Democracy is a stupid idea

Originally posted by TheRepublic
first of all i disagree with Mr. Churchills statement. The original republic as constructed by the founders was indeed superior to the "Democratic" government we now have.

The original republic as constructed by the founders . . . I assume you mean the Constitution of 1788? Actually the really truly original republic constructed by the founders was the Articles of Confederation of 1777. But it proved to empower too weak a central government, resulting in fiscal instability and an inability to present a unified foreign policy. Thus the government it created had to be replaced by the Constitution, which represented, not a weakening, but a highly controversial strengthening of the central government.

But even that government proved too weak. If it were otherwise, the Civil War would never have happened.

the cotton gin invented by a northern inventor made the cotton boom possible with his cotton gin invented in 1794. cotton would not have been profitible otherwise and chattel slavery would have faded from existance much sooner without it.

Your first sentence here is true. Your second is not, but certainly the cotton gin encouraged slavery to expand into areas where it otherwise might not have. However, what you said before was that machinery was available to allow slavery to fade out on its own. Surely the cotton gin was not that -- by your own statement, it encouraged slavery to expand!

The tractor is what allowed slavery (and serfdom) to end. And that was definitely not available in the 1850s. Slavery was not on the way out; it was expanding and growing. It was under political siege, though -- and THAT is the reason why the south seceded.

Everywhere else in the world slavery was abolished--at about the same time--with hardly a single corpse.

Untrue. In some places, slavery continued. In others, it had ALREADY been abolished.

Actually, that brings up the real purpose of the Emancipation Proclamation. It was intended, not to free the slaves, but to keep France and England from recognizing the Confederacy and intervening to end the war and sever the Union permanently. It transformed what had previously been only a war over secession into one over slavery, and France and England were unwilling to take the side of the slavers.

So all you are really saying here is that, by the standards of the civilized world, the American South was backwards and barbaric. Lincoln knew this, and knew that he could use it to keep France and England out of the war.

slavery still exists today it always has and always will in one form or another.

Yes and no. Without trying to defend injustices against hired workers, or claiming that they enjoy some kind of idyllic freedom, there is still a vast difference between even the worst capitalist oppression of the workers and actual chattel slavery. Even the black sharecroppers living essentially in serfdom after emancipation could not legally be whipped, or their families broken up and sold away from each other. It's not the same.

Regarding the economics of emancipation, the historical reality is that when it occurred, it did NOT disrupt the economy of the south. The south remained poor compared to the rest of the country, yes, but what can you expect of a region that so long and fiercely resisted industrialization? Did you know that the pre-Civil War southern state governments routinely put roadblocks in the way of building railroads? Did you know that the Confederate constitution contained a proviso forbidding any public projects to benefit industry, except for improvement of waterways? That one of the reasons the Confederacy lost the war was because, by its own choices, it had little in the way of industry?

The destruction of the Civil War itself hurt the southern economy, but the loss of property by a relatively few slaveowners was barely a hiccup.

tell us wiseone, were you there? did you interview the armies of the CSA?

Me, personally? Of course not. Can I read the accounts of those who were and did? Yes, I can. Have I? Yes, I have. What I said is not even controversial.

because thats exactly as the southerners saw the war, as a fight for independance

I never said otherwise, but you were arguing that they fought for the political principle of a weak central government. No. The government in Richmond was no weaker, and during the war no less despotic (recall that the Confederacy, not the Union, was the first to employ conscription) than the one in Washington. The Confederate constitution was taken word for word from the U.S. Constitution and contained only three significant differences. It was very primal, very visceral, why they fought, a matter of protecting their homes from invaders, and not one of political theory at all.

Oh, and just to make sure we don't get distracted too far: most Union soldiers couldn't have understood the concept, either.

KrazyJethro

i was agreeing with you. It was the others saying i was to leave the country that i was suprised at. I still agree with you. democracy is stupid.

