Ok roachboy, I ran your post thru a quick and easy Microsoft Word spelling and grammar check, and this is what I came up with. Let me know if anything is substantially changed by following commonly held standards as to writing format.
I’ll refute this point by point, so bear with me.
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I enjoy the occasional reminder that America is not a democracy. Particularly when it comes from conservatives (the website you link for sure...) and when this reminder circulates through conservative media. "Don’t worry, little people--you are not free in any meaningful sense because there is nothing really at stake in your participation in the electoral process, we can say anything..."
Because, it seems, these folk think democracy is antithetical to "individual freedom"...democracy is communism.... somehow this is linked, without the slightest analysis, to "Socrates was killed by a democracy"--which you know about from Plato, who was an enemy of democracy--a great philosopher--but an enemy of democracy.
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Who said Democracy is communism? You came up with that on your own.
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It is understood as the "tyranny of the majority" without the slightest evidence, as if the information context particular to the bankrupt forms of oligarchy rotation that we currently enjoy sets an eternal standard for information contexts. As if information context could be the same if actual decisions relied on the deliberation of a collective. As if the present kind of social subjectivity would be adequate for a democracy, all without any analysis.
Wow.
I guess there are frames of reference where simply citing one of the mystics who founded the current regime is adequate--no need to do any thinking on the matter really, just cite Jefferson. Apparently this is one of them.
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Jefferson was one of the guys who wrote the constitution, you think he might have had a clue what he was doing when he made sure the government that was set up in the constitution was not a democracy. He was actually quite a critic of the idea of a democracy if you take the time to read the text of the Framer’s Convention.
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So what I have learned this morning:
"Individual freedom" is best preserved in a system that allows people actual power one day every four years, and even then mediates it with an appointed "collegial" body.
Formal freedom is enough.
All you really need to do for Americans to think they are free in any substantive way is to use the word a lot.
Apparently freedom works best when no one is responsible for anything at the collective level. When there is no collective. When there is no deliberation. When there are no collective mechanisms. Where there is no actual power exercised by the people. When there is only the fiction of power residing with the people.
That sounds about right.
Thanks.
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If you want to argue whether it works as a form of government, start a different post. The point of this one is whether the US is a Republic or a Democracy.
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Yet somehow the Bush administration likes to talk about exporting democracy to Iraq, which I just learned is a system that it does not have and does not want at home. How does that work?
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I agree with you here, the word “democracy” has become such a buzzword lately that people have lost track of what it means. Your last paragraph here makes my point.