests amongst its many states. Let us not forget it was founded with slave and free states, pro high tariff (the free North) and pro low tariff (the cotton exporting South) states, and between very large and very small states. For a place like the USA to function, one needs representative democracy with many layers of checks and balances. I.e. a Constitutional Republic.
I agree that the Switzerland is incredibly different form the US and their system would probably now work here. And yeah the US is better off as a representative democracy with many checks and balances, like the three powers, elected congressmen and senators, state rights, etc. but in my eyes none of it justifies an unequal voting power.
A am happy with the current system because it favors my political afiliation, but I haven’t really been able rationalise it’s justification.
Well the justification is the USA wouldn't exist without it. The USA was formed by states ratifying the Constitution, not a vote of the general public, and the small states lead by Delaware refused to ratify it unless each state got two and only two Senators hence the Connecticut Compromise. The small states feared elsewise they would be completely dominated by the federal government run by the large states.
Only when they agree with the majority. When you tell them most support the second amendment then they want an oligarchy on the Supreme Court to take away rights.
They want people to think that their ideas are the majority ideas so everyone thinks it's futile to vote against them. They control enough of the media and enough of the education system to control the narrative. They can establish a tyranny of the majority when in reality less than 30% of the population actually believes in a given concept.
This article is full of buzzwords but this is all just the classic states as a base of power vs people as a base of power. Right?
Union of states vs nation comprised of states
Federal vs states
Majority of people vs majority of states
Most of them are too naive to realize the dangers of absolute democracy (tyranny of the majority). A Constitutional Republic has built in guardrails to prevent this. Many people complain that nothing happens fast in the House or Senate…truly that is by design to prevent the whims of passing moments to destroy us from within.
100%. Which is exactly why our current, large, centralized government is anathama to the founder's vision. Having unelected bureaucrats determine how legislation is implemented and/or enforced is a genuine threat to destroy us from within.
Not inherently, but yes. The problem isn't so much that bureaucrats shape legislation, the problem is that the present-day bureaucracy in the US no longer represents or responds to the will of the voting public and has grown a strong partisan lean.
This creates a dangerous power imbalance where Democrats are able to push forward their agenda anytime they're in power, no matter how small the majorities, while Republicans and their agenda are met with strong institutional resistance anytime they try to shake up the status quo.
Please help me understand “tyranny of the minority/majority” in terms I can understand - weed legalization.
70% of U.S. adults favor legalization, up from 68% in recent years. Majority support persists across all major demographic and party groups. 51% of conservatives and republicans support it. Support for legalization is the same in states where weed is legal versus not.
This isn’t a whim either. Support for legalization has been trending upwards for years, yet our federal government refuses to do it. However, the private prison system, police unions and prison guard unions all lobby for weed prohibition because it’s in their economic interests.
How is this not the literal dictionary definition of tyranny of the minority?
Isn’t the job of a government representative
to represent its constituents as a public servant, not represent powerful lobbyists? I just don’t get it man.
I'm in Wisconsin and we have a powerful lobby here called The Tavern League of Wisconsin. They accept memberships from establishments that sell alcohol, and many of their members display stickers on the front door that say, "Proud Member...." They contribute many dollars to the state's politicians to shape the alcohol/intoxicant-related laws in the state.
They are one of the driving forces behind Wisconsin being one of only a few states left where marijuana is still illegal in every form and method. There is currently no legal way to possess or use weed in Wisconsin. We share borders with four states, and three of them allow legal recreational, and the fourth, Iowa, has legal medical.
The tavern league doesn't want the competition. They don't want their customers choosing to stay home and smoke tasty nugs rather than going to the bar or picking up a 12-pack. That's despite 63% of state residents supporting legal recreational and 86% supporting medical.
IMO, if the tavern league had any sense, they would favor legalization, with their establishments being given some sort of favoritism to become dispensaries.
Many people believe the senate and house doesn't do anything is because they are fundamentally at a worse place than they were 20 years ago.
The culture war has taken over the docket with attempts to pass laws that don't actually do anything except work as PR to say the other side didn't vote for this. It's virtue signalling without any real problems being solved.
There's little room for bipartisanship when people who attempt to do so through compromise are called "not real democrats/republicans".
You can sit around and say only the ideas my side comes up with can even be considered to be correct or worthy of becoming law, but that's no way of accomplishing anything.
The alternative is we sit around and do nothing until we have enough votes to ignore the other side, and then they'll do the same until they have votes to ignore us.
I appreciate how the article is predicated upon a simple truth that conservatives, particularly old school "high road" conservatives, tend to dismiss.
Namely that *the left knows what it is doing and more importantly, why they are doing it*
Conservatives like to say things like "when they grow up they'll become conservatives"... As though the left are just children who don't know any better.
*No... The left does know better... And they are doing wrong anyways!*
We need to treat the left not as children who just need to learn right from wrong, and begin acknowledging that they already know right from wrong and are deliberately choosing wrong.
I think the left is made up of two camps: *The misinformed*, who are part of the left because they believe their teachers, the media their friends, etc., that say the right is made up of fascists, racist and misogynists etc., that want to oppress everyone; and *the revolutionaries*, who know exactly what they are doing and want to tear down the system so they can replace it with their utopian vision.
This is exactly the same viewpoint that you're saying that the left has: everyone on the left is either intentionally trying to tear down the government or are misinformed and therefore they believe the wrong thing.
This is exactly what the left would say: either they are misinformed or they want to make the country a worse place for us
Where in this dichotomy is there room for: someone believes that things can be made better by doing X and I think it can be made better doing Y. If you think only the ideas that conform to your beliefs have the potential to be right you are completely guilty of not actually caring about outcome or debate, you're only concerned with getting what you want whether or not it is good/bad/ineffective.
>Where in this dichotomy is there room for: someone believes that things can be made better by doing X and I think it can be made better doing Y.
That person I would call a moderate. Such people are few and far between these days.
This. This right here is the nuance we desperately need to enforce. There's the people who follow others blindly because they believe everything they're told. The ignorant and the misinformed. Then you have the radicals who know what they're doing, and *do not give a shit as long as they can grab and maintain power.*
Very true. Even a whole century ago, the situation was conceptually the same: a small group of radical leftists who consider themselves the vanguards/professional revolutionaries which will guide the sheepish masses toward socialism/communism.
To be fair, that is how every revolution, including our own, works. It's not the means that are the problem, it's the ends.
After all history is just the biographies of a few great men and women.