Two Steps Forward

First of all i apreciate discussion with someone who knows the ins and outs of the civil war and though i do disagree with you i apreciate your input. but before i reply to your previous statement i would like to ask a few questions.

first of all what do you think of this whole william jefferson business?

do you find it distressing that congress and the president are rushing to help hide the corruption?

do you agree with what i said earlier that without lobbying reform, that it is indeed the corporations who are being represented instead of the voters that put the representatives in office?

do you agree with term limits on senators?

and lastly
who is your favorite president?
mine is thomas jefferson

thank you,

Originally posted by TheRepublic

...must...stop....talking about...civil war.....
aaah forget it
Farm machinery replacing labor was certainly not available in the 1850s
WRONG
the cotton gin invented by a northern inventor made the cotton boom possible with his cotton gin invented in 1794. cotton would not have been profitible otherwise and chattel slavery would have faded from existance much sooner without it.
but think about this:

From the book Empire of Debt
Abraham Lincoln is credited with having abolished slavery--at a cost of 618,000 American lives, 2 percent of the entire population. (An equivalent death toll today would wipe out 5 million Americans) Everywhere else in the world slavery was abolished--at about the same time--with hardly a single corpse. The great Emancipator might better be cursed than praised.

Lincoln went to war with the South to preserve the Union. The South was under arms upon secession. The sympathetic Secretary of War had been working to isolate garrisons and forts as well as munitions for 2 years prior to the rebellion so the South could more easily gain control of those assets. They knew what was coming when they walked out of Congress and abandoned the United States to form a new Southern nation where slavery would be preserved. It was when the Southern gentlemen walked away from a difficult issue, abandoning their responsibilities, that war became inevitable. I don't recall Lincoln pushing them out the halls of Congress. They walked freely and created the problem unilaterally.

But it was the Mexican-American War which brought things to a head. It was the issue of whether Texas, New Mexico and California (the newly acquired territories) would be slave states that caused the issue to ripen when it did. U.S. Grant, although a participant, was opposed to the invasion of Mexico and understood that the Civil War was a direct consequence of that invasion. Lincoln was prepared to allow the existing Southern states the right to continue the practice of slavery for the forseeable future. He also believed that slavery would ultimately peter out on its own, without legislative intervention.

I am going off to egypt for 2 months and must pack up my computer now but one last post before i leave. I realize this may seem to be unfair on my part but i am sure 2 months from now when i get back there will be plenty in response and i will be the one cut off

first, i enjoyed talking with everyone on here, even the people who think i should leave the country.

lastly, i am sad people are more preoccupied with the civil war then they are with this william jefferson clown and all this corruption but oh well. what can you do.

seattlelaw

In my mind the war had little to do with slavery, and was mostly due to the ability of one part of the United States to impose its will and to control another. As i had agreed with others earlier:

1) Slavery still exists today just in a diffrent form, new name for same old crap. people working minimum wage jobs living off government assistance are basically slaves. if you owned slaves and let them pick their own jobs on the plantation and move around to diffrent parts are they free? are they still slaves? they sure as heck cant pursue their dreams or become president. no its the same old descendants of the same aristocratic white people running things. times change, faces change, but the roles are always the same. After the civil war many of the slaves still lived on the plantations, and still worked for the same people...but they were "free"?

2) Lincoln himself said the purpose of the civil war was not to free the slaves, the purpose of the emancipation proclimation was to throw the economy and homefront of the south into chaos. Lincoln was a calculating tryant.

so since we agree nothing really changed exept nominally, lincoln had 1 in 4 males in the south killed. shut down newspapers of those who disagreed with him. jailed many members of the maryland legislator for disagreeing with no trial. ignoored the rulings of the supreme court in ex parte merryman. all to preserve the union?

well what is a union?
if you are married to someone you are in a union. if one of the members is unhappy and leaves that is a dissolution of that union. if youre wife tries to leave you and you handcuff her and shove her in the basement, all the while beating her repeatedly and starving her into deciding to stay with you...guess what that is not a union...that is a crime If Lincoln had not been martyrized there may well have been war crime trials against him.

in the original articals of confederation there was clause in the preamble stating that it was to be a perpetual union. every state Seceded from the articals of confederation. they then disolved it and ratified the Constitution. you will find no mention of perpetual union in the US Constitution. The founding fathers new better then to put that in.

was it worth sending 618,000 mens souls from this earth when there was not even a legal precedent? obviously from lincolns actions he cared nothing for law in the first place.

