[POLL] United States Presidential Elections 2016
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It's OK. That sentence wasn't directed at you.
I'm sorry. I thought that 'oxymoron' is a derogative term used to insult people instead of being a literary device.
Nowhere did I say that it is solely a democracy. All I said is that the US is a democratic republic.I will stand very firm that the United States of America Government is not a democracy however. So what?
Read our founding fathers if you have not, I mean read them without an agenda
A democracy? No.
If this is not racist, then I don't know what is.
While I wouldn't say that BuzzFeed is the pinnacle of investigative journalism, I wouldn't say that it's completely worthless either.
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Which we don't, there for we are not
Definition 1 (Wikipedia):
Do you elect representatives from among yourselves to form a governing body, such as a parliament? Yes you do.
Definition 2 (Larry Diamond):
Do you have a political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections? Yes you do.
Do you have an active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life? Yes you do.
Do you have protection of the human rights of all citizens? Yes you do,
Do you have a rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens? Yes you do.
Definition 3 (dictionary.com):
Do you have a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by their elected agents under a free electoral system? Yes you do.
Is the United States a state having such a form of government, like the United States and Canada? Yes it is.
Definition 4 (Cambridge dictionary):
Do you have a system of government based on the belief in freedom and equality between people, in which power is held by elected representatives? Yes you do.
Is the US a country in which power is held by elected representatives? Yes it is.
Definition 5 (Oxford dictionaries):
Do you have a system of government by all the eligible members of the state through elected representatives? Yes you do.
Do you still not believe that the US fits the definitions of what a democracy is? (Yes you do...)
Let me ask you why it is so important to a few of you that we don't call the United States a democracy?
Then how do you ever learn? Oh that's right, you don't.
Hillary Clinton lost the election but she won the popular vote, there for the u.s. as a democracy needs to hand her our mob rules crown.
There it is folks, trust me
Why would you need to elect Hillary as a president to be a democracy? You elect representatives to the electoral college, and they, in turn, vote on behalf of the people that they represent. Representative democracy.
Edit: https://www.uscis.gov/system/files_force/USCIS/files/Government_and_You_handouts.pdf
I rest my case.
BobK
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Sorry, but you really, really, really need to read through the Human Rights thread.
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Yep. Satirical fake news website.
(If you were asking seriously and not being sarcastic. I can't tell.
)It seems this discussion has gone on as long as it has because it turns out people have very different definitions/interpretations of certain words like 'republic' and 'democracy', possibly born on US/non-US lines. To me that's quite interesting, and surely trying to establish common definitions is important, no? It's hardly meaningless.
How do you find out about things you don't already know?It's not clear to me what question you're answering here.
With all due respect a lot of your posts on this topic have been quite vague, and you've been quick to be dismissive of, and assume agendas in, others' posts. If you're worried about people being improperly influenced/educated, personally I'm learning far more from the likes of Joey D, McLaren, eran, UKMikey and Legro, who have made (at least some) very clear points and provided a wealth of sources and/or information.
Dotini
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All this discussion of US democracy versus republic has been entertaining, but IMO is a moot question. No one - left, right or center - has the slightest realistic hope or expectation that either the constitutional amendment or the constitutional congress needed to remove the electoral college will come to pass. This is because a majority of the states would be required for passage, either way. And rightly or wrongly the smaller states, which are the majority, firmly believe it is in their interest to retain the present system.
On top of that is the widespread phobia about changing the constitution in any way. This is not because it couldn't be improved here or there, but because the change process itself has the potential to become runaway, and introduce unneeded or bad changes along with the good, depending entirely on the character qualities of those involved.
On top of that is the widespread phobia about changing the constitution in any way. This is not because it couldn't be improved here or there, but because the change process itself has the potential to become runaway, and introduce unneeded or bad changes along with the good, depending entirely on the character qualities of those involved.
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xyloscissor
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Meanwhile, the inauguration is in three days. I can't say I'll watch it however because between the puffed up media and the desire to make it likened to a super bowl 1/2 time show it's more than I can take. I will however find the full text of his speech and read that more than once.
Here are a few things to note, democrats not willing to attend: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ers-not-going-to-trump-inauguration/96652942/ , that's showing very poor taste.
900,000 protesters? http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...rotesters-during-trump-s-inauguration-n707226 , reminds me of the million man march.
It's shaping up to be quite the circus show imo
Here are a few things to note, democrats not willing to attend: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ers-not-going-to-trump-inauguration/96652942/ , that's showing very poor taste.