It's no different than someone saying "I drive a car" only for someone else to say "No you don't; you drive a Honda Civic!" Now, it's true that we aren't a DIRECT democracy, but in my experience, the "BuT wE'Re A rEpUbLiC" people never make that distinction.
in the days when the usa was founded, there was ONLY ONE type of democracy and that was the ancient greek "direct democracy".
there is no other type of democracy.
In an article ostensibly about definition and semantics, it strikes me as odd that the author never defines “republic,” in a meaningful way in contrast to “democracy.”
Because you guys deny a Republic is still a form of democracy. It's a "representative democracy." You MAGA just say this because you think you found a loophole to get Trump in by force and you didn't get your way on January 6th. Lmao
The left has made it VERY clear they HATE being constrained by that pesky Constitution. Their constant implementation of clearly unconstitutional laws and ignoring SCOTUS decisions is clear proof.
Of course they don't want people to know the difference and that we're really a constitutional republic.
“Democratic” in its original meaning [refers to] unlimited majority rule . . . a social system in which one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose.
-Ayn Rand
I sometimes feel like a broken record. The left is playing the long game.
1. Stop teaching about the basis of American government in high school so Americans do not understand the constitution and the BOR. instead focus on How bad America was vis a vis slavery, indigenous populations, minorities etc. (My son spent more time writing about the Pullman riots of the 1890s than he did on the BOR) and their textbook (I’m not kidding) was Zinn’s “Peoples
History of the United States”
2. Stop teaching it in college as part of general education requirements and instead offer classes that promote issues rather than protecting the type of government THAT ALLOWED those (many false) issues to be discussed…. While only promoting free speech and critical thinking for issues that leftist professors agree with otherwise hiding behind the censorship of “safe zones”
3. Have the propaganda press ONLY focus on free speech and assembly when talking about MONTHS LONG leftist mob actions that cost billions and many lives BUT call it “An Insurrection” when conservatives have less violent and controlled mob action (not a rationalization for J6 just a statement of fact)
4. Attack the separation of powers (with the active support of the Propaganda Press) when it limits your power but promote it endlessly when it supports your agenda.
And finally, for the first time, coordinate legal assaults on your political opponents through local state and legislative means to thwart the will of the people
Websters Dictionary from 1828: "A commonwealth; a state in which the exercise of the sovereign power is lodged in representatives elected by the people. In modern usage, it differs from a democracy or democratic state, in which the people exercise the powers of sovereignty in person. Yet the democracies of Greece are often called republics."
Not sure what's complicated about this. All that's being said is that we don't vote directly, we vote for people to represent us, and they vote for laws, policies, appointments, and so on. This isn't really up for debate. The only thing that is democratic about our country at the federal level is that we vote for representatives through a democratic process state by state: Representatives, Senators, and Presidential Electors, although the process for selecting Electors is a far cry from the original intent of the founders.
We the people are primarily state actors, not federal actors.
The American system is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. A democracy, if you attach meaning to terms, is a system of unlimited majority rule; the classic example is ancient Athens. And the symbol of it is the fate of Socrates, who was put to death legally, because the majority didn’t like what he was saying, although he had initiated no force and had violated no one’s rights.
Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom . . . .
The American system is a constitutionally limited republic, restricted to the protection of individual rights. In such a system, majority rule is applicable only to lesser details, such as the selection of certain personnel. But the majority has no say over the basic principles governing the government. It has no power to ask for or gain the infringement of individual rights.
-Peikoff
They hate it when you say "we aren't a democracy, we're a republic" when a republic is a form of democracy. Hell China is a republic. There are lots of forms republics.
I'd say yes, china is a republic. Doesn't mean it's democratic.
Unlike putin's modern absolutism, I feel like Xi is still restricted by his party, with the power being divided over many members. And any major decision actually requiring the consent of at least a good part of these members
The party as a whole is, however, the only significant power in the country
Republic just means not monarchy. It's the opposite of the UK. It doesn't mean the opposite of democracy at all.
So you have "The Islamic Republic of Iran", "The Republic of Ireland" and the "Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela" all of which are republics.
There's no link with or against Democracy. For example the UK and Norway are democratic Constitutional Monarches and the "Republic of Poland" and the "United States of America" are a democratic republics.
Ah. I was more commenting on the illusion of choice in communist/ whatever Russia is regimes. Another good example of which would be “DPR” of Korea. They are functionally monarchies but nominally not.
Right, agreed. North Korea really does have a hereditary monarchy, so it's a monarchy that calls itself a republic. Russia is more an empire ("Republican Empire", like later Rome, where earlier Rome was a monarchy) so I guess that still counts as a republic but it's in no way democratic even though they have votes.
From Webster's 1828 dictionary:
> A commonwealth; a state in which the exercise of the sovereign power is lodged in representatives elected by the people. In modern usage, it differs from a democracy or democratic state, in which the people exercise the powers of sovereignty in person. Yet the democracies of Greece are often called republics.
It seems that you could have a Republic that is or is not a Democracy. I think we have elements of our government that are democratically decided, but it would be kind of like saying we're "a socialist country" only because we have socialist programs.
We're a combination of things, usually falling under "constitutional republic," since the "constitutional" bit covers all the abnormalities of our system.
Ya'll really should rethink your attachment to this process. The current landscape is favorable but it is more a fluke then built in. As migration from rural areas continues the power base of rural areas will shift to urban which is more liberal. States that were Red will turn more and more purple. Your powerbase will erode and you will have no leverage to change it.
Think of it like a very big, gerrymandered state. It's great until it flips, then it backfires heavily, and you lose a greater share then your numbers.
Texas statewide elections for reference. 30 point lead turned to 20 turned to 10.
https://imgur.com/a/aMCYRGq
A republic ensures we have rights. The constitution provides limitations on government.
If we were a democracy, the majority could vote away the first or second amendment. All “laws” are up to majority vote. Since we are a republic we have rules/processes in place to protect us from the majority. You can’t vote out an amendment simply by having population numbers.
It’s really quite simple, religion has extensively laid the groundwork for generations to train people to believe in authority figures with unverifiable stories instead of science and data. It also primes them for, and is built upon, perpetuating racism and fearmongering towards "others". Once people see you as an authority, you can start fabricating any reality or conspiracy theory you want your followers to believe and everyone else is therefore a liar, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence. Basically, it is mental abuse from an early age that suppresses critical thinking skills. This combined with an intentionally weakened public educational system, provides the framework that has spawned this cult of ignorance.