Two Steps Forward
The confederacy lost because of the form of its government, which is unfortunate.
Your right the government despised big business and would not cooperate with railroad building. many tracks in one state had diffrent gauges from other states. North Carolina had many textile factories and produced uniforms. while many units from other states were wearing rags the NC troops were dressed perfectly with extra uniforms in the wharehouses. Th NC governer was looking after his own. A confederacy is not good for winning wars against despotic empire building nations, as the south found out. but it was good for protecting individual rights in theory. but we will never know how the confederacy may have been thanks to lincolns all powerful forsight and his penchant for getting soldiers killed and burning and looting southern citizens homes.
Our government is the descendant of the victor, and it is not suprising that clowns like william jefferson are protected, good men like the investigators at the FBI threaten to resign, and lobbying goes unchecked. The big business industrial imperialists won and now we are in every corner of this world suppresing other people and medeling in their business. not minding our own business taking care of our own towns as the people of the republic would have been.

nice talking to yall
flame on...

[edit on 28-5-2006 by TheRepublic]

I don't think the thread post said:

"Democracy is a stupid idea compared to all the other forms of government currently employed in the world today."

I think he said:

"Democracy is a stupid idea."

There's a huge difference there. And I agree -- democracy is pretty stupid.

Even if it's the best form of government in the world today, it's still amounts to everybody doing what a simple majority prescribes. Considering vast amounts of people in this country today are insanely ignorant, apathetic, and conditioned, yes, I have to agree: this is stupid.

Democracy is Slavery!

Any questions, students? gemworld.com...

Sorry Republic, but I have to take exception on a couple of points.

For one, the problem in question is not specific to democracy. Democracy at least gives us a means of removing the most egregious offenders without bloodshed.

Second, but closely related, if Democracy is a mitigating factor, then what part of our system is truly open to this problem? The Republic. Had we not concentrated power in the hands of individual people, the power in question would not have been abused.

Now, it is true that if power is not vested in anyone it will not be exercised and nothing will get done. Police for instance will always be, to one degree or another, subject to corruption. In this case however, the power abused was the power of a man entrusted to vote on the issues. This is a power which could infact be claimed effectively by the people in the information age.

This brings us to the problems that scholars have historically found in democracy. They did not oppose it because of corruption, but out of distrust of the ill informed and poor masses.

Socrates is documented by Xenophon as trying to obstruct a trial in Athens when popular support lead to a trial being conducted in a manner contrary to law (one of the first instances of someone taking a stand against ex post facto legislation).

Aristotle was a proponent of the Stake in Society theory, suggesting that equality was geometric, rather than arithmetic. In other words, a persons status in society represents a greater holding in the common good and thus a greater say.

I like to think that I keep my finger on the pulse of American politics. The modern criticism of democracy couldn't be more contrary to ancient ones. The most common gripe is that Democratic Republics tend to be oligarchical. Corrupt may be a slight misnomer, or at the least a period biased term, since it would imply that ancient scholars opposed democracy for not being corrupt enough. Never the less, oligarchy is generally considered corrupt to the modern mindset and is even less acceptible to modern Americans than it was to our founding fathers (though you'd be hard pressed to see that through all of the apathy in this country).

A liberalization of democracy may be in order by way of having citizens vote not only for officials but for a "general sense of policies" detailing what the government shall and shant do in their name. For instance we might have elected this congress along with a general sense of policy saying that our government will not be appropriating funds or taking other measures to further American business interests in West Africa (i doubt it would be quite that specific, but something to that effect) and thus Ghana would have known that Mr. Freeze and his kitchen full of cash were powerless to give them any concessions in return for favors to the companies he lobbied for, thus his lobbying would have been a moot point.

