The practice of medicine, as well as hospitals and insurance companies, are already regulated at the state level, not the feds.
Except that most hospitals are dependent on Medicare and Medicaid patients, so CMS has a lot to say about how they operate.
Yes, that’s also true.
Well to be fair, Republicans started saying the US wasn’t a democracy around 2016. They said this like it was a good thing.
The “republic, not a democracy” meme became big much earlier, during the 2000 presidential recount.
“A republic, if you can keep it”, goes back to 1787.
That, of course, has zero to do with what we are talking about.
Before that, I seem to remember a lot of talk about “the republic for which it stands.”
Was that during your daily forced indoctrination?
That’s less talk, more mindless recitation, and certainly not defining the political structure of our country.
I seem to remember “a lot of talk about” liberty and justice for all, and that’s certainly not defining the social structure.
Well, during the attempt; I saw no point in pledging allegiance to a flag, and so, y’know, didn’t actually bother to mouth the words. And when I learned about the Supreme Court decision that addressed the right not to so pledge allegiance, I was glad to hear it; and when I heard that the Supreme Court struck down an oh-so-popular law about burning the flag, well, I was glad to hear that, too.
Notice that there’s no denial or repudiation of democracy, either implicitly or explicitly, in that line.
It’s only when the right started realizing that it could not achieve majorities through fair and equal elections that it started acting like democracy was not something it values.
And also the fallacy that a republic and a democracy were somehow antitheses of each other.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘antitheses’; I kind of figured that, like the man said, the “very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”
When it comes to handling stuff other than that, sure, bring on the plebiscites, or let elected officials take point; but for all the stuff that is that, I always thought it wasn’t supposed to be a question of whether the vote was democratic.
Yes, but that isn’t “a republic, not a democracy.” The USA is both a republic and a democracy, and for generations no one had a problem with that. It’s recently that Republicans have started claiming it’s not a democracy.
Only when it serves their purpose. Otherwise they subscribe to the mob mentality of "50 million Elvis fans can’t be wrong.
They’re betting the farm on rigging the Electoral College system. It definitely behooves them to downplay the relevance of the popular vote (you know: the one where they’ve been losing, bigly [NB: unfortunately, the Democrats keep forgetting that winning the popular vote is tantamount to receiving a ‘participation trophy.’])
It also behooves Democrats to remember that one of the most important features of a Constitutional Republic is that it avoids the “It’s like two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for lunch” aspect of a true Democracy.
And maybe blunts – if only marginally – the “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter” quote from Churchill.
Where “recently” means since (at least) the 1970s when I first heard right-wingers saying it.
My being born in 1963 might color my recollection of just how old this canard is.
Yeah, that particular platitude whereby it pretends to be a binary alternative is one of those rhetorical flourishes used to justify positions by appeal to “originalist” idolatry-of-the-founders. Basically those pointing it out reach for writings of the early Republic who did make a distinction in making the claim the indirect limited representational system created was a way to avoid the “tyranny of the majority”.
Now, we may look at it and say: “Wait, those authors were using the word “democracy” to refer to what, to them, was unrestricted rule swayed by the passion of the moment, in what was a time and place with very limited means of communication and a lot of illiterate people, and contrast it to their brilliant “republic” which would be governed with virtue and reason according to strict parameters, by men like them. These were people who did not even grant suffrage to all white Christian men, dammit!”
Now, one would think, wouldn’t that vision of the Republic/Democracy dichotomy become ineffective in gathering popular votes as the society changed? Ah… but what we’re missing is… both the supposedly “conservative” elites and the populist voters have been raised to believe that they are the holders of true values of virtue and wisdom, and the Republic should be governed by men [claiming to be] like them, regardless of whether they are a true numerical majority and that that is what it meant all along.
Bit of a hijack, but I’ll keep it short.
Back when I was a youth, I happened to be a fly on the wall when some people from a wealthy family in Canada were chatting just amongst themselves about politics. One of them commented that he’d recently read about how in the German Empire, votes were weighted according to an individual’s wealth, so that a rich person’s vote counted 3 or 5 times more than an ordinary schlub’s vote, and “Gee, that sounds like such a sensible system. If only there were a way to implement it here in Canada.” AND NOT ONE DAMN PERSON sitting around that table called him on his anti-democratic, plutocratic vision. They all nodded and said variants of “if only…”
I don’t have a bumper sticker that says “Eat the rich”, but ever since then I’ve viewed with suspicion any rich person who wants to be in politics.
But no one in the Democratic Party ever forgot that. It’s just not a thing in American politics that anyone is seriously saying the majority should be allowed to take away the rights of any minority by sheer popular vote.
This “Republic not a democracy” thing is parroted by so many Trumpists on social media that I’m starting to think it’s a Russian astroturf thing. Most of the people saying it clearly don’t really know what republics and democracies are.
So if the Dems were to pack the court, which then revisited and overturned Heller on the basis that they that hand guns are not arms and so are not covered under the second amendment, you’d say that they were correct in their assessment?