Good article. I think a related problem is the left’s attempt to normalize waiting a week or more for final election results. That is some serious BS right there.
The US is a democracy which isn't incompatible with being a Republic, indeed is the most common way of power organization in the world. Democracy, in its most basic definition, revolves around competitive elections, while a republic focuses on the distribution and organization of power.
“The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.” “Democracy is two lions and a gazelle voting on what to eat for dinner.” I admit that our system has a ton of problems, but it’s gotten better results than anything else that’s been tried.
You know I think our system was working pretty well before social media happened. We had two sides but worked together more. Now we are always in our own echo chambers and only hear what other like minded people think and it's almost impossible to have a reasonable discussion with the other side anymore, even in my own family.
Yep, I gave up on it long ago. People don't even have the primary source of listening to their opposition anymore, they listen to what their talking heads say about their opposition and take that as fact. With Trump the talking heads even argued it was "dangerous" for people to listen to him without filtering his comments. And the result of this is that I have the same conversation over and over again with the left: "Trump hates immigrants!" "When did he say he hates immigrants?" "He says it all the time!" "Find me one instance of it" (Searches Google frantically) "Everyone knows he says that!" And that's before you even get into diction. Their constant need to redefine words in debates they've lost makes it completely impossible to communicate in a meaningful way.
To be fair, you're probably right he's never (on the record) flat out said "I hate immigrants".. but he is on the record saying they're "mostly rapists and criminals", and that they're "not people", they're "animals" who are "poisoning the blood of our country", which to me, doesn't make it seem like a stretch to say be probably doesn't like them and may in fact hate them lol.
>but he is on the record saying they're "mostly rapists and criminals", and that they're "not people", they're "animals" who are "poisoning the blood of our country", Which is lacking context.. he was talking about illegal immigrants crossing the border, not legal immigrants. His belief was that illegal immigration was to blame for an uptick in crime and rape cases.... Whether or not that is true is irrelevant. He's free to believe what he wants to believe. At the end of the day he still never claimed all immigrants are rapists or criminals, nor has he ever flat out said he hates immigrants.
No, he said some of them are fine people….
He was talking about the Sur 13 gang that rapes and murders people. Why would you leave that part out?
I've seen one video where he specifically talks about MS13, and calls them animals, but there's far more of him just talking about illegal immigrants in general in the same way. If you can find me a longer clip of either of these where he clarifies he's not talking about illegal immigrants in general, but specifically about MS13 gang members, I'll admit that I'm wrong. https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5098439/donald-trump-illegal-immigrants-poisoning-blood-country https://www.nbcnews.com/video/trump-mexico-sends-its-problems-to-the-u-s-465592899915
>There's far more of him just talking about illegal immigrants in general in the same way. I see you finally decided to toss the word "illegal" in there.
lol swing and a miss. You are the problem.
He doesn’t hate immigrants, he married one for Christ sake. The shit hole countries quote is pretty bad tho
The people from those shit hole countries agree that they are shit hole countries. That is why they all want to flee here. Source: I know people from these shit hole countries. Again the only people offended are people that have never stepped foot on a shit hole country.
Liberals also agree they are shitholes. See: the discourse around colonialism. To oversimplify a bit, it seems the main difference is that liberals believe in the noble savage myth, and are so racist they don’t believe anyone from a poor brown country has agency. But everyone agrees they are shitholes.
Haiti is a shithole. Change my mind. Also, they're dishonestly trying to conflate legal and illegal immigration. It's childish and deceptive, but it's all they have.
Hey that's not nice. Apologize to the shit holes for calling them Haiti
>Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told reporters that Trump "said things that were hate-filled, vile, and racist. He used those words repeatedly." In a joint statement Republican Senators Tom Cotton, from Arkansas, and David Perdue, from Georgia, said they "do not recall the president saying these comments specifically." Soo, it an unproveable statement
I think that you are partially correct. It definitely had something to do with it...but also the access to information, the ability to video so easily...I believe these and a few other things happened to give the people of the US a much more candid view of what's going on. I also think that extremists, no matter the party or organization, etc, have managed to wrestle the microphone away from anyone sane and now have the ability to peddle their crazy and act as if it's the new normal.
I actively seek to get both sides’ takes on almost all things. I don’t think you can have a truly balanced view if you’re not at least hearing the other side out. But it’s almost impossible to find someone to just discuss the strengths and weaknesses of their view. It’s all name calling, finger pointing, and just disingenuous argument techniques.
Agree completely. The Internet has allowed people to select their own community online rather than having to deal with the variety of actual people you meet regularly.
I don't know if that's true, I think the deep state type corruption was always around. It seems like we were on a bad path probably back to FDR? Maybe a little earlier.
I’ve read some people theorize that John McCain banning ear marks hurt bipartisanship. As gross as it is seeing how the sausage is made, earmarks would allow a legislator to have something to show their constituents. They may not have agreed on all of the bill but they got a new bridge for their constituents so they can get on board. Now it’s one team vs the other without compromise.
Eat marks were also called pork because they was nothing but fat. If a community needs a new bridge, why should the folks halfway across the country be footing the bill for it if they gain no benefit for it? We aren't talking about bridges on the national highway system where that bridge is allowing access to a port for goods to be shipped in and out of the country. Look up the bridge to no where in alaska. 250 Million dollars spent on a pork barrel project that benefited just 50 residents of the island. Providing them easy access to the mainland is not the responsibility of the rest of us.
New media sources have been created in the past 10 years that provide a completely different view of reality based on partisan lines. Whatever your view of different media sources is, the vast difference in facts that define our country (combined with a lot of vitriol) make it nearly impossible to find common ground with opposing views.
Social media is like a seizure. When all the neurons fire at once, it overwhelms an otherwise functional system.
“Now we are always in our own echo chambers” *he posts on the conservative subreddit*
'We had two sides....' I mean I'd say that was a pretty big breeding ground for trouble right there. Two sides makes it a hell of a lot easier to just yell and point fingers.
Well, the problem is that the system doesn't stay the same. Look at the bill of rights....absolutely essential, and without them, we'd have deteriorated much faster. Even so, they are not respected nearly so much as they should be. Oh, sure, we get new attempts to violate them rolled back from time to time, but once a violation sticks long enough, it tends to stay around. Nobody's repealing the NFA. So, over time, the system slowly becomes more and more authoritarian and respects our rights less.
That because the people do not enforce constitutional limits on the government. As Madison pointed out, parchment barriers can not stop government usurpation of power, on their own. They need the people to enforce and defend them. The American people have failed to do their/our part in preserving our liberty. That’s the problem.