900,000 protesters? http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...rotesters-during-trump-s-inauguration-n707226 , reminds me of the million man march.
It's shaping up to be quite the circus show imo
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/5/bikers-for-trump-secure-space-for-inauguration-ami/Meanwhile, the inauguration is in three days. I can't say I'll watch it however because between the puffed up media and the desire to make it likened to a super bowl 1/2 time show it's more than I can take. I will however find the full text of his speech and read that more than once.
Here are a few things to note, democrats not willing to attend: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ers-not-going-to-trump-inauguration/96652942/ , that's showing very poor taste.
900,000 protesters? http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...rotesters-during-trump-s-inauguration-n707226 , reminds me of the million man march.
It's shaping up to be quite the circus show imo
I read somewhere they estimate over 100,000 bikers to show up.
Update 200,000 bikers to make a "wall of meat".
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...inauguration-but-ready-to-form-wall-meat.html
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Which we don't, there for we are not
Why on earth let me ask is it so important to a few of you to call the greatest republic the world has ever seen a democracy? It's getting so silly that this thread is beginning to lose any meaningful meaning at all.
I want an answer, no one would take this much effort over a name for no reason. Remember that blue dress?
I'll just go ahead and answer the question for you because I don't ask questions I don't already know the answer to.
Hillary Clinton lost the election but she won the popular vote, there for the u.s. as a democracy needs to hand her our mob rules crown.
There it is folks, trust me
The most distasteful part of that to me is the desire to influence the youth around here who may not yet have an education or a chance to form an informed opinion. I hate that so much it's most likely the reason I hang around these threads to begin with.
Lord almighty!
Why don't you please inform yourself instead of repeating the same tired cliches over & over again? It's perfectly possible, as eran has patiently & exhaustively explained, for the US to be both a republic AND and a democracy. The two are not mutually exclusive. France is a republic, Germany is a republic, Italy is a republic etc. - they are all also democracies.The fact that HRC lost the election but won the popular vote is NOT an indication that the US is a republic rather than a democracy. In fact, it's perfectly possible in many other democratic countries to win the "popular vote" & not win the election, that's because other countries, like the US, have first-past-the-post electoral structures & sometimes other rules that govern how the democratic process works. These countries do not suffer from "mob rule" any more than the US does & furthermore, as has been pointed out repeatedly, practically no countries have "direct democracy" - they all, like the US, have some form of "representative democracy".
The only reason I bother to comment on these threads is to counteract the constant stream of nonsense put forward by (mostly) American posters who have no perspective on their own country because they are completely uninformed about the way the rest of the world works.
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Danoff
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Well... is snow even frozen rain? I mean, that's debatable. Hail and sleet certainly, but snow? It never falls as water.
Anyway, the usual terms used to distinguish here are "pure" democracy vs. constitutionally-limited republic.
xyloscissor
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I wonder where these 900,000 people were when Hillary was on the campaign trail, seems to me if they had tried 1/2 as hard to get her elected as they now try to demonize Trump they'd probably have their woman.
These bikers had been stepping in all throughout Trumps run at his rallies and things right? It can be a scary thought if you can remember Altamont but in reality I don't think much will happen.
what is #DisruptJ20 lol
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The ones where he ignored posts that broke down his responses in favor of ones he found easier to attack (but later reasserting that his responses had been heretofore unchallenged), the ones where he edited definitions he found on the internet before posting them here, or the general process to shift the entire topic away from what he was originally saying about Trump? Or was it just the part where he started calling people irrational and sarcastic about people not agreeing with him after already doing the above things?
I only suspect I know which one it is.
I've seen his "knowledge" in action in other threads about how political systems work. I even quoted one of them since he kept bringing up various oppressive governments in the past as a point of direct comparison to Trump. I'm about as impressed with his superior knowledge of world government systems as I am with your superior knowledge of American history.
No, you got it backwards because you mentioned a specific determining factor of how the Electoral College and House of Representatives was originally apportioned and threw out an explanation for who benefited from it that conveniently left out most of the actual context of it (since it did reduce the amount of power that the slave states originally wanted and made them ultimately weaker than the North was, despite how it gave them more influence than really deserved) so it better fit your point. And then you called the person who gave an explanation to that effect a slavery apologist twice instead of actually, like, responding to it; right after talking about how much more together you've pieced it than anyone else.
