We aren't a pure democracy so long as we allow the electoral college and professional lobbying... but we got the best thing going on the planet, bar none.

I'm not entirely sure about that. In the Westminster system the head of government must answer questions in the parliamentary debating chamber. It certain puts policy to a robust test.

eqtworld: the brits dont want democracy, they never even overthrew the royals.

Monarchy and Democracy are not mutually exclusive, Britain is a constitutional monarchy (although unwritten it still has a constitution), and is democratic. Republics are not the only forms of government that are democratic.

The neoconservative denizens of Washington have been reduced to polluting their intelligence, suspending habeas corpus and debating the uses of torture. They seem unable to engage with other world powers on such matters as trade reform, international law and the future of the United Nations.

He's right about that, but Sir Simon Jenkins is a tool.

eqtworld: The British are technically "Subjects of the Queen"

Not according to my passport pal. Says CITIZEN. Also, our elected leader, much as he has his faults, isn't a member of some ugly little dynasty.

That's right there.

eqtworld
The USA is not a pure democracy, it has never been a pure democracy. It is a representative republic; and uses an electoral college.

I came in to point this out. I get so sick of hearing it called a democracy when it clearly isn't. A pure democracy would be a frigging mess anyway. Democracy is mob rule because the majority always gets their way.

eqtworld: The USA is not a pure democracy, it has never been a pure democracy. It is a representative republic; and uses an electoral college.

/the brits dont want democracy, they never even overthrew the royals.

"Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
-- John Adams, letter to John Taylor, April 15, 1814

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."
-- Professor Alexander Tytler over 200 years ago

"Democracy is a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses."
-- H.L. Mencken

"From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." -- Federalist #10
/republic FTW

Brubold: I get so sick of hearing it called a democracy when it clearly isn't.

What you say!! So you've never sung "The Battle Hymn of the Democracy" or pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the democracy for which it stands?

$DEITY willing, come 2009 we'll have a Democrat in the White House and we can get our country back.

Until then, I have to tag this article .

eqtworld: /the brits dont want democracy, they never even overthrew the royals.

Yes, we did. And then after trying a republic for 11 years we put them back again. We realised there is no better check and balance than an impotent head of state.

All this happened a long time before your country existed, so don't feel bad about not knowing.

/and there has never been even the means to produce a 'pure' democracy until the invention of the internet. And who is offering that? Nobody.

jimpoz: -- Professor Alexander Tytler over 200 years ago

That's a false quote, FYI. Probably invented by some Randroid in a chain e-mail.

Damn, I hate posting twice because I didn't realise what had been said, but anyway ...

A 'representative republic' is not instead of a democracy. You could have an 'anarcho-syndicalist commune' that was also a democracy, likewise an empire, a republic, a fascist state, a communist enclave ... provided the leaders obtained a mandate from a group of society it's a democracy.

AaaPha - whatever your passport says we are subjects. Our elected leader is not the head of state. I personally prefer it that way, and would happily kill people to keep it that way.

Suck it, Brits!

Crap, off the point article to try and get a dig in at the EU constitution.

Brubold I get so sick of hearing it called a democracy when it clearly isn't.

Try actually learning what words mean before you spout off about them. America is a Republic and a Democracy. The UK is a Constitutional Monarchy and a Democracy. This isn't hard to understand.

/Unless you are talking about the major issues with voting irregularities that make American democracy somewhat questionable compared to how it should be.

Shaggy_C: jimpoz: -- Professor Alexander Tytler over 200 years ago

That's a false quote, FYI. Probably invented by some Randroid in a chain e-mail.

And judging by tbe U.S.'s ability to pay future obligations its turning out to be quite true.

I'll take a parliamentary system over what the USA has any day.

eqtworld: The USA is not a pure democracy, it has never been a pure democracy. It is a representative republic; and uses an electoral college.

/the brits dont want democracy, they never even overthrew the royals.

The Constitution was designed to protect against pure democracy. A lynch mob is pure democracy.

thisispete: I'm not entirely sure about that. In the Westminster system the head of government must answer questions in the parliamentary debating chamber. It certain puts policy to a robust test.

The flip side is there is no separation of powers, as such. The equivalent of the Supreme Court vests in the House of Lords, and of course the PM is a member of Parliament.

/Yes, yes, I know, the monarch is the executive but for practical purposes the PM runs the place.

/"A robust test.": "Hear Hear!" "Shame. Shame!" [repeat indefinitely.]

TheGreyPiper: A lynch mob is pure democracy.

So you're saying the civil rights movement was very un-democratic?

galleech: And judging by tbe U.S.'s ability to pay future obligations its turning out to be quite true.

Is the U.S. even close to default right now?

Didn't think so.

thisispete: I'm not entirely sure about that. In the Westminster system the head of government must answer questions in the parliamentary debating chamber. It certain puts policy to a robust test.