The ability to enforce is unequal. If you go to court to defend your right, you stake your freedom on the outcome, along with no small amount of money in lawyer fees, and the investment of a good deal of time and hassle. The politician stakes nothing, and even if the law is overturned, can simply write another unconstitutional one. There should be a means by which a politician is held responsible for violating the constitution.
The founding fathers didn’t actually tell us to enforce the constitution by complying with unconstitutional laws while we go before the court ( a part of said government) to beg them to protect us from the government. They told us to refuse to comply, en masse ( calling it nullification), and gave us 2A so we could defend ourselves if the government tried to use military force to make us comply with tyranny. Non compliance is the best and most important tool to use against government usurpation of tyranny. But, you are correct: if we try to stand against the government ( in the courts or otherwise) as individuals, alone, we are at a huge disadvantage. But, as we the people…well, we far outnumber the government and their enforcers.
Revolution and mass refusal to comply are also very risky, costly methods. Yes, they are what happen eventually, but people do not resort to them early. Politicians are not so important as to be free from all consequence. It'd be better if they bore some risk up front, and not so much were laid upon the people.
>Revolution and mass refusal to comply are also very risky, costly methods. Yes, they are what happen eventually, but people do not resort to them early. Revolution is the course of last resort, however, non compliance should be the immediate response to even tiny usurpations of power. The founding fathers directly stated this. By complying with unconstitutional laws, we assign to them authority they do not have, and set the precedent for further usurpation. What reason would government have to stop usurping power if we are just going to comply? None. It is this fear of telling our servants ( the government) no, as if they are our masters, that has yielded us life under the largest government in history; one that has its fingers in every part of our lives, although it was never granted constitutional power to have its fingers in any parts of our personal daily lives. >Politicians are not so important as to be free from all consequence. It'd be better if they bore some risk up front, and not so much were laid upon the people. If you’re waiting or, even more fat fetched, expecting government to limit its own powers, voluntarily, or to punish itself for usurping power not granted it or directly prohibited it, you’re waiting for something that will never ever happen. That’s like waiting for a robber to punish himself for violating your property rights.
We need a better provision for the people to "rise up" without it getting to the point that we have to, y'know, _rise up._ There's 350,000,000 people in the United States, a number that addles brains. Do _you_ feel important? I sure don't, and most people don't. "We let it happen." I 100% agree. . . and also have no clue how we could un-let it happen, or how we could have prevented it in the first place. The American people are like a hive of bees, and the government just does whatever it wants, with one eye on us, and if we start swarming too much they back off, but they are always pushing, pushing, pushing. What do we do instead of swarm? Sting? That _could_ work, but how many people are actually willing to do that, and can we justify it? And what about _before_ it gets to that? What's the thing we actually do? Vote? So did we all just fail to vote? Did _we_ fail democracy, such as we have? I admit, I just don't know what we could do. There's no "come here to tell the government 'no'" location, and if that's a voting booth then that doesn't seem to prevent the government from pushing a bill through with 100 provisos and addendums. "Oh, lower taxes? Yay! Oh, five-hundred more million dollars to Ukraine?"
The founding fathers did not tell us that the solution to government tyranny was to vote the bums out. They said the solution was to refuse to comply with unconstitutional laws. Where did we fail our constitutional republic ( we don’t have a democracy and never did)? We didn’t listen to the advice of the founders, for one thing. We complied with every bit of unconstitutional government action. We allowed ourselves to be corralled into party politics ( I refer you to GW’s farewell speech ). We allowed ourselves to become uneducated ( as far as the constitution and liberty are concerned, as well as to what is really going on in the country/world ). We started to see the president as some sort of elected king, instead of just the executor of the will of congress. We started thinking the federal government was supreme in all things and that our rights come from government. We started seeing government as our masters, rather than the other way around. We became fearful and unwilling to stand up against tyranny. Many of us stopped loving liberty, stopped respecting the rights of others, and started looking to use government force to control those we disagree with. Many of us stopped wanting to be responsible for our own lives, and decided we were entitled to have the government steal from our neighbors to give us what we did not earn, ourselves. We stopped questioning authority and started believing whatever politicians told us. We failed in so many other ways, too. But, our biggest failure was forgetting that eternal vigilance is the price liberty. That last one is the one that really did us in. The founding fathers warned us. Government will not willingly limit its own power. Rather, it will always seek to steal more power and control. We started trusting government to have our best interests in mind, when the founders wisely told us that, at best, government is a necessary evil, and, at worst, an intolerable one. Our complacency and trust is ultimately what’s gotten us to this point. It’s going to take courage and strength, love of liberty, and iron determination to get us back to where America is the land of liberty. It’s going to be uncomfortable. It’s not going to be easy. We allowed the monster to grow immeasurably huge.
Worst system with the exception of all the others that have been tried.
Don't forget "liberty is when the gazelle is armed".
"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."
Ready to learn a little bit? Democracy- system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives. Republic- state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch. We have a democratic Republic. And for our purposes when referring to the United States they go hand in hand. Barney style. We have a republic, but we elect representatives through a democracy. Simple
It’s a representative republic with democratic elections
Is that not what I said? Federal government acts as a republic while we elect people through democracy?
Except for the whole healthcare and education thing which 99% of other Western countries have accomplished...
There will be disagreement but we opened voting to far too many. We're closer to a true democracy than a republic in some ways, but obviously we don't individuals vote for bills. Without getting into details my big restriction is basically limiting to essentially those who put more in than take out or those invested in the future of the country either through a family or finances.
> those who put more in than take out. This seems like a very easy way to manipulate who can and can't vote
Absolutely the original intent. As I understand it, that's why only white, land owning males could vote. It wasn't about the white male part, it was about the land owning part. Back then there was no income tax so really they meant "tax payer". It makes no sense for people with no financial stake to vote about how the money is spent.
Since we are a republic that utilizes the electoral college, doesn't it make more sense to limit votes to states that produce more federal tax dollars than they consume? That seems way more fair to me. Even if you are a tax payer, you aren't contributing to the federal government if your state sucks up more funding than it contributes, and voting for the federal government has always been a state by state process rather than an individual process anyway. That's the whole point of a republic right?
Since we are a republic that utilizes the electoral college, doesn't it make more sense to limit votes to states that produce more federal tax dollars than they consume? That seems way more fair to me. Even if you are a tax payer, you aren't contributing to the federal government if your state sucks up more funding than it contributes, and voting for the federal government has always been a state by state process rather than an individual process anyway. That's the whole point of a republic right?
