Autocrat vs Institutionalist

[Ken]

I would like to see a government that is run by people with good character and real wisdom. Whatever system achieves this is the one that I am for.

The system in which a majority of people also value those things and vote for them.

I would argue that part of good character is being humble. And humility is utterly inconstant with autocracy or being an autocrat.

[Praxis+Theodicy]

I chose "Something Else," and if this is a copout, or too close to "Institutionalism," feel free to call me out.

I choose "DEMOCTRATIC" - Leadership prioritizes 2-way democracy: strong, clear, frequent communication with all the people, mixed with more frequent governance by referendum. Communication and education from the top down to supplement governance from the bottom up.
By democratic, this would also mean a promotion of agendas that broaden democracy to more than just governance; democratic labor organization, democratic use of public funds through something like sovereign wealth funds, etc.

Most of this adds up to something like another FDR administration. Although his administration was a bit most technocratic than democratic, things like fireside chats helped make the administration "feel" more democratic because of that strong communication and education of the nation; and expanding democracy to more sectors than just governance helped save the nation from the Great Depression. Public funds were used in ways that gave employment to people that the private sector was unprepared to offer, and the projects were meant to serve the public good into the future, essentially turning currency in the present into actual, physical public wealth for the future.

[Ken]

I chose "Something Else," and if this is a copout, or too close to "Institutionalism," feel free to call me out.

I choose "DEMOCTRATIC" - Leadership prioritizes 2-way democracy: strong, clear, frequent communication with all the people, mixed with more frequent governance by referendum. Communication and education from the top down to supplement governance from the bottom up.
By democratic, this would also mean a promotion of agendas that broaden democracy to more than just governance; democratic labor organization, democratic use of public funds through something like sovereign wealth funds, etc.

Most of this adds up to something like another FDR administration. Although his administration was a bit most technocratic than democratic, things like fireside chats helped make the administration "feel" more democratic because of that strong communication and education of the nation; and expanding democracy to more sectors than just governance helped save the nation from the Great Depression. Public funds were used in ways that gave employment to people that the private sector was unprepared to offer, and the projects were meant to serve the public good into the future, essentially turning currency in the present into actual, physical public wealth for the future.

Democracy and institutions (or institutionalist) are not exactly opposed but they are not exactly the same thing either.

We can have democratic institutions (universal suffrage, direct election of Senators, term limits on the presidency, etc.)
And we can have undemocratic institutions (electoral college, 3/5ths compromise, filibuster rules, etc.)

I don't think it is necessarily good to swing the country back and forth between two different extremes of governance simply because one party gets 51% and the other gets 49%. But I also think that government shouldn't be so institutionalized that elections no longer matter. So where you find that happy medium I'm not sure.

But I do agree that the institution of democracy itself is exceedingly important if only because it allows us as a country to reverse course every 2 or 4 years if one particular party gets too far beyond the national consensus or is simply venal or incompetent. We are a strong country and can withstand bad leaders and leadership from time to time as long as we preserve the ability to change course.

[Josh]

We can have democratic institutions (universal suffrage, direct election of Senators, term limits on the presidency, etc.)
And we can have undemocratic institutions (electoral college, 3/5ths compromise, filibuster rules, etc.)

This looks suspiciously like Democratic institutions, not democratic institutions.

[Ken]

We can have democratic institutions (universal suffrage, direct election of Senators, term limits on the presidency, etc.)
And we can have undemocratic institutions (electoral college, 3/5ths compromise, filibuster rules, etc.)

This looks suspiciously like Democratic institutions, not democratic institutions.

Maybe it looks like that because your knowledge of American history is understandably lacking, having grown up in Australia not here.

In fact it was the Republican party that let the fight for both the 17th Amendment (direct election of Senators) and the 19th Amendment (woman's suffrage). Look at the roll call votes in the House and Senate for both of those Amendments. It was the Republican party that pushed them through, and it was largely Republican-led states that led ratification of both Amendments. For example, Republican Teddy Roosevelt was one of the biggest advocates for the 17th amendment. Democrats led the opposition to both Amendments. It was also the Republican party that led the fight for the 22nd Amendment (presidential term limits).

If in recent years the Republican party has been backsliding in its support for democracy, that only shows they are losing their way and the principles that the party once stood for.

But don't just take my word for it. Let's look at what one current Republican Congresswoman has to say on the subject: https://foxx.house.gov/news/documentsin ... tID=399971

Republicans Served As The Catalysts For the 19th Amendment

I hear repeatedly from my constituents that students are not learning the history of our country, and it is truly unfortunate. Where we are as a country today is a direct result of our past. The significant events that shaped the United States are not being taught, or explained, in a fashion that is reflective of the facts. As a direct result, modern opinions that have been formed are mired in inaccuracies. It is high time that the record is corrected, and the conversation is set straight.

A century ago, a monumental shift occurred within the Constitution that undeniably changed the course of our democracy: the passage of the 19th Amendment. Today, students across the United States flip through pages of textbooks and read about how this change came to fruition. However, when it comes to learning about the pivotal role that Republican suffragists played – in particular, Republicans within Congress who helped usher in this change – the ink runs dry. While the campaign for a woman’s right to vote is commonly referred to as a “progressive movement”, it is often misconstrued as a movement that was spurred by the platform of today’s Democrat Party. The simple truth is that history tells a different story.