Agreed. At least there is a standard of employees of the government (your elected representatives, the civil SERVANTS of the People) in the United Kingdom being required to ANSWER THE QUESTIONS OF THE PEOPLE THEY SERVE.

Right now we Americans have tolerated blatant shameless lying to the people by proxy of a "Press Spokesman" in the Whitehouse and allowing the President to pick & choose the reporters that ask the questions. In short, our elected servants are no longer required to explain themselves for actions both legal and criminal to the people that they are elected to serve. That is disgusting and appalling.

We have an executive office that is so far out of control and denying the demands of the people they serve that we are in a dire situation of losing control forever back to the worthless whims of a worthless Monarchy.

Our Congressmen (especially in the anti-human hate-America Republican Party) refuse to enforce the laws by which America restrains abuses of power, much less arrest + imprison the criminals in our highest offices. They have tolerated granting the unfettered unaccountable powers of a King to the worthless dullard son of an unarrested cocaine-trafficking lifetime traitor whom also disgraced our highest office for over a decade.

It is not too surprising to know that the Republican Party (the Satanist Power Elite) have cheered on and enabled every anti-American tyrannical abuse against this nation as well as supporting in whole the trafficking of narcotics. Our American political system has been systematically infiltrated by Republican traitors operating a consummate criminal organization out to destroy America and reshape to resemble Nazi Germany at the height of its oppressive insanity.

Gavino: Damn, I hate posting twice because I didn't realise what had been said, but anyway ...

A 'representative republic' is not instead of a democracy. You could have an 'anarcho-syndicalist commune' that was also a democracy, likewise an empire, a republic, a fascist state, a communist enclave ... provided the leaders obtained a mandate from a group of society it's a democracy.

AaaPha - whatever your passport says we are subjects. Our elected leader is not the head of state. I personally prefer it that way, and would happily kill people to keep it that way.

Do you take it in turns to be sort of executive officer for the week?

incendi: TheGreyPiper: A lynch mob is pure democracy.

So you're saying the civil rights movement was very un-democratic?


You're just being difficult, you know.

/But in the limited context of what the majority of Southerners wanted, yes, it was explicity anti-democratic. Think about it a little harder, OK?

The US has a pure democracy, like the Soviet Union had pure communism.

Shaggy_C: galleech: And judging by tbe U.S.'s ability to pay future obligations its turning out to be quite true.

Is the U.S. even close to default right now?

Didn't think so.

Cut out all that smart talk, Ron Paul told me we're on the verge of collapse because the IRS is taking all of our money and giving it to the fed so they can tear it in half and make it two dollars then gives it to Bush and Cheney who swim in it and then give it to Halliburton so they can stage the next moon hoax and then the UN 9/11 truth free market no IRS NWO Hitler.

Huh?
2 families have been running the house for the last 20 years with no sign of that changing anytime soon. This is called a monarchy, or maybe a plutocracy.
Hehe

England is picking the wroooooooong country to emulate

Let me know when the US stops jonesing for a dictatorship.

/at least people can't solidify their power under a parliamentary system.

Under Britain's system, the masterfully eloquent George Bush would have had no choice but to stand in the house of Parliment and answer direct and pointed questions from the opposition on a daily basis.

How long do you think Dubya would have lasted in a system like that?

Yeah, American's have it waaay better.

sparkmysmeg: plutocracy


King in the castle, king in the castle

diamond2a
Millions of people disagree with you and not Americans but immigrants who see us as the country to die for trying to join.
But you're right about them picking us for a model of a "pure Democracy".

Last I heard, we're a Representative Republic.

At some point in your life, had you learned the Pledge of Allegiance, you'd recall the line,
"and to the Republic, for which it stands..."

Maybe you could GIS it for a better understanding?

And yet again, Americans prove they can't read a dictionary.

de·moc·ra·cy /dɪˈmɒkrəsi/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[di-mok-ruh-see] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
-noun, plural -cies. 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.
2. a state having such a form of government: The United States and Canada are democracies.
3. a state of society characterized by formal equality of rights and privileges.
4. political or social equality; democratic spirit.
5. the common people of a community as distinguished from any privileged class; the common people with respect to their political power.

Look, the US is even in this farking dictionary definition of democracy you farking idiots.

xria: Look, the US is even in this farking dictionary definition of democracy you farking idiots.

That dictionary needs to put its own name under the definition of 'FAIL'.

I think they've known for at least a century. I recall form some PBS special about the Statue of Liberty, something along the lines of, "France, where there isn't enough Liberty, gave a statue of it to the United States, where there's already too much."

I think their happy with their constitutional monarchy.

Fark, China thinks it's a democracy -- they elect low level party members, who represent them in slightly higher level party elections, who represent them in upper level party elections, and so on, until the party elects the PM. Just like the US, if it had five level of electoral colleges, instead of just one.

The strongest argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter.
-Sir Winston Churchill

incendi: TheGreyPiper: A lynch mob is pure democracy.