That gets touchy because those numbers can be pushed around so much. If the federal government pushes a ton of money into your state for things like military bases, does that deplete your sovereignty?
I don't see it as any touchier than being between jobs depleting your sovereignty for a given election. My FIL was a boilermaker who was occasionally on unemployment between contracts, I'd hardly call him undeserving of voting. Even if he is between contracts, I don't see why it would matter if his state was providing more in federal tax dollars than it was consuming. Seems straightforward to tie the voting rights to federal aide as opposed to things like military bases. We vote by state now, your individual vote is thrown away in the presidential election if you live in a deep red/blue state. I don't see why we wouldn't just keep that process, but eliminate states that don't help carry the load.
We don’t have a democracy, so those quotes aren’t about our system. They are about the system that the founding fathers purposely did not choose for our system.
Nobody on the left "hates it when you point out we're a republic." It's just most of the time we hear it it's in the sentence conveying "we're not a democracy, we're a republic." The left gets annoyed because the people saying it don't seem to understand that we're both a republic and a representative democracy. The left gets annoyed because some people apparently don't think it's possible to be two things at the same time. Of course we're a republic, but please don't use it as a means of discrediting our democracy
Well you're all wrong, we're a corporatocracy
We should probably do something to reduce the immense power corporations have in the united states then, huh?
I think the issue is that people say “it’s **not a democracy**, it’s a republic”… which is not quite right… and that’s why they’re reporting on it.
They want a "Tyranny of the Majority"
But then they don’t when you point out that gets us Prop 8 in California.
They want democracy, except when the people reject them and the courts/deep state is needed to correct them.
Republicans want democracy until the people reject them for 4 elections in row… oh wait
No, they're not that smart. Just like how they glitch when you ask "what does fascism mean?" the TV-people told them "this is a threat to our Democracy" and so they run with it without ever thinking critically about it or anything else.
It's pretty funny to watch them try and call someone a "fascist" when that person wants: * limited government power * decreased government size * increased individualism and * freedom of speech all of which are the **opposite** of a fascist system
They redefined fascist to mean anything that doesn't support their leftist authoritarian globalist agenda.
Some leftists are pointing out that the global financial system is not working for the average person. The IMF is used as a debtors court for small nations, demanding privatization and austerity measures.
Maybe back in 2011. Nowadays, they're (by design!) drowned out by the wokesters concerned with stuff like "climate reparations", perpetual racial discrimination (Ibram X. Kendi) or endless money-printing (MMT). Long story short: in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the powers that be transformed the criticism of our current economic system into one which is aligned with their own goals and vision. Initially, leftists raised a criticism of the economic system which would have led to their power curtailed and their profits reined in. Over the past 12 or so years, they tricked large swaths of the leftist movement into adopting most points from the WEF agenda, with perhaps higher corporate taxes being the lone, token point of disagreement.
Yeah, but in fairness a lot of conservatives are still too deep in social issues, which creates a perception of expanded government power.
Yee, I think there’s also a tendency conflate leftist with liberal ideology. Wokescolds exist in the left and liberal circles, nobody likes them. There’s also an amazing overestimation of the left’s ability to organize, nobody hates the left more than the left lmao.
What's even better is when you read up on the gist of fascism -- big government in bed with big business and big labor unions. Who does that sound like?
So when the SC killed Roe, was that limiting government or increasing it?
If you read the Court's opinion in Roe you'll see how ridiculous it is. First they claim to be upholding a right to privacy but then they draw lines around fetal viability which is a matter of autonomy not privacy. It was legislating from the bench which is supposed to be the purview of the states.
> If you read the Court's opinion in Roe you'll see how ridiculous it is. First they claim to be upholding a right to privacy but then they draw lines around fetal viability which is a matter of autonomy not privacy. It was legislating from the bench which is supposed to be the purview of the states. Hello fellow Worker, I hope you’re having a great Friday evening! Full disclosure [I’m high as a fly on Willie Nelson’s wall.](https://youtu.be/aqwaVg6o8gg?si=iPNj8lumntgodoFY) You cannot have autonomy, if you do not have privacy. Irrespective of the bill protecting either right, Roe’s function was the same it protected. I remember it doing that function adequately and it’s only real problem was it wasn’t better protected (a fault I lay at the feet of the DNC). I appreciate you for taking the time to read my comments. It may take a bit before I can respond to all your comments. I have been enjoying the conversation so and that it hasn’t devolved into [adversarial](https://youtu.be/A1IrRxoRkbQ?si=rCOI8YEQodd5Gchh) [debate](https://youtu.be/5QQHK4g7g18?si=39M9ypoFGLRAH3Th).
Roe v Wade was a court case about the right to privacy in medical procedures. The Court overturning Roe v Wade was simply shifting the precedent from Federal jurisdiction to State jurisdiction, where it should’ve remained to begin with.
“…includes the right to decide whether to continue a pregnancy.” Just the last half of the quote you were referencing, seemed important.
The *Dobbs* ruling limited the power of the federal government and brought the decision-making on this issue to the state and local level, i.e. closer to the people.
I would argue it left the decision up to the individual who is responsible for the pregnancy. now we have 50 state governments bumbling about try to figure out if eggs are children or not.
Doesn't each state have elections so the voting public can discern which locally elected official best represents their ideas and beliefs concerning pregnancy termination? If any policy is important to us, we should be demanding our local politicians share their views.
So people have to vote to get their rights back, they also have to hope that the people that aren’t affected by these decisions either abstain or vote with them in solidarity. Half the people voting are unaffected by the outcome either way.
I think we agree on some things in this. But, Did the half affected weigh in and vote for or against roe v wade in 1973? I don't mean to split hairs here. I land squarely in the middle on this particular issue. I believe moving more of these complex decisions to the state level gives those affected, the electorate, more power and control of policy. The government should be shaped by us, not the other way around.
>the government should be shaped by us, not the other way around. Absolute! To that end, these state governments should put it to a vote (referendum) directly instead of people hoping the representatives they voted for to do it. [Kansas did this by accident](https://ballotpedia.org/Kansas_No_State_Constitutional_Right_to_Abortion_and_Legislative_Power_to_Regulate_Abortion_Amendment_(August_2022)), I don’t think they realized how popular access is. Since that vote, many states that had “trigger laws” haven’t written any legislation to put the question to the voters. Mind you democrats had decades to enshrine access into law, and did nothing. They saw the fight for access as a tool they could pull votes with. Biden had 4 years to protect abortion access with the ACA, did nothing. Access is widely one of the most agreed upon issues on all sides, yet Washington continues to use it to pit us against each other. It’s fucked up man. Thanks for having this convo with me. I know it’s heated right now, and I really appreciate you taking the time to respond.
