Is the United States really a democracy?

[Sand Dancer]

My opinion is that at this exact moment in history the U.S. is a democracy, but a very fragile one.

In just a few years this may change.

And the reason for this is so many Americans don't want Democracy. There are many who would rather have a dictator than have to accept the possibility that their political opponents might actually win an election, better not to have elections.

I don't understand why the far right hates government but likes an authoritarian leader.

 

[PureX]

I don't understand why the far right hates government but likes an authoritarian leader.

They hate the current government because they believe it stands in the way of their authoritarian dreamworld. (One in which they get to make all the rules.)

 

[pearl]

So many changes in interpreting the Constitution with this Court.

The new court upholds originalism, which has replaced its rival, living constitutionalism.

The theory of originalism argues that the core purpose of a written Constitution is to protect against the government’s inevitable bad behavior. The best way to defend individual rights and ensure a stable government is to enforce the Constitution’s exact language and the meaning it expressed to the Americans who ratified it.

From an originalist view, allowing clever lawyers to see the Constitution as evolving without the endorsement of the people simply defeats its purpose. So this constitutional theory holds that the document can only be changed by amendment, but not by courts.

The theory of living constitutionalism, meanwhile, is rooted in the idea that the Constitution should adapt to the American people’s evolving values, as well as the needs of contemporary society. This allows the Supreme Court to reinterpret the meaning of the language and expand the rights protected by the Constitution.

One side of the debate believes that upholding the true meaning of a written Constitution requires stable principles, while the second believes it requires evolving ones.

The two ways of reading the Constitution are not reconcilable.

The second view of what happened during the court’s last term is that the shift was not about honest constitutional debate, but instead about partisan politics. In this view, the justices are politicians in robes who pursue the policy goals of their party. This means that when the Republican appointees gained the majority in the court, GOP preferences followed.

Over the last few decades, partisanship has become a stronger force in shaping the nomination process. President Richard Nixon, for example, was a Republican who nominated Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who went on to write the liberal majority opinion for Roe v. Wade in 1973.
But today, justices nominated by Republican or Democratic presidents are chosen with much more care, with the aid of outside groups like the conservative Federalist Society.
Perhaps the worst result of the partisan view is that interpreting the Constitution becomes about merely group identity, with Democrats and Republicans cynically stuck in permanent camps. This makes crucial public deliberations about the constitutional foundations of a free society nearly impossible.

A seismic change has taken place at the Supreme Court – but it's not clear if the shift is about principle or party (msn.com)


The partisan view encourages people to see constitutional questions as they often view politics – simply ways of dodging principles while pushing ideological agendas. It characterizes the justices as pawns and constitutional debates as smokescreens.

 

[Stevicus]

Yes, but was it so at their founding?

I'm not sure what you mean.

 

[Stevicus]

My opinion is that at this exact moment in history the U.S. is a democracy, but a very fragile one.

In just a few years this may change.

And the reason for this is so many Americans don't want Democracy. There are many who would rather have a dictator than have to accept the possibility that their political opponents might actually win an election, better not to have elections.

Can you give any justification or support to the notion that America's democracy is any more fragile now than it was, say, 50 or 100 years ago?

It's not really a true democracy anyway. Never has been and never will be. This is by design, and it's the way the Founders wanted it, and it's the way the voters have gone ever since, for the most part.

In my own experience and observation, I find that very few Americans actually want democracy. How do I know? Go to a political forum somewhere and propose that the Supreme Court be an elected body. Watch how many people come forward to make sharp criticisms of democracy, and they might also bring up the Federalist Papers and recite the Founders' view on the subject.

I've encountered similar resistance whenever I've proposed that Cabinet level posts be elected, as well as the positions of CIA Director, FBI Director, Joint Chiefs of Staff, NSA Director, and similar posts also be directly elected by the people. To me, anyone who would oppose such a proposal is against democracy. Most people don't want democracy, and that's been quite obvious to me all of my life.

Heck, we can't even vote for President and Vice-President as separate elective offices. We have to take them in a package deal. What kind of "democracy" is that? It's a sham.

Likewise, we do not have a system set up to propose and vote on ballot propositions at the federal level. States have it, but the federal government does not.

Then there's the primary system and this grossly dishonest practice of "superdelegates." There should be no conventions, and all states should have their primaries on the same day - no exceptions, no early primaries, no early caucuses, no giving one or two states (such as Iowa or New Hampshire) a lopsided advantage over other states. All states voting at the same time makes it more fair.

This is not real democracy. This is a stacked democracy. It's corrupt, along with being unduly influenced and manipulated by monied interests.

It is what it is, and it's been this way for as long as I can remember. I have absolutely zero reason to believe that it won't continue to be this way, so I'm not all that convinced of any perceived "fragility" of democracy.

Question to those who voted no.

Do you want America to be a Democracy? Don't you think it is time it becomes a democracy?

Will you be one of the ones fighting for Democracy? Or will you be one of the ones fighting against it?

Not a rhetorical or hypothetical question.

I don't see it as an "either/or" question.

Do you consider "democracy," in and of itself, to be the be all and end all? Shouldn't it be considered more of a means to an end? The end goal should be an honest, honorable, competent, efficient government which faithfully carries out the will of the people. The central assumption of democracy is that, by allowing the people to choose the individuals who hold stewardship over government and the state apparatus, those who are elected would (theoretically) govern in good faith.

However, the same expectation holds for unelected officials, whether they're judges, bureaucrats, other appointees or employees.

Instead of simply issuing a challenge to either fight for democracy or fight against it, perhaps a better approach might to ask if we can find ways to make democracy work better to accomplish the positive end goal which I'm sure we all want. If democracy can be made to work better to serve the needs of the people, then there won't be the kind of restlessness and internal turmoil which might threaten civil order in society.

