Zarathustra

Democracies, or more correctly termed direct democracies, do exist at the local level in this country. City hall and all that stuff...

So I hope we're all proud of ourselves, sacrificing soldiers for a country that would send a man to prision for throwing shoes.
- Sparta on Iraq


The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many.

~Dick Cheney

"You do not know what genocide is, do you? It means the irradication of a race to obliviation through death."
- Tick

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dzustaparadox

That's why the constitution gave members of congress two year terms and then sent back home. Senators were supposed to be appointed by their respective governors but that doesn't happen anymore either. What we have now is a political oligarchy that get fat off the constituencies that are either too sdewpyd or too lazy to know WTF they're electing.

Davocrat

You just countered your own (and 'Paradox's) position. The US is a democracy.

Insisting on calling it a "republic" is a popular Internet Conservative "nyeah-nyeah."

Throwing my shoes for peace!
"This is a farewell ... you dog!"

Davocrat

...and I guess Iraq is destined to be the world's first democracy. Since that's what we're supposed to spreading.


'once the surge kicks in.

Throwing my shoes for peace!
"This is a farewell ... you dog!"

Zarathustra

Wrong. The U.S. is not a democracy, but hey why don't we ask the founding fathers?

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."
-- Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States, author of the Bill of Rights

"We are a Republican Government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of Democracy... It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity."
-- Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury to George Washington, author of the Federalist Papers

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"
-- Benjamin Franklin, leader of the American Revolution

"Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
-- John Adams, 2nd President of the United States

"The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived."
-- John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the United States

"Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."
-- John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 1801-1835


So Davocrat, I guess the "conservatives" were right, weren't they?

So I hope we're all proud of ourselves, sacrificing soldiers for a country that would send a man to prision for throwing shoes.
- Sparta on Iraq


The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many.

~Dick Cheney

"You do not know what genocide is, do you? It means the irradication of a race to obliviation through death."
- Tick

Davocrat

So I guess Bush is intent on starting the world's first democracy:

CNN.com - Bush: Iraqi democracy making progress - Dec 12, 2005

Throwing my shoes for peace!
"This is a farewell ... you dog!"

Davocrat

Point is, democracy is a principle that drives our system of government, thus for all practical intents and purposes, we are a democracy.

Throwing my shoes for peace!
"This is a farewell ... you dog!"

dzustaparadox

You must be a Democratic.

Davocrat

The irony is, the argument that "the US is NOT a democracy, it's a republic" is so often used to justify authoritarian actions, which, to me, seems anti-liberty.

Throwing my shoes for peace!
"This is a farewell ... you dog!"

Zarathustra

Okay, your right and the founding fathers are wrong.

So I hope we're all proud of ourselves, sacrificing soldiers for a country that would send a man to prision for throwing shoes.
- Sparta on Iraq


The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many.

~Dick Cheney

"You do not know what genocide is, do you? It means the irradication of a race to obliviation through death."
- Tick