Ireland recovering from Theocracy.

[Starlight]

Yes. And if a priest-ridden country like Ireland, mired for so long in Dark Ages morality, can vote thus then virtually any country in the developed world can...

Except Australia...

[Tassman]

"The Republic of Ireland has voted overwhelmingly to legalise same-sex marriage in a historic referendum. More than 62% voted in favour of amending the country's constitution to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry.
It is the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage through a popular vote.
Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny said it was a "small country with a big message for equality" around the world.
The referendum was held 22 years after homosexual acts were decriminalised in the Republic of Ireland."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32858501

Yes. And if a priest-ridden country like Ireland, mired for so long in Dark Ages morality, can vote thus then virtually any country in the developed world can...of course the religion-infested third world countries are beyond hope, at least for now. The Irish voters have rejected centuries of anti-homosexual rhetoric and realised the truth about love, that it doesn't have a gender, race, skin colour, creed, or sexual orientation! Well done!

[Starlight]

It seems that Sam is aghast that anyone is against dumbing down Americans about this.

You're putting words into Sam's mouth here. He never implied this.

Keep 'em ignorant so they don't know what is constitutional and what isn't.

What purpose do you think it serves for the general population to know more about the contents of the constitution?

What I observe happening sometimes in the US is that the general populace (who have no legal training and no great amount of intelligence and mental framework for actually understanding the subtleties of the processes by which courts set precedents and reach constitution decisions) delude themselves into believing that they personally have the mental skills to go around pronouncing what is • Edited by a Moderator • and what isn't. And subsequently instead of paying any attention to what the law is, they will act as if their own beliefs about the implications of the constitution have the force of law. It seems to me you'd be much better off actually educating people about what laws actually say and encouraging people to actually obey them, than you would giving encouragement to stupid people to draw their own conclusions about what they feel ought to be legal based on their own personal interpretation of the constitution.

[rogue06]

Yeah!

It seems that Sam is aghast that anyone is against dumbing down Americans about this. Keep 'em ignorant so they don't know what is constitutional and what isn't. Hey, it's what the majority wants -- after all it is a Democracy. $#@% the law. Majority rule.

[Cow Poke]

Democracy is a dictatorship.

Our founding fathers had every opportunity to create a democracy but did not choose to do so. Why? Because they were utterly repulsed by the idea recognizing it for what it is.

Let's take a quick peek at what some of them had to say about it shall we

Source: James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10

Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

© Copyright Original Source

In the same document Madison, regarded as the "Father of the Constitution" as well as author of and biggest supporter of our Bill of Rights, stated that in a pure democracy "there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.” It is in essence mob rule.

Source: John Witherspoon, Signer of the Declaration of Independence

Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state, it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Fisher Ames, author of the House language for the 1st Amendment

A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way. The known propensity of a democracy is towards licentiousness [excessive license] which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be liberty.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Gouverneur Morris, signer and Penman of the Constitution, in a 1814 speech

We have seen the tumult of democracy terminate ... as [it has] everywhere terminated, in despotism… Democracy! savage and wild. Thou who wouldst bring down the virtuous and wise to the level of folly.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: John Marshall, first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Zephaniah Swift, author of America’s first legal treatise

It may generally be remarked that more a government resembles a pure democracy the more they abound with disorder and confusion.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, in a 1789 letter to John Adams

A simple democracy ... is one of the greatest evils.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Edmund Randolph, 1787, at the Constitutional Convention

...that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found in the turbulence and follies of democracy.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Noah Webster, in his 1801 “American Spelling Book”

In a democracy ... there are commonly tumults and disorders… Therefore a pure democracy is generally a very bad government. It is often the most tyrannical government on earth.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: John Quincy Adams in a speech celebrating the Jubilee of the Constitution

The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived.

© Copyright Original Source

And from his father...

Source: John Adams, in a letter from 1814

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history.

© Copyright Original Source

In his highly influential Thoughts on Government stated unequivocally that "There is no good government but what is republican" and that was the form of government that was established.After the Conventional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked what had been wrought to which he famously answered: "A republic, if you can keep it."

The word "democracy” appears absolutely nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or Constitution – the two most fundamental documents of our nation. Instead of a democracy, the Constitution’s Article IV Section 4, guarantees "to every State in this Union a Republican form of government."^[1]

In fact, the Constitution is replete with undemocratic mechanisms. The Electoral College and Senate representation come to mind. The Bill of Rights enumerates individuals with similar protections against the majority. The First Amendment, for example, is totally undemocratic. It was designed to protect unpopular speech against democratic fervor.