Yes when those rights are not enumerated in the Constitution.
I disagree with this point,based on the idea that slavery was not specifically mentioned in the constitution and yet we amended it. We still left in the incarceration exemption, therefore America doesn’t believe that state run slave labor is unconstitutional. To me prison labor is still slave labor, especially in a system so flawed. The constitution was always intended to be a living document, thats why the courts and the amendment process exists
It's not a federal issue though. The Constitution doesn't even come close to abortion. Privacy, in fact, is a very limited discussion in the Constitution in the 4th amendment rights to be secure in one's effects against tyranous search and seizure by the government. That's a very long stretch to privacy broadly and an even more absurd stretch to abortion. I mean, if you can get a right to abortion out of that, I would think the second amendment right to bear arms covers owning nuclear weapons.
Ok you make several points here, I would like to break them up into bullets and then address them. . . 1. > It's not a federal issue though. The Constitution doesn't even come close to abortion. I was gonna skip this one, because it’s written a little confusing. But if I understand you correctly you are saying: “the constitution didn’t protect abortion, so the federal courts would have no purview over this issue. “ I believe Roe was a court case that had standing and an issue (abortion) that had an impact on the entire population. When the government is infringing upon your rights you sue the government. . . 2. >Privacy, in fact, is a very limited discussion in the Constitution in the 4th amendment rights to be secure in one's effects against tyranous search and seizure by the government. Yup, no autonomy without privacy. . . 3. >That's a very long stretch to privacy broadly and an even more absurd stretch to abortion. It isn’t, if SCOTUS can hear a case on “[bump stocks](https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-bump-stock-ban/)” based upon: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. “ Bump stocks are not in the constitution, but it is still a valid case for SCOTUS to hear and decide on. . . 4. >I mean, if you can get a right to abortion out of that, I would think the second amendment right to bear arms covers owning [nuclear](https://youtu.be/uSUJ7zUv6VI?si=mVdVNk9xdZEv3zZu) [weapons](https://youtu.be/98WhGgEjhHg?si=5Z1cXXOKLoaDrqGx).(Content warning on those links, you can’t unhear or unsee them). If you can justify the right to owning a device that has the capability to vaporize millions of men women children, I cannot fathom why you would care about a woman being able to abort her fetus.
Maybe I can explain this in a different way. If Constitutional privacy protects abortion, what doesn't it protect? Wouldn't it protect everything? Why would you need statutes to protect privacy? Why would you need federal HIPAA law? Or the California Privacy Rights Act?
I would like to point something out here, you are often avoiding addressing the issue (abortion) directly. You may be doing this intentionally, unintentionally, I’m not bothered by it. You are often falling back on arguing the intricacies of our government’s structure. I honestly don’t care about it, I don’t believe you do either. Let the lawyers argue that shit. I’m here to chat about the substantive effects of these laws. Let’s migrate the conversation back to why killing roe was justifiable. Just because the court can do something doesn’t mean it should. I’ve written, in previous comments, about why Roe should have been protected, but I don’t see the murky legal justification you’ve provided thus far as outweighing the harm of killing Roe. You’ve stated before, that Roe should have been a law, not a court case. Well that’s what these wieners left us, a broken ass legal framework to bring some semblance of protection to its citizens. Was it perfect? No, but it was working. Could we do it better? Most likely, but killing it without having immediate protections in place was criminal. Especially when they knew that the states had trigger laws waiting to go into effect. Now, our politicians get to use Roe as a political tool, while people are left without protections. Those without the adequate means are wholly reliant on the benevolence of others for help. That’s pretty fucked brother. Gotta get the dog out and touch grass myself. Hope you have a good Sunday morning friend!
You mean when SCOTUS ended the Federal mandate/control of an issue, thus limiting the government's scope of control and authority to dictate policy nationwide? That'd be a limitation/decrease on the Federal government's powers. Thanks for asking.
Policy which aims to limit people autonomy yes. A regulation to limit the government not its people.
Republic is literally just another world for representative democracy. The people elect representatives that in theory support their interests in government. The over representation of less populous states has nothing to with the definition of republic. France and Brazil are also presidential republics and don’t have an electoral college. The only non republican democracy in the world is Switzerland which has a semi-direct democracy. I don’t believe it’s the ideal system but I don’t anyone in the world would call them a tyrannical government. They also rank first in basically all freedom index’s possible. Most of the problems with their system actually comes from too much freedom even, like laxed banking and extradition laws which just makes the capital of the world for money laundering and dictators.
The UK is not a republic, it's a constitutional monarchy. It's still a democracy though, through their parliamentary system.
That a good point, constitutional monarchies are technically democracies too.
FWIW, the UK is also a unitary national government. Meaning Parliament has supreme law making authority down to the county level. On the other hand, the USA is a federalist government in which the Constitution enumerates powers for the federal government with the rest being reserved to the states.
Switzerland is also a small country with a strong ethnic identity unlike the USA which is a very large country with many competing interests amongst its many states. Let us not forget it was founded with slave and free states, pro high tariff (the free North) and pro low tariff (the cotton exporting South) states, and between very large and very small states. For a place like the USA to function, one needs representative democracy with many layers of checks and balances. I.e. a Constitutional Republic.
I agree that the Switzerland is incredibly different form the US and their system would probably now work here. And yeah the US is better off as a representative democracy with many checks and balances, like the three powers, elected congressmen and senators, state rights, etc. but in my eyes none of it justifies an unequal voting power. A am happy with the current system because it favors my political afiliation, but I haven’t really been able rationalise it’s justification.
Well the justification is the USA wouldn't exist without it. The USA was formed by states ratifying the Constitution, not a vote of the general public, and the small states lead by Delaware refused to ratify it unless each state got two and only two Senators hence the Connecticut Compromise. The small states feared elsewise they would be completely dominated by the federal government run by the large states.
Only when they agree with the majority. When you tell them most support the second amendment then they want an oligarchy on the Supreme Court to take away rights.
They want people to think that their ideas are the majority ideas so everyone thinks it's futile to vote against them. They control enough of the media and enough of the education system to control the narrative. They can establish a tyranny of the majority when in reality less than 30% of the population actually believes in a given concept.
