> The very foundation of your democracy has been eroded.
Anyone who has studied American history knows that there's been a fairly recent revisionist movement to convince everyone that our republic is actually a democracy. The truth is that this country has always been a republic. The founders of our government hated tyrannical democracy.
Hamilton: "It has been observed by an honorable gentleman, that a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved, that no position in politics is more false than this. The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity."
John Adams: "Democracy, will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes, and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure and every one of these will soon mold itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues, and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit, and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few."
Adams again: "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide."
Ben Rush: "A simple democracy is the devil's own government."
Madison: "Where a majority are united by a common sentiment, and have an opportunity, the rights of the minor party become insecure."
Madison again: "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."
I could go on and on.
The point I'm trying to make here is that the left has fully endorsed this. Trump lost because turnout was high -- because the left shoehorned executive actions through elections commissions and governors under the guise of COVID. They increased turnout by mailing everyone a ballot. The left fired up their base and increased turnout by promising direct checks into voters bank accounts. They increased turnout by promising free healthcare. The left wants to double down and provide citizenship to 11 million illegal aliens, forever increasing their voter base. And finally, most brazenly, they want to abolish the electoral college to ensure that their coastal majorities can never be overridden.
So no, democracy isn't dying in the US. We're more democratic than we've ever been, and there's no sign of it stopping.
I am sorry to have to be the one to say this but you are making a pointless semantic argument. Nobody is saying the USA is not a republic, it's a democratic republic.
This must be some kind of political talking point because I have heard it over and over for years, but it does nothing to convince anyone of your arguments and you would be better served to argue based on policy or ideology rather than this semantic distinction which is not even correct to begin with.
For what it's worth I don't disagree with your substantive points.
I agree with this analysis (and I support the Democrats in all those things you mentioned).
What happened was not just increased talk of our government being a democracy - it was also that our republican form of government, over the course of the years, actually made itself a democracy, step by step, from the Twelfth Amendment to the Seventeenth Amendment to the various judicial rulings of the 1960s that recognized the "one person, one vote" standard, among many other steps.
The difficulty with the "We're not a democracy, we're a republic" argument is the same difficulty with monarchists today who have to deal with the fact that their beloved legitimate rulers abdicated or otherwise ceded power legitimately. We certainly were not a democracy in 1789, given the number of people disenfranchised, but we chose to become one, which is an entirely intra-vires thing for a republican government to do.
Anyone who has studied American history knows that there's been a fairly recent revisionist movement to convince everyone that our republic is actually a democracy. The truth is that this country has always been a republic. The founders of our government hated tyrannical democracy.
Hamilton: "It has been observed by an honorable gentleman, that a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved, that no position in politics is more false than this. The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity."
John Adams: "Democracy, will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes, and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure and every one of these will soon mold itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues, and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit, and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few."
Adams again: "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide."
Ben Rush: "A simple democracy is the devil's own government."
Madison: "Where a majority are united by a common sentiment, and have an opportunity, the rights of the minor party become insecure."
Madison again: "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."
I could go on and on.
The point I'm trying to make here is that the left has fully endorsed this. Trump lost because turnout was high -- because the left shoehorned executive actions through elections commissions and governors under the guise of COVID. They increased turnout by mailing everyone a ballot. The left fired up their base and increased turnout by promising direct checks into voters bank accounts. They increased turnout by promising free healthcare. The left wants to double down and provide citizenship to 11 million illegal aliens, forever increasing their voter base. And finally, most brazenly, they want to abolish the electoral college to ensure that their coastal majorities can never be overridden.
So no, democracy isn't dying in the US. We're more democratic than we've ever been, and there's no sign of it stopping.
It's the republic that's in danger.