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.
The system in which a majority of people also value those things and vote for them.
Democracy and institutions (or institutionalist) are not exactly opposed but they are not exactly the same thing either.Praxis+Theodicy wrote: ↑Sat May 11, 2024 9:19 am 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.
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.
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.
Again, your historical knowledge is lacking.
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.
i suspect very little of our system is democratic, it was based on being a republic, beyond that it’s become highly socialistic.
^^Good discussion in that 2016 thread.appleman2006 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 19, 2016 5:23 pm 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.