Is the US a democracy or a republic? Yes

by blondie 5 Replies latest jw friends

  • blondie
    blondie

    https://www.npr.org/2022/09/10/1122089076/is-america-a-democracy-or-a-republic-yes-it-is

    Throughout our history we have functioned as both. Put another way, we have utilized characteristics of both. The people decide, but they do so through elected representatives working in pre-established, rule-bound and intentionally balky institutions such as Congress and the courts.

    The government seated in Washington, D.C., represents a democratic republic, which governs a federated union of states, each of which in turn has its own democratic-republican government for its jurisdiction.

    The relationship between the democratic and republican elements of this equation has been a dynamic and essential part of our history. But it has not always been easy, and in our time the friction between them has become yet another flashpoint in our partisan wars...Republicans, by contrast, have seemed of late to be stressing the role of the republic and its restraint on democracy. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, an outspoken Republican but hardly an outlier, got considerable attention for saying bluntly on Twitter in October 2020: "We are not a democracy."

    Lee then posted online an explanation of what he meant. It said, in part: "Our system is best described as a constitutional republic [where] power is not found in mere majorities, but in carefully balanced power." (just snippets, but reading the whole article carefully shows the difference between the 2 words and how they work together in the US.)

  • road to nowhere
    road to nowhere

    Mob rule.

    Actually oligarchy now. We are given a choice of 2 well entrenched hand selected persons. If none of above was a choice that would win.

  • Journeyman
    Journeyman

    It's becoming a problem in many (most?) of the world's democracies, and it's highlighting a number of fatal flaws in the democratic system.

    Corporate, commercial and other vested interests are leading to a "professional" political class who are entrenching power among themselves. These cabals are selecting their own preferred candidates, as RTN says, limiting the choice to the people and using the levers of media, education and culture to influence how voters make their decisions and tell them what are "good" and "bad" opinions to hold, giving them only a limited choice.

    To some extent, it is like the Roman Senate - the leaders at the very top are elected, but only by a limited number of votes and voters who have greatest influence, with many more being excluded from influencing the ultimate levels of power. To "compensate" those at the bottom who have no real influence, they are "rewarded" with "bread and circuses" to keep them contented, and there is a tacit agreement that as long as the leaders maintain a degree of order and wellbeing for the people, the people will remain compliant and let them get on with it.

    That delicate balance eventually gets overturned though, especially once the masses at the bottom being to feel resentful and that their needs are not being served, and they look up and see their leaders not just enjoying their status, but actually taking advantage very publicly, exploiting their position for all they can get.

    I'd say we're seeing that in most modern democracies today - the USA, UK, Europe. We even saw that just recently in South Korea with the discontent over their unpopular president leading to him trying to declare martial law, and now ending up in court.

    Part of what is contributing to the chaos is another major flaw in democracy: it only works when there is a clear majority, and a willingness of the people to yield to that majority. As we've seen in so many elections and referendums in the past 10 years or so, if a population is deadlocked more or less 50/50 with strongly entrenched opinions on either side, democracy freezes, and whichever choice is made, as many as half of the population will be discontent, angry and restless. That's a nightmare scenario for any leaders, even if they are trying to be fair to their voters and not just in power to scam their population.

  • TonusOH
    TonusOH

    We are a constitutional republic. The USA government was designed as a bottom-to-top structure, where states ran their own affairs and worked together to manage the nation as a whole. The idea was to avoid the risk of too much centralized power. We've been working hard for almost 250 years to undermine that structure, but it has managed to hold up. How much longer remains to be seen.

  • Anony Mous
    Anony Mous

    There are three independent branches of government. Read the federalist papers if you want to understand how it works. Pure democracy typically centralizes power into the executive branch, hence why we should have small government, that way you cannot control everything from a single seat. Axing bureaucracy as Trump is doing now is reducing his power directly, thousands of bureaucrats that were wielding their own power structure while unelected are now voluntarily leaving, that is a good thing as that power is now returned to the states and flows down to the citizen.

    If what you want to do in business or private is not regulated or there is no law against it, then it is allowed per the constitution. If the government wants to do something that is not regulated or has a bureaucrat or law for it, government is not allowed to do it. That’s the crux of the constitutional republic.

  • no-zombie
    no-zombie

    How can the America be a Democracy, when the ONLY way you can become President is, if you are either mega-rich or mega-influential? As there is not a Democracy in the world, where presidential candidates have to be willing to raze and spend $1.4 billion USD (as in the case of Trump did last year) to win in it AND have the right social and business connections.

    Don't fool yourselves. The US is not a Democracy ... is a Plutocracy ... and has been since the late 1800s.

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