Instead of a democracy which they viewed as merely another form of tyranny our founders gave us a republic, with a representative form of government. Democracy is rule by majority or mob rule (the point of the two wolves and a sheep voting on what's going to be had for dinner remark I posted earlier), whereas a representative Republic is based upon the rule of law -- the Constitution.

The latter recognizes the unalienable rights of individuals (the power of the majority is limited by a written constitution which safeguards the God-given inalienable rights of minority groups and individuals alike) while the former is only concerned with group wants at any given moment. As I said -- mob rule or maybe a "mobocracy."

The great American author James Fenimore Cooper put it another way:

Source:

It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.

© Copyright Original Source

In closing I'll note that since the formation of our nation no American president ever referred to the U.S. as a democracy until Woodrow Wilson misapplied the term during WWI. Sadly, today it has become common to use the term democracy in describing our form of government including by presidents and other top elected officials from both major political parties.

Maybe things would be different if every elected official was required to memorize what the founding fathers had to say or even how the U.S. Department of War (superseded by the U. S. Department of Defense) training manual (No. 2000-25), published in 1928, which every American soldier once carried, defined Democracy.:

Source:

A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any form of ‘direct’ expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic – negating property rights. Attitude toward the law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.” The manual went on to state: “Our Constitutional fathers, familiar with the strengths and weakness of both autocracy and democracy, with fixed principles definitely in mind, defined a representative republican form of government. They ‘made a very marked distinction between a republic and a democracy and said repeatedly and emphatically that they had founded a republic.’

© Copyright Original Source

And thus ends today's rant

















1. Think of it this way, does our Pledge of Allegiance to the flag say "to the democracy for which it stands"? Or do we sing the “Battle Hymn of the Democracy” or the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”?

Yeah!

[Starlight]

Three different conservatives had expressed various objections to democracy in this thread alone at the point I commented. I've also seen such a view regularly expressed in other threads by conservative posters in this forum. Anti-democratic sentiment among conservatives here seems quite widespread.

Amusingly a few posters here seem to have a fair level of insecurity about their own anti-democratic views though and project them onto other people, and so accuse me and/or the left in general of being anti-democratic, while themselves espousing anti-democratic views.

The whole "the US is a republic not a democracy" game is completely disingenuous. It has democratic elections, hence democracy. I do think that their poorly conceived constitution makes it much worse though. Every other country that has tried copying the US's model has failed, and anyone who has been watching US politics recently and watched the government shutdown while eating popcorn, can hardly say that the US system is particularly functional.

My own country has been a democracy now for 160 years.* So I find reading through rogue's quote-gallery of the US founding fathers quite entertaining - the complete idiocy and factual falsity of their quotes is hilarious. In their defense, they were, of course, writing at a time where democracy hadn't been widely used as a form of government. So they couldn't have known what we know now - that democracies work perfectly fine for centuries.

The irony of all this, in light of this thread topic - same sex marriage - is that the US Supreme Court is widely expected to be about to declare that the US constitution implicitly endorses same-sex marriage as a constitutional right. So all the constitutional fetishists out there who hate letting the people decide things by popular vote and would much much rather an unelected and unaccountable judiciary (who in the US are appointed with the intention of bias, by partisan presidents, after the random-roulette of death strikes down a previous appointee) get to impose their whims on the populace... will doubtless be celebrating... right? After all Rogue, isn't this what you wanted? You've got your Republic as opposed to a Democracy, so you get to have those judges telling you that you have to have same-sex marriage instead of the people being allowed to get a say in it. What an awesome system... I'm sure it's the envy of the world... LOL.

I would also point out that Jefferson was famously horrified when the Supreme Court took it upon themselves to grant themselves the power to strike down federal laws as 'unconstitutional'. He had apparently never conceived of that being a possibility. In his mind the constitution was never supposed to be a weapon for the judiciary to be able to use against the laws passed by democratically elected representatives:

Jefferson's response to Marbury v Madison:

You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.... Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.

In fact, the Constitution is replete with undemocratic mechanisms. The Electoral College and Senate representation come to mind.