And yet here you are again, over the same topic, acting like everyone but you is just so full of nonsense because they (especially if they are Americans) just can't figure out how governments work like you and another person who once said things like American slavery and the Holocaust were morally in the clear because the respective governments said so at the time.
So I guess my only real question to you is what nasty thing from history are you going to end up implying people are this time when they disagree with you? Could save us all some time.
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Dotini
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For John Pilger fans, a provocative new article:
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/373933-issue-donald-us-trump-pilger/
Edit: Trigger warnings for all snowflakes and fascists! To read this is become mentally bruised.
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/373933-issue-donald-us-trump-pilger/
Edit: Trigger warnings for all snowflakes and fascists! To read this is become mentally bruised.
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xyloscissor
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Joey D
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It still amazes me after all these pages there are people still claiming the US is something it isn't. Just because a republic has elements of a democracy doesn't mean it's democracy. My truck has elements of a sports car, doesn't mean it is one. But it looks like there's no convincing some 
.
Trump has a point, even if it's exaggerated. Many people hopping the boarder aren't good people are are definitely a reason drugs are making their way into the country. With the criminalization of drugs, you're going to get criminals doing criminal things, including rape.
I honestly don't think Trump is a racist, he does have some bigoted and prejudice views on some things, but I wouldn't call him a racist, more of an idiot that doesn't know how to phrase things properly. When the media edits things to make it sound like something it's not, then the public is misled.
I can't think of a single thing BuzzFeed does that would be considered journalism. Sure there are some fun lists and fun quizzes, but when it comes to news they are worse then CNN and Fox New combined.
I'm not exactly sure why I should care how other countries work. I don't live there, I don't pay taxes to that nation, and I don't vote for their leaders so why should I even have an opinion about the way it's ran? And before you say "because the US intervenes with all these countries" I'd like to point out I am staunchly against any kind of foreign aid or participating in foreign conflicts that didn't result in the US being directly attacked.
About the only things I care about when it comes to other countries is a.) is tourism any good, b.) what cars do they build, c.) what alcohol can I try from there, and d.) how attractive are their females. Past that what they do and how they run their country is solely up to the people that live in it and have to deal with it day in and day out.
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Seriously, people need to stop getting bent out of shape over Trump and start paying attention to Congress, they have way more of a chance to jack up your life then Trump does.
.Trump has a point, even if it's exaggerated. Many people hopping the boarder aren't good people are are definitely a reason drugs are making their way into the country. With the criminalization of drugs, you're going to get criminals doing criminal things, including rape.
I honestly don't think Trump is a racist, he does have some bigoted and prejudice views on some things, but I wouldn't call him a racist, more of an idiot that doesn't know how to phrase things properly. When the media edits things to make it sound like something it's not, then the public is misled.
I can't think of a single thing BuzzFeed does that would be considered journalism. Sure there are some fun lists and fun quizzes, but when it comes to news they are worse then CNN and Fox New combined.
I'm not exactly sure why I should care how other countries work. I don't live there, I don't pay taxes to that nation, and I don't vote for their leaders so why should I even have an opinion about the way it's ran? And before you say "because the US intervenes with all these countries" I'd like to point out I am staunchly against any kind of foreign aid or participating in foreign conflicts that didn't result in the US being directly attacked.
About the only things I care about when it comes to other countries is a.) is tourism any good, b.) what cars do they build, c.) what alcohol can I try from there, and d.) how attractive are their females. Past that what they do and how they run their country is solely up to the people that live in it and have to deal with it day in and day out.
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Seriously, people need to stop getting bent out of shape over Trump and start paying attention to Congress, they have way more of a chance to jack up your life then Trump does.
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CodeRedR51
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A few words from Trump sent the US dollar tumbling:
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-18/donald-trump-highlights-power-to-move-markets/8191012
Granted, he wanted that outcome, but I wouldn't downplay his potential impact. He may wield less direct power (of the kind you're talking about) than Congress, but you could argue that he wields more than previous Presidents. Society is in a very receptive state right now, so Trump will have a lot of influence, at least to begin with.
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Source? I don't recall Cruz coming into that matter at the time - not even Trump's statement on it mentions him.
Joey D
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My mistake on that and I got it wrong from the article. I retracted my statement from the previous post.
What the article really said what that Trump mocked the reporter in the same way that he mocked Ted Cruz, which just shows Trump is terrible with impressions.