So you're saying the civil rights movement was very un-democratic?

Yes, it was. Which is fine. The founding principle of America was not democracy, it was the belief in the universal rights of man. A government made of elected representatives was chosen as the best means of attaining that goal.

The Constitution and Bill of Rights were written to document human rights, and to place them on a higher plane of authority than that given to the elected representatives.

Civil rights is deliberately undemocratic, the whole point of it is to protect the minority from the power of the majority within a democratic system.

This is exactly the point being made today regarding same-sex marriage. The opinion of the majority doesn't matter. It is a civil rights issue, and the only consideration is how the laws affect the rights of the individual.

As said in the Declaration of Independence "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

"Unalienable" means just that, taking them away from anyone, by any means, including by a democratic vote, is tyranny.

eqtworld: The USA is not a pure democracy, it has never been a pure democracy. It is a representative republic; and uses an electoral college.

/the brits dont want democracy, they never even overthrew the royals.

Actually, they killed all the royals, they just changed their minds and went out to get a new bunch later.

But yeah, ditto, republic, not pure democracy, necessary to scale larger than a smally city, etc, etc.

Democracy will always lead to an idiot being elected, because we all know the idiots are in majority, and they will make sure they'll elect one of their own.
-Unknown

That being said, the only pure democracy I know of is Switzerland, who puts just about anything up for a referendum on a regular basis. That is, by definition a rule of majority vote by the people.

The rest of the world is pretty much a representative democracy, either through parliamentarism, an electoral college, or some other arrangement that they will swear is the best in the world.

Then again, there are one or two repressive democracies, where people get to think that their votes actually mean jack shiat, and then the person who was supposed to get elected gets elected anyways.

Britons have far more individual say in their government than we do.

We have an executive branch that mandates every national decision, and is elected in nothing even closely resembling a democratic manner.

The nature of the electoral college alone places greater electoral control on the heads of the few. The electoral college would be fine if it was distributed fairly to the states by population. As it is, states with twice the population as (say, Wyoming) have the same number of electoral votes (three).

The number of voters per electoral vote in Wyoming is 172,000. The number of voters per electoral vote in Florida is 669,000. That's even more disgusting. My vote for president here in Florida has 25% the power that someone's does in Wyoming.

Caesar1313: eqtworld: the brits dont want democracy, they never even overthrew the royals.

Monarchy and Democracy are not mutually exclusive, Britain is a constitutional monarchy (although unwritten it still has a constitution), and is democratic. Republics are not the only forms of government that are democratic.

Too bad some "replublics" are falsely advertised, eg. Peoples Republic of China, Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North), and etc...

Potent_Potable: Too bad some "replublics" are falsely advertised, eg. Peoples Republic of China, Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North), and etc...

Political sciences rule of thumb: "Any country that needs to point out that they are free, democratic or a republic in their name, most probably aren't."

Deutsche Demokratische Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, and a whole lot of other examples.

The dumbest thing I've ever read from anything approximating professional media. Lord..

The Constitution - Its just a goddamn piece of paper

well, its not like we have it either right now.

Clearly, Anglo-American political scientists and philosophers haven't learned much from history. With all due respect to Francis Fukuyama's End of History, human political experience is continually evolving within the Hegelian dialecticoontil it reaches its final predetermined destiny. The most pure and rational form of human governance: the Spartan constitutional system of two simultaneous kings.

bubbaprog: The electoral college would be fine if it was distributed fairly to the states by population.

I'm sorry, but that statement proves that you have absolutely no understanding of the purpose of the electoral college, nor of the intent of the founding fathers. Please find a remedial history course and STUDY why we have the structure we do.

I'll even give you the first clue. We were NEVER intended to have a rule of the masses, and the founding fathers were NOT interested in what the "majority" had to say.

They were some pretty smart guys that way.

Wow. All that just to take a shot at their new PM in the final two sentences!

Except for a few gratuitous and borderline snide/ill informed commments, a pretty good article.


America ROCKS!

<b>Lee Jackson Beauregard:</b> <i>come 2009 we'll have a Democrat in the White House and we can get our country back.</i>

This is exactly that kind of BS comment that shows Dems/Libs to be azzhats.

Your nation hasnt gone ANYWHERE; it is still here and thanks to your right to vote you will get an opportunity for a new administration. But if the Reps win the White House again, and it is a strong possiblity, it doesn't mean it was an 'illegal' election, no matter WHAT the Dems say.

It is a sign of stupidity and arrogance for you to think when Dems are in power it is the 'will of the people' and when Reps are in power it's because the election was 'stolen'.

Between evangelical Christians, the US Republican Party, the Bush and Clinton families, and corporate domination of the US legislative process, I'm not exactly sure that our form of democracy compares favorably to that of other first world nations.

A little restraint would be a nice change from our current system, where the recipe for political success seems to be a combination of receiving more campaign contributions and out-assholing the competition with one dimensional rhetoric.