Yes. The people vote for the single candidate, who so far has happened to be the previous leader’s son. The system works!
The Onion’s “Our Dumb World” had a part where it said that each superlative made it less democratic and more stabby. So the Republic of the Congo is relatively better than the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was outranked by the (very much paraphrased) People’s Happy Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was a hellhole.
*As aside, a damn AP news report from the other day kept referring to unrest in “the Congo” multiple times. I had to Google the geography to find what country they were talking about (it was the one you’d expect).
I will accept the weak version of this hypothesis, but not the strong one.
If someone comes here and makes a post unfairly bashing a viewpoint I disagree with, yes, I confess, I am less likely to say, “Whoa, that’s unfair” than if the post bashed a viewpoint I agree with. I think that is true of very nearly everyone.
But to sway and swing in fundamental beliefs – “Activist judges are bad!” “Thank goodness the courts struck down that bad law!” – is, I think, reserved only for the very worst of hypocrites.
Nobody’s absolutely clean…but most of us manage not to reek.
This strain of thought may derive from Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s “Democracy: The God That Failed”. Those that approach politics from an economic slant tend to believe the will of the people is less important than the implementation of their ideal economic system. Mises claimed (paraphrasing) democracy was ideal not because it allowed the will of the people to be represented in the political system, but that it prevented agitation from fomenting into revolution and resulting in systemic change (very inefficient for market functioning!) - basically, the right Reverend Townsend nailed it a few hundred years ago:
Exactly what I came in here to say. These are the same people who love direct democracy when it comes to ballot initiatives stripping gays of the right to marry, and decry ‘activists judges’ who override the will of the people in such cases. Or who organize direct democratic judicial recall campaigns in states like Iowa when the judiciary has stirrings of independence. Opportunist hypocrites.
I’m glad you brought this “We are not a Democracy! We are a Republic!” topic up because I keep getting stuck here with my friend who lives in his own private Libertaria, and I’m not sure why he keeps bringing it up. To me, it really does not make any sense and seems like a “potato, pototoe” argument.
Every time we go around this wheel, he thinks he has “won” something. He is a (substitute) teacher, so I thought he was just trying to prove he read a history book or something. But because he is so persistent and adamant about this particular issue, I could not figure out what I was missing, nor could he really explain it to my satisfaction (thus, I am dumb, according to him).
My takeaway is that he is fixated on some bit of minutiae that makes profound sense only to himself a few self-selected others (as evidenced by the Google recommendation above).
I first had this childish “gotcha” pointed out to me by probably the world’s youngest member of the John Birch Society, circa 1968. We were twelve years old at the time.
Ever since I became an adult, I have never understood the democracy worship that so many people have.
A democracy is very likely the worst form of government ever devised. It is simply mob rule with a veneer of civilization–nothing more. A democracy has absolutely no protections of any kind for any type of minority–whether that’s a political minority, a social minority, or any other kind. Now some people might object, and say, “But protections could be voted into place.” Of course they could. But what 50% + 1 can do, 50% + 1 can undo. This is called “tyranny of the majority.”
A republic, on the other hand, has three defining characteristics.
(1) It has protections for minorities built into its very structure. A beautiful example of this is the Electoral College. Some people say that the Electoral College is undemocratic–and they’re absolutely right. Where they go wrong is in wanting democracy.
(2) A republic is a hybrid form of government. It combines the best features of other forms of government.
In the case of the United States, the President comes from monarchy. The Congress comes from oligarchy. And the means of choosing most public officials (other than the President) comes from democracy.
(3) Another part of a republic’s structure is division of power. The very form of a republic makes it difficult for any individual or group to accumulate more power than they should have. This is normally achieved by one or both of two ways-- (A), power is split between levels (national vs. local) and (B) power at each level is split between functions of government.
Incidentally, the Seventeenth Amendment should be repealed. The Senate was designed, in part, to give the states–as entities–direct representation on the national level. Direct election of Senators is a step away from the republican ideals that the Founding Fathers left us.
In what way does the Electoral College provide any protection for any meaningful minority?
Quite a few nations which are generally considered to be republics have neither of these features, and yet continue to function at least as well as our own. In the UK, for instance, the reins of all functions of government are held by Parliament, and they can act at any level.
