America Is Not a Democracy
theatlantic.com> It is true that to recover its citizens’ loyalty, our democracy needs to curb the power of unelected elites who seek only to pad their influence and line their pockets. But it is also true that to protect its citizens’ lives and promote their prosperity, our democracy needs institutions that are, by their nature, deeply elitist. This, to my mind, is the great dilemma that the United States—and other democracies around the world—will have to resolve if they wish to survive in the coming decades.
I think I'd harken back to an older view of the conflict: large concentrations of wealth (the natural result of our economic system, unregulated) are in direct opposition to the principle of "one man, one vote."
America doesn't have a democracy problem--it has a republic problem. Clearly, a republic is failing the people, mostly out of its own design. The founding fathers' ideas may have worked in the ages of slavery, and Jim Crow, where exploitation actually led to great wealth creation, but they do not work now. They work great at keeping the people down, in check, and out of politics, just as the founders designed. Really, the main problem here is that Americans stupidly think that they live in a democracy when this has never been the case. Obviously, America is not a democracy. It's always been a republic and people are now realizing just how oppressive a republic ruled by bribes from the elite is, now that the main concerns are less about oppressing minorities but simply about the survival of the majority, something that is no longer guaranteed. Let's face it, American government isn't about to change soon, so it'd be in our best interest for the people who think we live in a democracy to realize that we don't. After all, if you don't think you have a problem, a solution is impossible.
I'm not sure the first example where the town failed to buy out a bad water company supports author's argument.
The article hinted that the company was doing something malicious that on the voting day, "locals who had toiled on the issue for years noticed many newcomers", who eventually voted the idea down. It almost sound like those newcomers were brought in by the company to influence votes in its favor.
But in my experience with condo boards and other small democratic organizations, there are always a small but vocal group who tend to run the show, while the majority just carry on with their lives without paying too much attention to the local politics. That does not mean those people have no opinion on major issues, and their opinions tend to be revealed at those kind of major votes.
It sucks if you worked for years to get your ideas through, only to be voted down by the majority. But is this really a failure of democracy?
I guess the trouble, in my mind, is that these instances are often grey enough that a justification like this could come up, but there is a tendency, in aggregate, for things to break one way. For an example that is probably familiar to HN readers, consider municipal broadband.
Never has been.
They are using the word democracy in the colloquial sense. If you read the article it’s clear they are talking about a growing disconnect between policy makers’ decisions and the needs/wants of the public. Just saying, “never has been one” isn’t helpful.
Yes. It is a constitutional republic. A democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
Why not read the article and engage with the idea of democracy in the sense it's being used? Anyone could have written this comment and I don't see what it adds to the discussion.
Actually a republic is a type of democracy.
The People's Democratic Republic of Korea is both.
In spite of the name, North Korea is a dictatorship.
I agree, that was my point.
Well then it doesn't really seem to answer the argument that a "representative democracy" and "direct democracy" can plausibly be classified as two forms of democracy.
Give all the voting power to one person.
I think it is actually, you see, the elections and such.
The author makes sense initially but towards the end seems to be attacking American institutions like the Supreme court. That was odd.
America was founded on a messy system where not everyone got what they wanted. It was always a compromise.
However, this messy system did bring us out of slavery into the modern era. Now though one of the last abominations of this messy system is causing most of the issues in the republic. I wonder why the author does not touch the subject of "Electoral College".
The "Electoral College" elected both "George Bush" and "Trump" subverting the will of the majority. The first president led us into an illegal war that enriched his corporate buddies. The second one will be judged by history.
In my opinion, until we get rid of the "Electoral College" America will never be a true democracy.
Very few countries operates on a majoritarian voting system, and the reason is often related to civil wars. If the highest populated areas has a overwhelming dominating majority then the low population loose confidence that their vote maters and is simply a wasted exercise. Too much of that and you get civil wars and nations that split into smaller ones that each operates more efficiently towards the needs of those living in each of those areas.
A big example of those is not a nation but rather EU parliament. Citizens of the smallest country count twice as much influence as the biggest country, and the reason is rather obvious to keep those members states interested to be part of the union even if the voting power is going to be minuscule compared to the big countries. Even so the sell is a tough one.
Judicial review was invented by Federalists specifically to subvert Jefferson really. It's in some sense an antidemocratic institution.
> Judicial review was invented by Federalists specifically to subvert Jefferson really.
Judicial review is simply the concrete manifestation of two things express in the Constitution:
(1) the judicial power regarding cases and controversies arising under the Constitution, laws, etc., and
(2) The Constitution’s express limits on what laws Congress has the power to pass.
It's anti-democratic in the sense that Constitutionally-limited government is itself anti-democratic, in that the electre representatives of the people are denied the unlimited power they would have in a parliamentary supremacy model, but not in any other sense.
I don't like treating the development of ideas like they just sprung from the ether devoid of masters or historical context. Certainly it can be seen as flowing from those principles, but it came to exist in a particular circumstance -- namely, when Federalists thought raving Jeffersonian Democrats were going to ruin the whole republic with too much democracy and invented a legal theory that said they could throw out their laws.
This is my whole point, it's a messy system. You can weigh the Electoral College and Supreme court then, decide which one is more anti-democratic?
Why do I have to choose? Both are in fact intended to be anti-democratic. Our collective admiration for the Founding Fathers makes it hard for us to wrap our heads around this, but it's reality -- the Constitution is largely a document intended to limit, not encourage, popular sovereignty.