Of course a question is then raised as to who should be able to vote in a more liberal or even a direct democracy if we should try such a thing. It would be contrary to our objective to restrict sufferage to the educated or the elite, therefore a substantial reform of our education system is in order. This is big problem for America and one I know many ATSers have strong feelings about. Our education system generally does not produce students with a high level of understanding of government and politics, or in many cases strong critical thinking skills in general, because such people are unwieldy subjects. Any reform of democracy must include a first class education system with strong emphasis on government and civics.


Last but not least, we should bring this discussion back to nuts and bolts so that its not entirely academic. It is proposed that our government has failed. One cannot fail unless one has a goal. So what is the goal, or purpose for being, of our government? It's the first thing in our Constitution.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity

Well, we get along decently, we're not fighting in the streets, perfect justice has never been achieved but most of us get a reasonably fair shake (granted only because we don't generally have personal differences with those in power), our defensive capabilities are second to none, we've got our working poor and that is to be addressed, but it's not as if the average American has to worry where his next meal comes from (and if you get that low, you can recover. I've eaten my share of Ramen noodles, believe me, but you can get out from under that here.) and though I frequently lament certain infringements on our liberty, the average person very rarely has a reasonable desire or need blocked by law.
So how have we failed? Overall, I'd give us B Minus on our performance of those functions. Hardly an enviable grade, definately worthy of substantial efforts at improvement, and given recent trends, definitely in danger of falling rather than rising, but by no means "failing".

So how far are we willing to go? It's not time for blood in the streets or a complete political revolution. It's time for extensive technical improvements of our system with minimal change in overall structure, mission, etc. Democracy has more potential than any system but one- and that's the dictatorship of the personified collective consciousness. So short of some kind of god-king taking over and running this nation flawlessly for our benefit rather than his own, we've got the best thing running (in terms of general choice of system, I'm not making a comparative statement about American democracy versus other free nations) and we need to give it a tune up and keep it going.

Democracy is by no means "stupid", it's just not studying hard enough.

The Republic:

To answer your questions re the thread, I'm disgusted but not surprised by the defense of Jefferson in Congress. Despite what one poster said, this is not a partisan issue; corruption crosses party lines. Power attracts those who seek power, and power is attractive for bad reasons as well as good ones. Yet power is necessary -- a certain amount of centralized power is necessary, depending on the population density, cultural plurality, and international circumstances of any given nation -- thus we need more today than our ancestors did in 1800. And so the key to liberty and good government (which in my view are synonymous) is to place safeguards both on how power is to be achieved, and on how it may be used.

It all comes down to class struggle in the end, yet Marx was unrealistically utopian in thinking that true equality could ever be achieved or a truly classless society created. And so we are left with a constant need to actively compensate for the natural accumulation of power in the hands of the smartest and most ruthless people and their descendants. From time to time we relax our guard, especially when a new generation grows up without awareness of the last time the elite had to be curtailed, and results such as we are seeing now come to pass; then a great crisis and struggle ensue, in which matters are rectified to some extent. Hence the punctuation of our history with upheavals such as the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Great Depression. It's my belief that we are currently entering another one, and will have to again reconstruct our civic order to better meet the needs of changed circumstances.

I also believe that Jefferson's alleged misdeeds don't go to the heart of the problem. The most damaging corruption in our government is perfectly legal: the influence of campaign donations arranged by corporations. But one type of corruption easily crosses over into another, and I can well believe that many in Congress, whose campaigns are flooded with money to fund them and so buy influence, manage to mix and swap account books from time to time, so that their own personal nests as well as their campaigns benefit. Hence the unwillingness to put Jefferson under too great and strong a scrutiny, lest an uncomfortable precedent be set.

Originally posted by TheRepublic
I am going off to egypt for 2 months and must pack up my computer now but one last post before i leave.

I shall look forward to your response two months from now, then.

lastly, i am sad people are more preoccupied with the civil war then they are with this william jefferson clown and all this corruption but oh well. what can you do.

