Has democracy ended in the U.S.?

[Belsnickel]

(07-03-2018, 12:59 PM)Dill Wrote: You know, I think some of this "US-is-not-a-democracy" comes from the Hillsdale school of Constitutional interpretation favored by right wing talk shows.  I have heard Rush say that often, and never heard him take a call in disagreement.

Remember Madison's argument in Federalist No. 10, where he distinguishes between face-to-face and representative democracy?  That gets spun into the "we are Republic, not a democracy" claim. 

I think that spin was largely a response to the 1960s, when war protesting counter culturalists made such a media splash, and conservatives did not want to risk votes on their policies.  It is the kind of claim which is quite at odds with the current right populism, though. There certainly is a case to be made that many or most of the founders did not intend universal suffrage and expected a CIVIL and classically educated social elite to rule the country.

I could get this thread extremely sidetracked on this topic. I will only make a couple of points to this, though.

First, even without universal suffrage, the country would be classified as a democracy. Even if eligibility for voting disqualifies chunks of the population, the hallmark of a democracy is an electoral process where the results are free and fair. However, democracy is not an all or none situation, and so the more inclusive your suffrage is, the more democratic the society is.

Second, I think you may be misunderstanding the intentions of the founders. This part gets a bit more complicated, but they did certainly look for safeguards against the rabble unseating the more wealthy folks. At the same time, though, there was populist streaks among them that aimed to prevent any sort of elite class from forming. Jefferson, for instance, had on more than on occasion called for measures to prevent automatic inheritance of property.

Anyway, the long and short for both of our posts is that democracy comes in many different flavors, but it is still democracy.