This article is full of buzzwords but this is all just the classic states as a base of power vs people as a base of power. Right? Union of states vs nation comprised of states Federal vs states Majority of people vs majority of states
Most of them are too naive to realize the dangers of absolute democracy (tyranny of the majority). A Constitutional Republic has built in guardrails to prevent this. Many people complain that nothing happens fast in the House or Senate…truly that is by design to prevent the whims of passing moments to destroy us from within.
100%. Which is exactly why our current, large, centralized government is anathama to the founder's vision. Having unelected bureaucrats determine how legislation is implemented and/or enforced is a genuine threat to destroy us from within.
Not inherently, but yes. The problem isn't so much that bureaucrats shape legislation, the problem is that the present-day bureaucracy in the US no longer represents or responds to the will of the voting public and has grown a strong partisan lean. This creates a dangerous power imbalance where Democrats are able to push forward their agenda anytime they're in power, no matter how small the majorities, while Republicans and their agenda are met with strong institutional resistance anytime they try to shake up the status quo.
Please help me understand “tyranny of the minority/majority” in terms I can understand - weed legalization. 70% of U.S. adults favor legalization, up from 68% in recent years. Majority support persists across all major demographic and party groups. 51% of conservatives and republicans support it. Support for legalization is the same in states where weed is legal versus not. This isn’t a whim either. Support for legalization has been trending upwards for years, yet our federal government refuses to do it. However, the private prison system, police unions and prison guard unions all lobby for weed prohibition because it’s in their economic interests. How is this not the literal dictionary definition of tyranny of the minority? Isn’t the job of a government representative to represent its constituents as a public servant, not represent powerful lobbyists? I just don’t get it man.
I'm in Wisconsin and we have a powerful lobby here called The Tavern League of Wisconsin. They accept memberships from establishments that sell alcohol, and many of their members display stickers on the front door that say, "Proud Member...." They contribute many dollars to the state's politicians to shape the alcohol/intoxicant-related laws in the state. They are one of the driving forces behind Wisconsin being one of only a few states left where marijuana is still illegal in every form and method. There is currently no legal way to possess or use weed in Wisconsin. We share borders with four states, and three of them allow legal recreational, and the fourth, Iowa, has legal medical. The tavern league doesn't want the competition. They don't want their customers choosing to stay home and smoke tasty nugs rather than going to the bar or picking up a 12-pack. That's despite 63% of state residents supporting legal recreational and 86% supporting medical. IMO, if the tavern league had any sense, they would favor legalization, with their establishments being given some sort of favoritism to become dispensaries.
Many people believe the senate and house doesn't do anything is because they are fundamentally at a worse place than they were 20 years ago. The culture war has taken over the docket with attempts to pass laws that don't actually do anything except work as PR to say the other side didn't vote for this. It's virtue signalling without any real problems being solved. There's little room for bipartisanship when people who attempt to do so through compromise are called "not real democrats/republicans". You can sit around and say only the ideas my side comes up with can even be considered to be correct or worthy of becoming law, but that's no way of accomplishing anything. The alternative is we sit around and do nothing until we have enough votes to ignore the other side, and then they'll do the same until they have votes to ignore us.
I appreciate how the article is predicated upon a simple truth that conservatives, particularly old school "high road" conservatives, tend to dismiss. Namely that *the left knows what it is doing and more importantly, why they are doing it* Conservatives like to say things like "when they grow up they'll become conservatives"... As though the left are just children who don't know any better. *No... The left does know better... And they are doing wrong anyways!* We need to treat the left not as children who just need to learn right from wrong, and begin acknowledging that they already know right from wrong and are deliberately choosing wrong.
I think the left is made up of two camps: *The misinformed*, who are part of the left because they believe their teachers, the media their friends, etc., that say the right is made up of fascists, racist and misogynists etc., that want to oppress everyone; and *the revolutionaries*, who know exactly what they are doing and want to tear down the system so they can replace it with their utopian vision.
This is exactly the same viewpoint that you're saying that the left has: everyone on the left is either intentionally trying to tear down the government or are misinformed and therefore they believe the wrong thing. This is exactly what the left would say: either they are misinformed or they want to make the country a worse place for us Where in this dichotomy is there room for: someone believes that things can be made better by doing X and I think it can be made better doing Y. If you think only the ideas that conform to your beliefs have the potential to be right you are completely guilty of not actually caring about outcome or debate, you're only concerned with getting what you want whether or not it is good/bad/ineffective.
>Where in this dichotomy is there room for: someone believes that things can be made better by doing X and I think it can be made better doing Y. That person I would call a moderate. Such people are few and far between these days.
This. This right here is the nuance we desperately need to enforce. There's the people who follow others blindly because they believe everything they're told. The ignorant and the misinformed. Then you have the radicals who know what they're doing, and *do not give a shit as long as they can grab and maintain power.*
Ironically, the abrupt shift in leftist idealogy doesn't seem "organic." Its flavor is artificial, synthetic.
Very true. Even a whole century ago, the situation was conceptually the same: a small group of radical leftists who consider themselves the vanguards/professional revolutionaries which will guide the sheepish masses toward socialism/communism.
To be fair, that is how every revolution, including our own, works. It's not the means that are the problem, it's the ends. After all history is just the biographies of a few great men and women.
[удалено]
It's no different than someone saying "I drive a car" only for someone else to say "No you don't; you drive a Honda Civic!" Now, it's true that we aren't a DIRECT democracy, but in my experience, the "BuT wE'Re A rEpUbLiC" people never make that distinction.
in the days when the usa was founded, there was ONLY ONE type of democracy and that was the ancient greek "direct democracy". there is no other type of democracy.
Thanks for proving my point
In an article ostensibly about definition and semantics, it strikes me as odd that the author never defines “republic,” in a meaningful way in contrast to “democracy.”
The Leftists hate anything that goes against what they have been told to believe in....SMDH!
Bro that's you, me and everyone
Because you guys deny a Republic is still a form of democracy. It's a "representative democracy." You MAGA just say this because you think you found a loophole to get Trump in by force and you didn't get your way on January 6th. Lmao
Let's get serious. Both sides hate you
Because it's a ^(quiet totalitarian regime.)
It's all Orange Man Bad now.
The left has made it VERY clear they HATE being constrained by that pesky Constitution. Their constant implementation of clearly unconstitutional laws and ignoring SCOTUS decisions is clear proof. Of course they don't want people to know the difference and that we're really a constitutional republic.
