Where does the origin of the names of political camps (USA I mean) come from ? President Bush was elected on a democratical basis and president Clinton was president of a republic ?
The Democrats are a shortening of Jefferson’s Democratic Republican Party. By Jackson’s time, “Republican” was dropped. When a new abolition-oriented party was formed in the 1850s, they took the leftover name Republican.
The names aren’t meant to represent anything in particular.
They’re just labels that don’t really have much meaning. Much more accurate names for the parties would be “People’s Front of Judaea” and “Judaean People’s Front”.
[sup]What do you mean it isn’t immediately obvious which name goes to which party?[/sup]
all at once:
SPLITTER!!!
Actually, these names really do have some meaning.
If you ask the typical citizen of the US which form of government he lives under, he will likely reply “democracy”. News commentators and others prattle on and on about “our democratic form of government”. They are both wrong and illustrate the low level of political education which exists in this country. It is convenient and safe for the powers that be that the people believe this fable.
In fact, as conservative ideologues of the Republican Party will tell you; our form of government is the constitutional republic. The founding fathers were against democracy as it threatened the position of private property. In those days, only Jacobins were for democracy in theory.
Therefore, “republican”, as in Republican Party, means that party which claims to uphold the principles of a republic; as opposed to a democracy. For the Democrats, it is not quite so simple. The core constituency of the Democratic Party definitely believes in democracy, but the Party poobahs really don’t in their heart of hearts. They mouth the proper democratic platitudes to keep the masses from bolting. In a republic, someone or some party has to perform this function, and in the US, the task falls to the Democratic Party.
And the Illuminati decided this, right?
No, there is no Illuminati. The Illuminati is the invention of paranoid right wing nut cases.
Ahem.