True democracy is mob rule. True democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what is for dinner. The US is a representative republic.
By the way, the constitution limits the government, not the people...
Democracy is Greek for "the people rule", all you have to ask yourself is do the people rule in the US or is it a small group of people in Dee Cee that rule and pass laws as they wish regardless of what the majority desire. Even some politicos say this is a "representative" democracy because they know it is not a true democracy, I like to call it a oglio-cracy, a few ruling many
I disagree but for a different reason. In the U.S. we elect representatives into office that we believe have the same morals and concerns as we do. The problem is that a majority of the time once a politician is elected into office they are more concerned about their own well being and their own agenda than ours. Just look at the electoral college for example. The way the system is supposed to work is we the people vote for who we want in office as president, the electoral college representatives are then supposed to look at the way we vote, take it into consideration, and cast their vote for the candidate they feel their state's population wants in office. The candidate that has the most votes from the electoral college representatives of that state gets all of the votes. The problem with this is that the electoral college representatives aren't required to vote the way the people of their state do. In fact they can vote however they want. Even if an entire states population voted for the same candidate they could still vote for a different one. However this is very unlikely to happen and would be political suicide. I am just using all of this to illustrate my point that once we elect our representatives into office, we lose pretty much all control.
It certainly does not fill the shoes of the ideal democracy, but then again, the ideal version never works quite right, that's why someone always changes little bits.
I cannot claim to be particularly politically active, but the government seems to me to address issues the people put forth, to the satisfaction of the majority.
It has to be admitted that by having so many stages of vote, the true desire of the individual is diluted through a series of approximations (ie. a 49-51% vote is approximated as 1 vote in favor of the 51%, rinse, repeat, several times), but having each person vote on every single thing is not a realistic solution at the moment.
There are no true democracies because that would mandate having everyone vote on EVERY issue in the entire country including out of state issues.
But America is a republic: that is a society that elects people to represent them.
I know some hate cut and pasters.
Hate this Wikipedia pasting.
"The United States of America is the oldest constitutional republic in the world. According to James Woodburn, in The American Republic and Its Government, "the constitutional republic with its limitations on popular government is clearly involved in the Constitution, as seen in the election of the President, the election of the Senate and the appointment of the Supreme Court." That is, the ability of the people to choose officials in government is checked by not allowing them to elect Supreme Court justices. Woodburn says that in a republic, as distinguished from a democracy, the people are not only checked in choosing officials but also in making laws. A Bill of Rights exists in the U.S. Constitution which protects certain individual rights. The individual rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights cannot be voted away by the majority of citizens if they wished to oppress a minority who does not agree with the restrictions on liberty that they wish to impose. To eliminate these rights would require government officials overcoming constitutional checks as well as a two-thirds majority vote of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the States in order to amend the Constitution.
A constitutional republic is a form of liberal democracy, but not all liberal democracies are constitutional republics. For example, though the head of state is not elected in a monarchy, it may still be a liberal democracy if there is a parliament with elected representatives that govern according to constitutional law protecting individual rights (called a constitutional democratic monarchy). Also, a representative democracy may or may not be a constitutional republic. For example, "the United States relies on representative democracy, but [its] system of government is much more complex than that. [It is] not a simple representative democracy, but a constitutional republic in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law.""
Landslide. What does that say?
Why does GW Bush continually hail democracy as some kind of wonderful ideal? Doesn't he know the USA is a constitutional/representative republic? Why does he talk about establishing democracy in the Middle East?