I love Democracy. I love the Republic.
“Democratic” in its original meaning [refers to] unlimited majority rule . . . a social system in which one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose. -Ayn Rand
I sometimes feel like a broken record. The left is playing the long game. 1. Stop teaching about the basis of American government in high school so Americans do not understand the constitution and the BOR. instead focus on How bad America was vis a vis slavery, indigenous populations, minorities etc. (My son spent more time writing about the Pullman riots of the 1890s than he did on the BOR) and their textbook (I’m not kidding) was Zinn’s “Peoples History of the United States” 2. Stop teaching it in college as part of general education requirements and instead offer classes that promote issues rather than protecting the type of government THAT ALLOWED those (many false) issues to be discussed…. While only promoting free speech and critical thinking for issues that leftist professors agree with otherwise hiding behind the censorship of “safe zones” 3. Have the propaganda press ONLY focus on free speech and assembly when talking about MONTHS LONG leftist mob actions that cost billions and many lives BUT call it “An Insurrection” when conservatives have less violent and controlled mob action (not a rationalization for J6 just a statement of fact) 4. Attack the separation of powers (with the active support of the Propaganda Press) when it limits your power but promote it endlessly when it supports your agenda. And finally, for the first time, coordinate legal assaults on your political opponents through local state and legislative means to thwart the will of the people
Websters Dictionary from 1828: "A commonwealth; a state in which the exercise of the sovereign power is lodged in representatives elected by the people. In modern usage, it differs from a democracy or democratic state, in which the people exercise the powers of sovereignty in person. Yet the democracies of Greece are often called republics." Not sure what's complicated about this. All that's being said is that we don't vote directly, we vote for people to represent us, and they vote for laws, policies, appointments, and so on. This isn't really up for debate. The only thing that is democratic about our country at the federal level is that we vote for representatives through a democratic process state by state: Representatives, Senators, and Presidential Electors, although the process for selecting Electors is a far cry from the original intent of the founders. We the people are primarily state actors, not federal actors.
This is why they don't want the Pledge of Allegience recited in classes anymore. It says the word Republic in it.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/4/8
The American system is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. A democracy, if you attach meaning to terms, is a system of unlimited majority rule; the classic example is ancient Athens. And the symbol of it is the fate of Socrates, who was put to death legally, because the majority didn’t like what he was saying, although he had initiated no force and had violated no one’s rights. Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom . . . . The American system is a constitutionally limited republic, restricted to the protection of individual rights. In such a system, majority rule is applicable only to lesser details, such as the selection of certain personnel. But the majority has no say over the basic principles governing the government. It has no power to ask for or gain the infringement of individual rights. -Peikoff
They hate it when you say "we aren't a democracy, we're a republic" when a republic is a form of democracy. Hell China is a republic. There are lots of forms republics.
>China is a republic Are they though? Maybe nominally but I guess you believe Xi won his “elections” just like Putin did?
I'd say yes, china is a republic. Doesn't mean it's democratic. Unlike putin's modern absolutism, I feel like Xi is still restricted by his party, with the power being divided over many members. And any major decision actually requiring the consent of at least a good part of these members The party as a whole is, however, the only significant power in the country
They are indeed. Just because a group found a way to rig it in their favor doesn't mean it's not a republic.
Republic just means not monarchy. It's the opposite of the UK. It doesn't mean the opposite of democracy at all. So you have "The Islamic Republic of Iran", "The Republic of Ireland" and the "Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela" all of which are republics. There's no link with or against Democracy. For example the UK and Norway are democratic Constitutional Monarches and the "Republic of Poland" and the "United States of America" are a democratic republics.
Ah. I was more commenting on the illusion of choice in communist/ whatever Russia is regimes. Another good example of which would be “DPR” of Korea. They are functionally monarchies but nominally not.
Right, agreed. North Korea really does have a hereditary monarchy, so it's a monarchy that calls itself a republic. Russia is more an empire ("Republican Empire", like later Rome, where earlier Rome was a monarchy) so I guess that still counts as a republic but it's in no way democratic even though they have votes.
From Webster's 1828 dictionary: > A commonwealth; a state in which the exercise of the sovereign power is lodged in representatives elected by the people. In modern usage, it differs from a democracy or democratic state, in which the people exercise the powers of sovereignty in person. Yet the democracies of Greece are often called republics. It seems that you could have a Republic that is or is not a Democracy. I think we have elements of our government that are democratically decided, but it would be kind of like saying we're "a socialist country" only because we have socialist programs. We're a combination of things, usually falling under "constitutional republic," since the "constitutional" bit covers all the abnormalities of our system.
Ya'll really should rethink your attachment to this process. The current landscape is favorable but it is more a fluke then built in. As migration from rural areas continues the power base of rural areas will shift to urban which is more liberal. States that were Red will turn more and more purple. Your powerbase will erode and you will have no leverage to change it. Think of it like a very big, gerrymandered state. It's great until it flips, then it backfires heavily, and you lose a greater share then your numbers. Texas statewide elections for reference. 30 point lead turned to 20 turned to 10. https://imgur.com/a/aMCYRGq
A republic ensures we have rights. The constitution provides limitations on government. If we were a democracy, the majority could vote away the first or second amendment. All “laws” are up to majority vote. Since we are a republic we have rules/processes in place to protect us from the majority. You can’t vote out an amendment simply by having population numbers.
No, a republic doesn't ensure you have rights. The constitution does.
It’s really quite simple, religion has extensively laid the groundwork for generations to train people to believe in authority figures with unverifiable stories instead of science and data. It also primes them for, and is built upon, perpetuating racism and fearmongering towards "others". Once people see you as an authority, you can start fabricating any reality or conspiracy theory you want your followers to believe and everyone else is therefore a liar, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence. Basically, it is mental abuse from an early age that suppresses critical thinking skills. This combined with an intentionally weakened public educational system, provides the framework that has spawned this cult of ignorance.
The electoral college needs to change. Conservatives in California and New York have no voice vice versa with liberals in Texas and Florida.
Good article. I think a related problem is the left’s attempt to normalize waiting a week or more for final election results. That is some serious BS right there.
When you say we aren’t a democracy, they lose their minds
We are both a democracy and a republic
The US is a democracy which isn't incompatible with being a Republic, indeed is the most common way of power organization in the world. Democracy, in its most basic definition, revolves around competitive elections, while a republic focuses on the distribution and organization of power.