It looks like you’re engaging in the same form of system-worship that you’re attributing to your opponents-- Don’t just tell us that the amendment diverged from the Founders’ original intention; that much is obvious. Instead, tell us why the Founders’ original intention was better. Why is it a good thing for the states as entities in their own right to have direct national representation? What desirable goal does that accomplish?
They were doing this before Obama. I think it is a way to be dismissive of all those voters who didn’t vote the same as them by showing how they don’t understand our form of government or constitution. Of course that is obvious, but there you go.
He’s right (I don’t agree with his premises, but it is a coherent and prevalent line of thought in the US). In that certain institutions have a “democratising effect”, where the population will “want stuff”. This is the “Crisis of Democracy”: how the institutions can prevent the people from achieving their wishes (tyranny of the majority) in order to protect their own interests (governance). This was absolutely the view of the founding fathers.
I’ve heard this (i.e. the use of “republic” for “constitutional representative democracy” and interpretation of the word “democracy” in the narrowest terms possible) online for years from Americans on both sides of the political spectrum.
Quite a few nations which are generally considered to be republics have neither of these features, and yet continue to function at least as well as our own. In the UK, for instance, the reins of all functions of government are held by Parliament, and they can act at any level.
[QUOTE]
The United Kingdom is not a republic. The Queen says not.
Isn’t a republic just a state without a monarch (or inherited ruler)? There are all sorts of “republics” in the world, and there’s nothing that says the US is the be-all and end-all of what a republic should be.
Same with democracy. It needn’t be a direct democracy. A representative democracy (us) is a democracy, too. Just a different kind of one.
Not at all. As cited above, the UK has a monarch, but is still a Republic. You can argue that she’s just a figurehead, but the UK is still a Republic once you factor in the House of Lords. There are few vestiges of inheritance in the House of Lords, and they will likely be gone in the near future, but they are still there and have always been there, so a monarch/inheritance isn’t a requirement of a Republic.
I generally argue that the United States isn’t a democracy (and there’s nothing wrong with that!), but when it comes down to it, the problem with arguing that the US is/isn’t a democracy comes down to what definition of “democracy” you prefer, and there really isn’t a clear winner. The ballot system that most states have is clearly direct democracy, but its strength varies considerably from state to state. The US government more closely resembles the monarchy that was Sparta rather than the democracy that was Athens. To some, that is a problem. To others, who cares?
That’s one definition. It isn’t the only one, and it usually isn’t the most useful.
Think about this: North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Canada, America.
Which of those go together?
Well, obviously, North Korea and America should be classed together, and Canada fits right in with Saudi Arabia. Done and done.
Oh. Wait. That’s patently idiotic.
Canada and the US are a lot more alike than not, regardless of whose face is on the money, and while I wouldn’t accuse Saudi Arabia of being fully as bad as the Kim Family’s Gulag, don’t try to be an apostate there.
So what word should be used to refer to America and Canada? Frankly, ‘democracy’ seems to have won, but ‘republic’ is a good runner-up.
It’s not about monarchy, specifically. Were Obama and Harper elected, directly or through a system of electors etc.? Did people vote for Kim and Abdullah? That gives you a good idea whether they are a republic. (Although note, the argument comes up whether it counts if the election is a sham.) You can absolutely quibble about whether country X is a democracy, but the RW arguments like “in a democracy, Pelosi can send jackboots” to LW “this is not a democracy because some people starve/can’t get married/have never heard of Howard Zinn.”
Tangentially, republic is not a synonym for “representative democracy” as many people on the internets seem to think. Hell, if you define democracy as “direct,” like some people do, then pretty much no place is a democracy, although you could argue for local governments and that Switzerland is the closest bet. That the framers preferred the term “republic” should not be evidence that they didn’t like democracy, although they certainly argued against the purest term. I think that one’s definition needs to be adjusted if the one example is one country-kinda-sorta and possibly in dead societies (with non-universal suffrage).
By the basic definition (and that used by Wikipedia, take that as you may), not the one used by extremist message boards, the UK is not a republic, except that it functions pretty close to one, as the queen doesn’t do much running of things, hence “crowned.” The US and many other countries like in South America fuse head of state and government. Others, like many European countries, the PM is the HoG and the president is the HoS. Countries differ in the relative strengths of the two positions (France and Russia, among others, switch those roles), and whether roles are elected or appointed. I have no idea what to call Andorra.