Take appropriate lessons from the worst crisis in our history as a nation, and try to understand why it happened. Whatever else you can say about Jefferson's misdeeds, they are not likely to slaughter 600,000 Americans.

In my mind the war had little to do with slavery, and was mostly due to the ability of one part of the United States to impose its will and to control another.

This whole line of reasoning rests on the apparent belief that the Union was the only combatant, or the one whose actions caused the war. It was not.

Why did the Civil War happen? Because the southern states seceded, and the federal government was not willing to accept that. Why did the southern states secede? Primarily because they saw a threat to slavery in political developments, most especially the election of a Republican president. Although Lincoln was a moderate on the issue by Republican standards, he was still on record as believing in abolition and was committed to keeping slavery out of the new western territories and states. He could also be expected to endorse any legislation restricting slavery to come out of Congress. All in all, the south saw the writing on the wall, and chose to leave the union rather than see their slaves ultimately freed and the planter elite's way of life, which was dependent on slavery, destroyed.

For this reason, the war WAS about slavery, and Lincoln's famous statement that if he could restore the union by freeing all the slaves, none of them, or some of them, he would do that, does nothing to argue against this fact.

you will find no mention of perpetual union in the US Constitution. The founding fathers new better then to put that in. . . . was it worth sending 618,000 mens souls from this earth when there was not even a legal precedent?

Like slavery itself, the right to secede from the union was something the framers held silence on. There is no provision in the Constitution either allowing or specifically forbidding a state to secede. The legal question, then, admits of no answer. We should therefore set that aside, and consider the matter pragmatically.

The South was not the first region to consider secession. The New England Federalists had begun such a scheme during Washington's second term, although they never acted on it. Within both Union and Confederacy there were sectional differences. Had the secession of the southern states been allowed to stand, the precendent would have been set which would later very likely have led to further fragmentation. So the choices before our ancestors at that time were either to restore the union by force and create a stronger central government that would prevent a recurrence, or else to fragment into a number of smaller nations, each with either a very loose confederation among several states, or possibly each state becoming a sovereign nation unto itself.

And so the real question is this one:

A confederacy is not good for winning wars against despotic empire building nations, as the south found out. but it was good for protecting individual rights in theory.

I do not believe history supports you on this one. If we look at the actual record of state governments protecting individual rights, we find a decidedly mixed bag. The freedom of state governments from interference by the federal government does not equate to the freedom of citizens from oppression generally. (Start with the fact that the states that actually seceded in 1860-61 kept a very large proportion of their inhabitants in actual bondage and chains.)

Moreover, when civil liberties are sacrificed, it is most commonly in the face of some threat or other, and the sovereign threat used to justify such sacrifice is war. So anything that makes war more likely and more frequent is a threat to liberty. And it is an observable fact of history that many small governments, each with its own military forces and full sovereignty, result in much greater frequency of war than a single strong central government able to restrain sectional divisions and prevent them from becoming bloody.

I would also question whether the economic welfare of citizens (which cannot be separated from their liberty) would be enhanced if many portions of the current U.S. could erect trade barriers against each other at will. I seriously doubt it.

Vagabond:
"Democracy is by no means "stupid", it's just not studying hard enough. "

Sorry for over-simplifying your post, but I think the founding fathers would have disagreed with you pretty heartily.

Originally posted by KrazyJethro
Vagabond:
"Democracy is by no means "stupid", it's just not studying hard enough. "

Sorry for over-simplifying your post, but I think the founding fathers would have disagreed with you pretty heartily.

Depends on which founder you mean.

Hamilton? Definitely.

Washington? Probably.

Adams? Likely.

Madison? Hard to say.

Jefferson? No.

Franklin? Absolutely not.

Among these admittedly brilliant men, some trusted the people more than others did. Hamilton, in fact, wanted the president to be chosen for life.

We do not have to agree with them on every point, especially where they do not agree with each other. The Constitution is not holy writ, and the founders were not prophets. Would you return to the days when women and nonwhite men could not vote, and when the franchise was restricted to property owners?

