If you've talked to anyone who buys into rightwing talk radio, you've heard the argument; the United States is a republic, not a democracy. It's actually a silly argument. Democracy is a system, while a republic is a structure. What they mean -- or what I think they mean -- is that the US isn't a direct democracy. Citizens don't vote on everything, we elect representatives to do that. Those representatives go on to work within the structure of a republic; i.e., a lawmaking governing body. Still, democracy is more something you do, not something you are. To me, saying, "This is a republic, not a democracy," sounds a lot like, "This is a cake, not a baking." We vote for people to go to Washington and vote for a living -- the whole system hinges on democracy.But this argument has seemed to evolve. It comes up whenever you bring up democracy in any form. They seem to have come to believe that democracy is in itself a bad thing. I used to think that this was simply idiotic semantics -- Democrats=democracy, Republicans=republic. Democrats are bad, therefore democracy is a bad word. Republic is a good word, because it's right there in Republican. It's a sort of quasi-logical equation that assumes the governing philosophies of both parties can be summed up with single words; we're a republic, not a democracy, because Republicans are always right and Democrats are always wrong.
And I really don't have any problem at all believing that many in the Republican base really do see it that way. Yes, it's simplistic to the point of infantile, but these are people marching around with misspelled signs warning that Obama is a socialist, just like Hitler (there's no "H" is "socialist," guys). They obviously don't waste a lot of time with reason or facts. They live in a world where whatever you want to believe -- no matter how far-fetched or nonsensical -- is true, true, true if you just believe it with all your little wingnut heart. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Barack Obama is really an illegal alien. Despite all evidence to the contrary, global warming is just a socialist plot to bring down capitalism. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the framers of the Constitution were hyper-Christian zealots and the United States is therefore a hyper-Christian nation by design. Despite all evidence to the contrary, there were WMD in Iraq -- Saddam just moved them someplace else. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Republican Party represents the people...[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