On May 21, 1919, an Illinois Republican by the name of James Mann reintroduced the 19th Amendment in the House of Representatives and it passed by a vote of 304 to 89. It was a decisive victory, and the split among Democrats and Republicans was staggering. In all, over 200 Republicans voted in favor of the 19th Amendment, while only 102 Democrats voted alongside them. Subsequently, on June 4, 1919, the 19th Amendment passed the Senate by a vote of 56 to 25. Once again, the split among Democrats and Republicans was notable: eighty-two percent of Republicans voted in favor of the amendment while only forty-one percent of their Democrat colleagues concurred.

The very next year in March of 1920, 36 states ratified the 19th Amendment, and the infighting within state legislatures was steadily approaching a crescendo. Many Democrat-controlled legislatures opposed ratification, and out of those 36 states that ratified, 26 were Republican. Following ratification, over eight million women voted in the November presidential election that same year. What was the result? A 26.2 percentage-point victory for Warren G. Harding, a proud Ohio Republican who was a staunch advocate for women’s suffrage. This is not a mere coincidence; it was a direct reflection of how Republicans helped lead the charge for women’s rights.

[Josh]

Claiming the electoral college is “undemocratic” is obviously partisan. That’s why I say it’s actually a Democratic position.

[Ken]

Claiming the electoral college is “undemocratic” is obviously partisan. That’s why I say it’s actually a Democratic position.

Again, your historical knowledge is lacking.

The electoral college was implemented in part to prop up slavery which is the least democratic institution every invented. The whole 3/5ths compromise in which slaves were counted for the purpose of representation but of course not allowed to vote was meaningless without the electoral college to give it effect.

It was Democrats like Jefferson who gained the most from the electoral college (he would never have beaten Adams without it). And it was Republicans who opposed the system up through Abraham Lincoln. For example: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ns/601918/ and https://time.com/4558510/electoral-coll ... y-slavery/

Standard civics-class accounts of the Electoral College rarely mention the real demon dooming direct national election in 1787 and 1803: slavery.

At the Philadelphia convention, the visionary Pennsylvanian James Wilson proposed direct national election of the president. But the savvy Virginian James Madison responded that such a system would prove unacceptable to the South: “The right of suffrage was much more diffusive [i.e., extensive] in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of Negroes.” In other words, in a direct election system, the North would outnumber the South, whose many slaves (more than half a million in all) of course could not vote. But the Electoral College—a prototype of which Madison proposed in this same speech—instead let each southern state count its slaves, albeit with a two-fifths discount, in computing its share of the overall count.

Virginia emerged as the big winner—the California of the Founding era—with 12 out of a total of 91 electoral votes allocated by the Philadelphia Constitution, more than a quarter of the 46 needed to win an election in the first round. After the 1800 census, Wilson’s free state of Pennsylvania had 10% more free persons than Virginia, but got 20% fewer electoral votes. Perversely, the more slaves Virginia (or any other slave state) bought or bred, the more electoral votes it would receive. Were a slave state to free any blacks who then moved North, the state could actually lose electoral votes.

If the system’s pro-slavery tilt was not overwhelmingly obvious when the Constitution was ratified, it quickly became so. For 32 of the Constitution’s first 36 years, a white slaveholding Virginian occupied the presidency.

Southerner Thomas Jefferson, for example, won the election of 1800-01 against Northerner John Adams in a race where the slavery-skew of the electoral college was the decisive margin of victory: without the extra electoral college votes generated by slavery, the mostly southern states that supported Jefferson would not have sufficed to give him a majority. As pointed observers remarked at the time, Thomas Jefferson metaphorically rode into the executive mansion on the backs of slaves.

[temporal1]

Claiming the electoral college is “undemocratic” is obviously partisan. That’s why I say it’s actually a Democratic position.

i suspect very little of our system is democratic, it was based on being a republic, beyond that it’s become highly socialistic.
for instance, minority rule as has become normalized, is not at all democratic, but decidedly Democratic.

socialism is human attempt to play God.

[Josh]

Ken, I’m speaking of the present, not 200 years ago. Democrats frequently talk about how terrible the electoral college.

America wouldn’t exist without the electoral college because smaller states (most of which weren’t slave states) wouldn’t have joined the Union. They wanted representation instead of everything being dominated by the most populous states.

The electoral college isn’t “undemocratic”. Every state gets electors based on its population. To ensure it is fair, every state also gets electors just like the Senate does. America is a republic, not a direct democracy. Nobody ever has claimed otherwise.

I suspect most Americans would prefer not to live in a country where Presidential elections are entirely decided by a few of the most populated cities and nobody else matters. In America, those people already have great influence over their own elections for governor, legislature, national Congress… and yet some Democrats claim it would be more democratic if L.A. and NYC also dominated the choice for President, too.

Many of the rest of Americans look at L.A. and NYC and say “no thanks”. We’ll gladly live without the unaffordable housing, corrupt government, sky high taxes, horrific traffic, pollution, smog, rising violent crime, carjackings, and filthy, rubbish-strewn streets. Those who wish to stay there may. We just also feel that they also shouldn’t decide to elect the President without the rest of us getting a fair say.

[temporal1]

2016 / Electoral college / P.1: viewtopic.php?t=192

I think the fact that you have a system where in fact less populated areas have a chance to be heard is a good thing. Even the way things are presently urban interests are far more likely to be heard over rural which I think is a bad thing.

One other thing to keep in mind as well. Because of the electoral college system parties plan their campaigning accordingly. My guess is that as close as the majority vote was this time around, had the outcome actually been based on it Trump would of spent far more time in places like California and the west coast and could very well have more than made up the difference.

There is another way of looking at it as well. If you add in all the people that did not go to the polls and add them to Trump's supporters he has a pretty strong mandate. As I always say. If you do not vote you are by default saying you will be satisfied with whoever is chosen as the winner.

^^Good discussion in that 2016 thread.