SciFi Chick wrote:Rommie wrote: People literally did not think women at the time were on equal footing with men, and thus should not vote. That doesn't mean ergo that we've always lived in an oligarchy/dictatorship/ insert whatever non-republic you want here.
I'm a little confused. People were literally wrong. It's not a democracy if everyone can't vote, so excluding women and slaves and anyone who didn't own land means we didn't start out as a democracy.
Hell, everyone that defends the Electoral College does so by saying we aren't a democracy, so maybe we need to define some terms here.
By your definition we do not live in a democracy. And we did not ever live in one. Because "everyone" will never be able to vote. The dictionary definition of a democracy is
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives:
The key is the words "eligible members". By that definition most people believe that we have lived in a democracy since the founding of the U.S. We have re-defined eligible voter several times along the way. And may have room for improvement.
When most people say "democracy" they think they are talking about a society in which every eligible (or what they believe is every eligible) voter is allowed to vote. And that the popular vote i.e. a majority vote wins the election and gets what it wants. That is not what we have in the U.S., and in fact, most democracies in the world.
We live in a hybrid democracy. On the local level it is pretty much a straight up majority rules democracy. Want to run for dog catcher? Get more votes than your opponent(s). You win. This pretty much works although the way up to the congressional level. Except even then it's not a "true democracy". Because if it were every time a decision had to be made then everyone would vote and the popular opinion would decide. Instead, we elect people to represent us and/or perform a job and then we let them make all the day to day decisions. If we like the decisions they made we re-elect them.
Until we get to the president election. And then the founders added a clause to the constitution that talked about electors. The electoral college was created to satisfy the intent of this clause. It created proportional democracy. It was quite frankly an attempt to prevent dictatorship of the majority. It took approx 2/3 of the states to cast their electoral votes for Trump to defeat the 1/3 of the states who wanted Hilary. Most people don't "get it" because they really are thinking about more votes = winner. Unless you count the "states votes" which is what the electoral college does.
And now we get to the slippery part. Because you, Zee, and everyone else who claims we live in an oligarchy are right. And everyone who claims we live in a democratic republic is also right.
The dictionary definition of an oligarchy:
a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution.
"the ruling oligarchy of military men around the president"
Wall street, the major corporations, and the 1% in the U.S. don't appear to directly control the country per se but their out sized influence cannot be denied.
The dictionary definition of a democratic republic:
A democratic republic is, strictly speaking, a country that is both a republic and a democracy. It is one where ultimate authority and power is derived from the citizens, and the government itself is run through elected officials.
It would not be accurate to deny that the people vote and that they elect officials who run the government.
Are you confused yet? How can this be? We live in a hybrid democracy that is an oligarchic democratic republic!?!?!? Is this really what the founding fathers intended? Honestly I cannot tell you what they were thinking. I wasn't there. We do have a lot of published articles and papers though that suggest that many of them did envision something along these lines. I think they feared something happening similar to what happened in France. A pure democracy is a rule of the mob. A pure oligarchy is a dictatorship by committee. I think they feared a pure form of any form government because of the ease with which they can become a form of dictatorship.
There you have it. We live in a Democratic Oligarchic Representative Republic. We just argue a lot about who gets to pick the representatives.
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