# US democracy under threat?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-democracy-under-threat/73521>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [July 23, 2001, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-democracy-under-threat/73521 "2001-07-23T09:13:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\
**Post date:** [July 27, 2001, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-democracy-under-threat/73521/21 "2001-07-27T17:12:14Z")

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**NiceGuyJack** wrote:

> [@](#):
>
> Perhaps we wouldn’t have wasted countless lives and 15 years on a useless war in Vietnam if we had held a plebiscite.

Actually, the Vietnam War war had tremendous public support for most of its duration. Even following the Tet Offensive in '68, something like 70% of Americans supported the war effort. Until the early 70’s, the war protesters were a very vocal and very visible minority.

I don’t think plebiscites are a good way to handle foreign policy, and are particularly unsuited for decisions about military matters. If the Vietnam War had been waged by plebiscite, we might well have wound up unleashing nuclear weapons.

And that would have been a bad thing.

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