Here is is mocking Cruz:
And also, here's a video showing the reporter and how he wasn't spastic at all:
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Yes. Precisely. Your own quoted definitions make that pretty clear.
a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.
and
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
The distinctions are not really meaningful, the details of the constitutional arrangements, electoral system, division of powers, legal protections etc. being the most significant distinctions.
What is mind-bogglingly frustrating is to spend pages caught up in an argument over something that is of little or no significance. Some Americans seem to believe that there is some over-riding significance to being called a republic rather than a democracy. There isn't. One would hope for democracy as the basis for the electoral system in a country & this can apply to republics as to constitutional democracies. Equally, calling yourself "a republic" doesn't guarantee any particular standard of human rights, legal rights, democratic rights or anything else. Look at the Arab Republic of Egypt, the Islamic Republic of Iran, The Democratic Republic of the Congo & many other examples.
Switzerland is one of the (practically none) countries that exercises a degree of "direct democracy". Surprisingly enough Switzerland (a country I have lived in), contrary to the often repeated warning of anti-democracy propagandists, is not particularly known for its "mob rule".
How does your staunch opposition to US participation in foreign conflicts manifest itself?
What about US involvement in trade? What about drug trafficking, human trafficking, refugees, draught, crop failure, climate change, disease? What about US citizens living abroad, or traveling abroad? What about US citizens with family living in other countries? What about US citizens with property & business interests in other countries? What happens when a country in another part of the world crushes & occupies its neighbours, or forms alliances with another country that result in your own territories being attacked? What happens when ethnic or religious groups in the US see people of their own ethnicity or religion persecuted or slaughtered in other countries. You don't live there ... why should you care?[/QUOTE]
Joey D
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How? I'm against unprovoked intervention because I feel that it leads to more problems then it solves. The Iraq War is a fine example of what happens when the US goes meddling in things that it should just leave alone.
- Trade is a matter for companies residing in the US, not of the government itself.
- Drugs, human trafficking, and other global calamities should only be dealt with by the US when they affect the US directly, if they are affecting another place any number of US charities are free to exercise their right to help.
- Citizens living in other countries are already protected and have a embassy they can go to if things are bad...however, if you choose to live in an area with war or any other major, known, global events going on then you're going to have to assume that risk.
- Business interest in other countries are a matter for that business, if their company is ruined then it's on them for the risk they took.
- If a country occupies another country, then who is the US to police that action? It happens and has been happening since the dawn of civilization. If they form an alliance and proceed to attack a US owned territory then, as I've stated, the US should protect itself and fight back since it was provoked.
- When ethnic or religious group in the US see terrible events occur in other countries there are any number of charities they can donate too or if they are inclined, they can go over there and help their people. Plenty of people do missionary (both religious and secular) work to devastated areas around the globe.
I also don't really see why this is any reason for me to take an interest in how a country like Finland is ran.
xyloscissor
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xyloscissor
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Or some of our earliest presidents 👍
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1970-07-01/entangling-alliances
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Joel
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I don't get this pedantic insistence that the US is a republic and not a democracy as if its system of government isn't incredibly similar to every other representative democracy in the world. Basically every other western country is a representative democracy and is either a republic or has a toothless monarchy with symbolic power. Most have constitutions and/or bills/charters of rights and other checks and balances. Many western countries have systems where a party or coalition can form government without winning the popular vote. Many western countries have strong rural-urban, or geographic cultural divides and have systems that disproportionately weight different regions to ensure a few cities don't dominate federal politics. The majority of western countries have a legislative, executive, and judicial branch of government.
This stuff isn't unique to the US and it's not a unique snowflake. It was in the 1700s but it's not the 1700s anymore. Since WW2 every western country including the US has functioned as a representative democracy. Seriously, we're not all living under mob rule "tyranny of the majority" and I'm not under the thumb of the Queen.
This stuff isn't unique to the US and it's not a unique snowflake. It was in the 1700s but it's not the 1700s anymore. Since WW2 every western country including the US has functioned as a representative democracy. Seriously, we're not all living under mob rule "tyranny of the majority" and I'm not under the thumb of the Queen.
xyloscissor
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WWII was in the 1700's? The things you learn.
Are you sure of that? Perhaps you don't mind giving up some of your right to life for the better good of the whole, I'll never know why though. Don't get me wrong I like to pay taxes to drive on roads for instance, I don't like however having to include the ramifications of an over zealous government in my daily decisions and I honestly feel I have to do that. I have not been a free man for many years.
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Yet today the country most similar is the one with the most democracy, funny that.
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