For the record, there had been nothing hysterical or anything demonstrably crappy about the original post, and there is something very important that I think a lot of us are failing to fully grasp right now. In a democratic republic, the people are in charge and their role is to make their wishes known to those who represent them.The poor guy must have failed high school civics. We don't live in a "democratic republic"...we live in a Federal Constitutional Republic, otherwise known as a representative republic. The people aren't "in charge", the people elect other people to be in charge. And if they don't like what those people do, they elect other people the next time around.
Remember the German Democratic Republic? Yeah...that was East Germany. The now-unified Germany kept the name of the former West Germany: The Federal Republic of Germany. It's no coincidence that one survived and the other didn't. Just think of states whose formal names contain the words "Democratic Republic" or "People's Republic" and ask yourself if you want to live there. North Korea goes for the double-whammy with the name "Democratic People's Republic of Korea".
The whole point of a representative republic is to prevent the worst tendencies of mob rule, such as the marginalization of significant minorities, like the 48% of Americans who didn't vote Democrat.
2 comments:
I think you're both half-right.
Yes, we live in a republic, not a democracy. One of the net results is that (theoretically) the rights of the minority can not be overruled by 50% +1 of the voters. The classical Greek model of democracy was simple majority rule. So even a guy like Thucydides could be ostracized (thrown out of the Attica region for at least 10 years). So it's being a republic that prevents mob rule.
We the people ARE in charge. We pay the bills. We've hired representatives to do our bidding. But we can and should let them know how we want them to vote. The easiest way to do that is to vote for creeps with whom we agree. But contacting your Congress critter or Sen-uh-tor on important issues is always an option that should be exercised when important issues are under consideration.
Yeah, my point wasn't that "we the people" shouldn't let our elected officials know what we think, just that we're not "in charge" in the manner suggested by the DU poster. If we were, every bit of legislation would be put to a referendum and we'd be voting two or three times a week.
I still maintain that we put other people in charge on our behalf by electing them.
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