stevestory
Posts: 13407
Joined: Oct. 2005
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Allan KeithMay 28, 2018 at 9:55 am
Kairosfocus,
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AK, RW calls so just a prelim. Mob rule is patently different from properly stabilised democracy:
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Let’s use a hypothetical:
1) US calls a vote to make abortion illegal.
2) The vote is announced and adequate time is given for public debates.
3) The result of the vote is 67% in favour of making it illegal.
4) The US passes legislation making abortion illegal.
Is this the result of proper democracy or mob rule?
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I bet the paranoid Kairosdoofus struggles to give a simple answer to that.
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215
tribune7May 28, 2018 at 10:55 am
Allan, proper democracy and mob rule are not exclusive (and is the big reason the U.S. is not a democracy).
A democratic society can certainly exist where the majority doesn’t believe the minority deserve civil liberty. |
Oh god, that dumb America isn't a democracy, it's a republic nonsense. We are in fact both.
| Quote | I often hear people argue that the United States is a republic, not a democracy. But that’s a false dichotomy. A common definition of “republic” is, to quote the American Heritage Dictionary, “A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them” — we are that. A common definition of “democracy” is, “Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives” — we are that, too.
The United States is not a direct democracy, in the sense of a country in which laws (and other government decisions) are made predominantly by majority vote. Some lawmaking is done this way, on the state and local levels, but it’s only a tiny fraction of all lawmaking. But we are a representative democracy, which is a form of democracy. |
Eugene Volokh at WaPo
Edited by stevestory on May 28 2018,13:20
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