If not, then "democracy" is nothing more than a word, and who wants to fight over a word?

 

[Sand Dancer]

So many changes in interpreting the Constitution with this Court.

The new court upholds originalism, which has replaced its rival, living constitutionalism.

The theory of originalism argues that the core purpose of a written Constitution is to protect against the government’s inevitable bad behavior. The best way to defend individual rights and ensure a stable government is to enforce the Constitution’s exact language and the meaning it expressed to the Americans who ratified it.

From an originalist view, allowing clever lawyers to see the Constitution as evolving without the endorsement of the people simply defeats its purpose. So this constitutional theory holds that the document can only be changed by amendment, but not by courts.

The theory of living constitutionalism, meanwhile, is rooted in the idea that the Constitution should adapt to the American people’s evolving values, as well as the needs of contemporary society. This allows the Supreme Court to reinterpret the meaning of the language and expand the rights protected by the Constitution.

One side of the debate believes that upholding the true meaning of a written Constitution requires stable principles, while the second believes it requires evolving ones.

The two ways of reading the Constitution are not reconcilable.

The second view of what happened during the court’s last term is that the shift was not about honest constitutional debate, but instead about partisan politics. In this view, the justices are politicians in robes who pursue the policy goals of their party. This means that when the Republican appointees gained the majority in the court, GOP preferences followed.

Over the last few decades, partisanship has become a stronger force in shaping the nomination process. President Richard Nixon, for example, was a Republican who nominated Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who went on to write the liberal majority opinion for Roe v. Wade in 1973.
But today, justices nominated by Republican or Democratic presidents are chosen with much more care, with the aid of outside groups like the conservative Federalist Society.
Perhaps the worst result of the partisan view is that interpreting the Constitution becomes about merely group identity, with Democrats and Republicans cynically stuck in permanent camps. This makes crucial public deliberations about the constitutional foundations of a free society nearly impossible.

A seismic change has taken place at the Supreme Court – but it's not clear if the shift is about principle or party (msn.com)


The partisan view encourages people to see constitutional questions as they often view politics – simply ways of dodging principles while pushing ideological agendas. It characterizes the justices as pawns and constitutional debates as smokescreens.

Wow, I never thought about that before. So what I am getting is that in the "living" view, it becomes very partisan, whereas with the "original" view, it's more objective. Am I understanding it correctly?

 

[Estro Felino]

I still don't think US is democratic because single states don't have sufficient autonomy but they rely on Washington DC for everything.

 

[PureX]

Wow, I never thought about that before. So what I am getting is that in the "living" view, it becomes very partisan, whereas with the "original" view, it's more objective. Am I understanding it correctly?

Both are partisan. And both views are lying to themselves and to us. The intent of the founders was laid out in the Declaration of Independence regarding both the rights and the limitations of the people, and of the government. The Constitution then attempted to spell out the mechanics of those rights and limitations, with the intent that we could add to and clarify these as we go along. The founders understood that the goals they set forth in their Declaration were not being fully achieved in their own time, but that they could be achieved in the future if we so chose.

Unfortunately, there have always been those among us that did not wish for those goals to be achieved. And we have been fighting amongst ourselves ever since as some of us want to achieve that freedom and justice and opportunity for all, while others of us only want these things for ourselves, by denying them to others. And everyone is interpreting the founder's artifacts to suit their own desires.

If we really wanted the government to serve the will of the people, we would put issues like abortion to a national referendum, and not fob it off on state governments. But the "constitutional conservatives" aren't going to even suggest that because they already know most of the general population want women to have a right to an abortion in the early stages of pregnancy. Which is how it was under Roe for many decades. Instead, they wanted to force their own will onto the majority of the country by claiming that the founding documents were written on some sort of stone tablet that must never be revised to accommodate the will of the people or modern circumstances. So they deliberately stacked the courts with biased judges who spout off their nonsense about some "sacred" Constitution that conveniently supports their authoritarian desire to rule over and dictate to everyone else.

 

[Revoltingest]

We could use a dictionary.
Definition of democracy | Dictionary.com
1 government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.

By this, it sure does appear that USA is a democracy.
This is notwithstanding the existence of imperfection,
skullduggery, corruption, incompetence, & failed coups.

 

[Sand Dancer]

Both are partisan. And both views are lying to themselves and to us. The intent of the founders was laid out in the Declaration of Independence regarding both the rights and the limitations of the people, and of the government. The Constitution then attempted to spell out the mechanics of those rights and limitations, with the intent that we could add to and clarify these as we go along. The founders understood that the goals they set forth in their Declaration were not being fully achieved in their own time, but that they could be achieved in the future if we so chose.

Unfortunately, there have always been those among us that did not wish for those goals to be achieved. And we have been fighting amongst ourselves ever since as some of us want to achieve that freedom and justice and opportunity for all, while others of us only want these things for ourselves, by denying them to others. And everyone is interpreting the founder's artifacts to suit their own desires.

If we really wanted the government to serve the will of the people, we would put issues like abortion to a national referendum, and not fob it off on state governments. But the "constitutional conservatives" aren't going to even suggest that because they already know most of the general population want women to have a right to an abortion in the early stages of pregnancy. Which is how it was under Roe for many decades. Instead, they wanted to force their own will onto the majority of the country by claiming that the founding documents were written on some sort of stone tablet that must never be revised to accommodate the will of the people or modern circumstances. So they deliberately stacked the courts with biased judges who spout off their nonsense about some "sacred" Constitution that conveniently supports their authoritarian desire to rule over and dictate to everyone else.

Thank you!

 

[averageJOE]

The US is an oligarchy.