It's amusing you mention the Electoral College... offhand it's hard to think of a stupider institution. It surprises me that only 62% of Americans want to scrap it.


* Yes, we technically have a monarch (the Queen of England), who in practice wields no power whatsoever. We are for all intents and purposes a complete democracy, and have no constitution.

[Sam]

My response was to an idiot who thinks that opposition to Democracy is tantamount to wanting a dictatorship. It was to pure Democracies that the objections were being raised. Apparently he didn't know what you insist "we all know."

Starlight was using the word "democracy" as DLA was using it and as we all use it in general conversation. I don't know anyone in "real life" who goes around correcting folk about the difference between a republic and a democracy when they categorize the USA as a democracy. I don't see why it keeps coming up here as a counterpoint, except for its use as an easy target.

By all means, criticize the glib bifurcation between "democracy" (by which we all are meaning "democratic republic") and dictatorship. But let's end the democracy/republic stuff. It's not relevant and it's based on a willful oversimplification of an opponent's use of the term while allowing the colloquial sense to pass unscathed other times.

[rogue06]

Ugh. Again.

If people are going to be complaining about the consequences of a democracy when a democratic Republic like the USA or Ireland passes measures by popular vote, why is it that people who respond using that loose definition of "democracy" (which we virtually always use when describing America!) get rants about the difference between Republics and Democracies?

We all know the difference between a constitutional democratic republic and a pure democracy. We don't need people pointing out the difference every time — especially in response to someone who is just going along with earlier posters' colloquial use.

And thus ends my rant for today.

My response was to an idiot who thinks that opposition to Democracy is tantamount to wanting a dictatorship. It was to pure Democracies that the objections were being raised. Apparently he didn't know what you insist "we all know."

And I think that the "loose definition of "democracy" (which we virtually always use when describing America!)" is at the root of many of our political problems and misunderstandings. How often have you heard misinformed folks declare "majority rules"?

[Sam]

Don't recall saying otherwise, do you? Besides, it was only one person that seemed to have a problem with it, not conservatives as a whole. What is that thing called again when you try to broad brush an entire group of people, based upon what a few people say?

A hasty generalization. But while DLA is the only one who expressed his displeasure with "democracy" explicitly, this is a general trend among at least a large subset of Conservatives. The Religious Right, for example, is an authoritarian wing of the Conservative bloc. So Starlight's comment wasn't a hasty generalization, especially as we really do seem to have had a fair number of authoritarian Conservatives here through the years.

Personally, I'm just ready for the whole "Well, we're a republic not a democracy" counterpoint to go away. It's never been applicable in all the times I've seen it used on this board. No one has argued for a pure democracy or extolled the virtues of pure majority rule.

[lilpixieofterror]

As is Ireland.

Don't recall saying otherwise, do you? Besides, it was only one person that seemed to have a problem with it, not conservatives as a whole. What is that thing called again when you try to broad brush an entire group of people, based upon what a few people say?

[Sam]

Democracy is a dictatorship.

Our founding fathers had every opportunity to create a democracy but did not choose to do so. Why? Because they were utterly repulsed by the idea recognizing it for what it is.

Let's take a quick peek at what some of them had to say about it shall we

Source: James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10

Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

© Copyright Original Source

In the same document Madison, regarded as the "Father of the Constitution" as well as author of and biggest supporter of our Bill of Rights, stated that in a pure democracy "there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.” It is in essence mob rule.

Source: John Witherspoon, Signer of the Declaration of Independence

Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state, it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Fisher Ames, author of the House language for the 1st Amendment

A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way. The known propensity of a democracy is towards licentiousness [excessive license] which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be liberty.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Gouverneur Morris, signer and Penman of the Constitution, in a 1814 speech

We have seen the tumult of democracy terminate ... as [it has] everywhere terminated, in despotism… Democracy! savage and wild. Thou who wouldst bring down the virtuous and wise to the level of folly.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: John Marshall, first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Zephaniah Swift, author of America’s first legal treatise

It may generally be remarked that more a government resembles a pure democracy the more they abound with disorder and confusion.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, in a 1789 letter to John Adams

A simple democracy ... is one of the greatest evils.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Edmund Randolph, 1787, at the Constitutional Convention

...that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found in the turbulence and follies of democracy.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Noah Webster, in his 1801 “American Spelling Book”

In a democracy ... there are commonly tumults and disorders… Therefore a pure democracy is generally a very bad government. It is often the most tyrannical government on earth.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: John Quincy Adams in a speech celebrating the Jubilee of the Constitution

The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived.

