It’s not a democracy…
The United States of America is not a democracy………….?
No. Absolutely not. A democracy is a place where, if there were enough folks who wanted to, they could vote to, say, take away the rights of the minority. Sort of like the Greeks had for themselves. And sort of like when we used to have legalized slave trading.
Which is precisely why our far-thinking founders—that bunch of “old white guys” who gave us the most precious documents ever penned by the hand of man—did NOT hand us down a democracy, per se. They gave us a democratic republic (can you say that, children? De-mo-crat-ic Re-pub-lic) Actually, a Constitutional Democratic Republic.
What’s the difference? Well, besides the foregoing protection already mentioned, it means that we as Americans—having been given a constitution to protect the people from the government and not the other way around—are protected against the majority attempting to impose its will upon the minority simply because of the superiority of their numbers.
It means that just because the majority of Americans call themselves Christians, they cannot require you to bend the knee to their god. It means that just because everyone else’s home is painted green, yet you want to paint yours purple, and they vote that you must paint green over top of your beautiful purple paint job…well, it means they have no constitutional right to make you do such a thing (unless, of course, you willingly submit to the tyranny of the “master-planned community,” CCR, or some such quasi-private quasi-governmental organization).
It means that, even if everyone in the country stops eating hamburger, unless it poses some great and imminent danger to your neighbors, they have no right to require you to abstain.
Obviously these are oversimplifications. And since we have lawyers which, like enemas, are a necessary, albeit detestable, part of life, there will always be litigation between citizens in what might be looked at as the grand balance-of-powers dance. Many of these litigations are not easily hashed out; and often they leave one or both sides far from happy with the results (which usually tend to cause yet more litigation, on and on, ad infinitum).
Yet some of these laws, rules and regulations which our founders laid down for us are simple. Deceptively simple. So simple that certain folks—judges, senators, mayors, city councilthings, usually the folks who don’t seem to like the rules for one reason or another—just can’t seem to understand them. And in fact they often seem to think that Yes means No.
The United States of America is not a democracy………….?
No. Absolutely not. A democracy is a place where, if there were enough folks who wanted to, they could vote to, say, take away the rights of the minority. Sort of like the Greeks had for themselves. And sort of like when we used to have legalized slave trading.
Which is precisely why our far-thinking founders—that bunch of “old white guys” who gave us the most precious documents ever penned by the hand of man—did NOT hand us down a democracy, per se. They gave us a democratic republic (can you say that, children? De-mo-crat-ic Re-pub-lic) Actually, a Constitutional Democratic Republic.
What’s the difference? Well, besides the foregoing protection already mentioned, it means that we as Americans—having been given a constitution to protect the people from the government and not the other way around—are protected against the majority attempting to impose its will upon the minority simply because of the superiority of their numbers.
It means that just because the majority of Americans call themselves Christians, they cannot require you to bend the knee to their god. It means that just because everyone else’s home is painted green, yet you want to paint yours purple, and they vote that you must paint green over top of your beautiful purple paint job…well, it means they have no constitutional right to make you do such a thing (unless, of course, you willingly submit to the tyranny of the “master-planned community,” CCR, or some such quasi-private quasi-governmental organization).
It means that, even if everyone in the country stops eating hamburger, unless it poses some great and imminent danger to your neighbors, they have no right to require you to abstain.
Obviously these are oversimplifications. And since we have lawyers which, like enemas, are a necessary, albeit detestable, part of life, there will always be litigation between citizens in what might be looked at as the grand balance-of-powers dance. Many of these litigations are not easily hashed out; and often they leave one or both sides far from happy with the results (which usually tend to cause yet more litigation, on and on, ad infinitum).
Yet some of these laws, rules and regulations which our founders laid down for us are simple. Deceptively simple. So simple that certain folks—judges, senators, mayors, city councilthings, usually the folks who don’t seem to like the rules for one reason or another—just can’t seem to understand them. And in fact they often seem to think that Yes means No.
posted by Jefferson | 3:33 AM
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