© Copyright Original Source

And from his father...

Source: John Adams, in a letter from 1814

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history.

© Copyright Original Source

In his highly influential Thoughts on Government stated unequivocally that "There is no good government but what is republican" and that was the form of government that was established.After the Conventional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked what had been wrought to which he famously answered: "A republic, if you can keep it."

The word "democracy” appears absolutely nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or Constitution – the two most fundamental documents of our nation. Instead of a democracy, the Constitution’s Article IV Section 4, guarantees "to every State in this Union a Republican form of government."^[1]

In fact, the Constitution is replete with undemocratic mechanisms. The Electoral College and Senate representation come to mind. The Bill of Rights enumerates individuals with similar protections against the majority. The First Amendment, for example, is totally undemocratic. It was designed to protect unpopular speech against democratic fervor.

Instead of a democracy which they viewed as merely another form of tyranny our founders gave us a republic, with a representative form of government. Democracy is rule by majority or mob rule (the point of the two wolves and a sheep voting on what's going to be had for dinner remark I posted earlier), whereas a representative Republic is based upon the rule of law -- the Constitution.

The latter recognizes the unalienable rights of individuals (the power of the majority is limited by a written constitution which safeguards the God-given inalienable rights of minority groups and individuals alike) while the former is only concerned with group wants at any given moment. As I said -- mob rule or maybe a "mobocracy."

The great American author James Fenimore Cooper put it another way:

Source:

It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.

© Copyright Original Source

In closing I'll note that since the formation of our nation no American president ever referred to the U.S. as a democracy until Woodrow Wilson misapplied the term during WWI. Sadly, today it has become common to use the term democracy in describing our form of government including by presidents and other top elected officials from both major political parties.

Maybe things would be different if every elected official was required to memorize what the founding fathers had to say or even how the U.S. Department of War (superseded by the U. S. Department of Defense) training manual (No. 2000-25), published in 1928, which every American soldier once carried, defined Democracy.:

Source:

A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any form of ‘direct’ expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic – negating property rights. Attitude toward the law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.” The manual went on to state: “Our Constitutional fathers, familiar with the strengths and weakness of both autocracy and democracy, with fixed principles definitely in mind, defined a representative republican form of government. They ‘made a very marked distinction between a republic and a democracy and said repeatedly and emphatically that they had founded a republic.’

© Copyright Original Source

And thus ends today's rant


1. Think of it this way, does our Pledge of Allegiance to the flag say "to the democracy for which it stands"? Or do we sing the “Battle Hymn of the Democracy” or the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”?

Ugh. Again.

If people are going to be complaining about the consequences of a democracy when a democratic Republic like the USA or Ireland passes measures by popular vote, why is it that people who respond using that loose definition of "democracy" (which we virtually always use when describing America!) get rants about the difference between Republics and Democracies?

We all know the difference between a constitutional democratic republic and a pure democracy. We don't need people pointing out the difference every time — especially in response to someone who is just going along with earlier posters' colloquial use.

And thus ends my rant for today.

[rogue06]

I'm amused by how many of the conservatives here appear to fundamentally dislike democracy and would apparently much rather have some sort of dictatorship.

Democracy is a dictatorship.

Our founding fathers had every opportunity to create a democracy but did not choose to do so. Why? Because they were utterly repulsed by the idea recognizing it for what it is.

Let's take a quick peek at what some of them had to say about it shall we

Source: James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10

Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

© Copyright Original Source

In the same document Madison, regarded as the "Father of the Constitution" as well as author of and biggest supporter of our Bill of Rights, stated that in a pure democracy "there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.” It is in essence mob rule.

Source: John Witherspoon, Signer of the Declaration of Independence

Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state, it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Fisher Ames, author of the House language for the 1st Amendment

A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way. The known propensity of a democracy is towards licentiousness [excessive license] which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be liberty.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Gouverneur Morris, signer and Penman of the Constitution, in a 1814 speech

We have seen the tumult of democracy terminate ... as [it has] everywhere terminated, in despotism… Democracy! savage and wild. Thou who wouldst bring down the virtuous and wise to the level of folly.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: John Marshall, first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Zephaniah Swift, author of America’s first legal treatise

It may generally be remarked that more a government resembles a pure democracy the more they abound with disorder and confusion.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, in a 1789 letter to John Adams

A simple democracy ... is one of the greatest evils.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Edmund Randolph, 1787, at the Constitutional Convention

...that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found in the turbulence and follies of democracy.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Noah Webster, in his 1801 “American Spelling Book”

In a democracy ... there are commonly tumults and disorders… Therefore a pure democracy is generally a very bad government. It is often the most tyrannical government on earth.

© Copyright Original Source

Source: John Quincy Adams in a speech celebrating the Jubilee of the Constitution

The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived.

© Copyright Original Source

And from his father...

Source: John Adams, in a letter from 1814

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history.

© Copyright Original Source

In his highly influential Thoughts on Government stated unequivocally that "There is no good government but what is republican" and that was the form of government that was established.After the Conventional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked what had been wrought to which he famously answered: "A republic, if you can keep it."

The word "democracy” appears absolutely nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or Constitution – the two most fundamental documents of our nation. Instead of a democracy, the Constitution’s Article IV Section 4, guarantees "to every State in this Union a Republican form of government."^[1]

In fact, the Constitution is replete with undemocratic mechanisms. The Electoral College and Senate representation come to mind. The Bill of Rights enumerates individuals with similar protections against the majority. The First Amendment, for example, is totally undemocratic. It was designed to protect unpopular speech against democratic fervor.

Instead of a democracy which they viewed as merely another form of tyranny our founders gave us a republic, with a representative form of government. Democracy is rule by majority or mob rule (the point of the two wolves and a sheep voting on what's going to be had for dinner remark I posted earlier), whereas a representative Republic is based upon the rule of law -- the Constitution.

The latter recognizes the unalienable rights of individuals (the power of the majority is limited by a written constitution which safeguards the God-given inalienable rights of minority groups and individuals alike) while the former is only concerned with group wants at any given moment. As I said -- mob rule or maybe a "mobocracy."

The great American author James Fenimore Cooper put it another way:

Source:

It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.

© Copyright Original Source

In closing I'll note that since the formation of our nation no American president ever referred to the U.S. as a democracy until Woodrow Wilson misapplied the term during WWI. Sadly, today it has become common to use the term democracy in describing our form of government including by presidents and other top elected officials from both major political parties.

Maybe things would be different if every elected official was required to memorize what the founding fathers had to say or even how the U.S. Department of War (superseded by the U. S. Department of Defense) training manual (No. 2000-25), published in 1928, which every American soldier once carried, defined Democracy.:

Source:

A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any form of ‘direct’ expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic – negating property rights. Attitude toward the law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.” The manual went on to state: “Our Constitutional fathers, familiar with the strengths and weakness of both autocracy and democracy, with fixed principles definitely in mind, defined a representative republican form of government. They ‘made a very marked distinction between a republic and a democracy and said repeatedly and emphatically that they had founded a republic.’

© Copyright Original Source

And thus ends today's rant

















1. Think of it this way, does our Pledge of Allegiance to the flag say "to the democracy for which it stands"? Or do we sing the “Battle Hymn of the Democracy” or the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”?

[Sam]

Considering that the US is a republic and not a democracy. That might be part of it.

As is Ireland.

[lilpixieofterror]

I'm amused by how many of the conservatives here appear to fundamentally dislike democracy and would apparently much rather have some sort of dictatorship.

Considering that the US is a republic and not a democracy. That might be part of it.

[Sam]

Let's be honest, whether Iran could be accurately portrayed as right wing is debatable (their politics is pretty much outside of both left and right wing ideology). But let's just say for giggles that you are right, at least to date they still pale in comparison to what the far left wing Republics like Mao's People's Republic of China, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (especially under Stalin) and even to a much lesser extent the Democratic People's Republic of Korea have brought to us.

Sure; I'm not looking to pretend that left-wing authoritarianism is any better than right-wing authoritarianism. But DLA wanted a one-party "Republic" with the left-wing clipped off. So: Iran. Or Mussolini's Italy. Or Hitler's Germany. Throw in the Khmer Rouge on the left, too.

Point being: one-party authoritarian governments tend to be a bit more awful than democratic governments and voting to allow gay people to get married is pretty low on the "Failures of Good Governance" list.