If so, I suppose you are entitled to your opinion. But you will forgive us, I hope, if we do not take that opinion seriously.

I agree. We're all lucky the founders weren't more screwed up than they were. Considering the social/religious repressions on individual expression and such, we're lucky enough we got the flexible Constitution we did. But for my part, the best aspect of the Constitution lies in the Bill of Rights which followed.

Things are changing quickly now. The Constitution as we know it is not likely to survive these times. As flawed as it is, future generations will lament our inability or unwillingness to insist upon those oath takers fulfilling their sworn oaths to protect and support it.

Oath-breakers should get the hangman's noose.

Originally posted by KrazyJethro
Vagabond:
"Democracy is by no means "stupid", it's just not studying hard enough. "

Sorry for over-simplifying your post, but I think the founding fathers would have disagreed with you pretty heartily.

I appreciate the support from twostepsforward, I think he's reading me right on. Really the question in my mind is not if the founders would have disagreed, but if they would disagree at this juncture.

My point is this: we have a system wherein increasingly complex and fast-moving issues are being decided by an electorate which is falling behind rather than catching up in terms of understanding the government and the issues facing our nation.

This brings one of the oldest disagreements in American politics to the forefront, one well illustrated by the clash between Hamilton and Jefferson.

Jefferson and Madison apparently thought that the 10th Amendment was supposed to be taken seriously. Most of people's affairs were to be left to the people- it is afterall the truest form of democracy to just let the people run what they can without the government even taking notice.

Hamilton had something else in mind. Hamilton believed that not only should the government be up to its ears in the people's business, but that it should be run by both an elite cadre that served for life- both the president and senate would have done so in his proposal, and he left the convention until signing time after that proposal was shot down.

Just in case we think he ever came around, let's not forget that it was his idea to federalize state debts and then shift the burden off of big business by disproportionately taxing the little guys, notably distillers. When that didn't go over well, he and his boss called up the militia and sent troops against American civilians.
To but it breifly, when Patrick Henry smelled a rat, it was probably Hamilton.


I for one, am a Jefferson man, with certain reservations (god knows nothing is black and white- some of what I like about his presidency was a departure from his principles). I believe that the people must retain a controlling stake in our government. In my humble opinion, the popular demand of the American people is no "polite suggestion".

The problems we see in our democractic republic, as I interpret them, stem from the republic (small r) not the democracy (small d). The people are too often decieved, and when they can't be decieved, wholly ignored.


Of course I have left aside certain problems, and I'll give them at least breif mention to wrap up.
Most strikingly, where war was concerned, even Jefferson kicked the government into gear without much regard for how incredibly unpopular it made him. So much for hero worship.
I think this stresses two points.

1. That a sense of the people must be voted upon before the fact to guide government policy, and that the government must be bound thereby, since for whatever reasons they simply cannot be or will not be listened to in the heat of the moment.

2. That people must be better educated with regard to the national interest and the mechanisms of government, both to lend legitimacy to popular opinion and to make them better able to resist harmful measures taken by the government.

So, if I may reitterate, the problem with democracy is that it isn't studying hard enough. The people rule, at least ostensibly, but they rule negligently and therefore it is no great surprise that certain people feel entitled to usurp authority. Nor is it any surprise that the people allow this.

I'm fairly certain I could count Jefferson and probably Madison on my side for this one, and though he doesn't have a vote here, Socrates perhaps.

Against me... well if I hear one word out of Hamilton I'll challenge him to a duel. I hear he isn't very good at it.

Um, hey TheRepublic. Your moniker exhorts "Deny Finals". That may be your problem. No offense intended. It's an observation. It was my first thought after skimming your opening post on this thread.

I suggest you study harder and longer and analyze what you've studied, then do some research to answer questions, and integrate it all into a coherent and logical point of view. I'm not suggesting you shouldn't express your thoughts. Indeed, you should do so without fear and be open to opposing points of view and learn from others.

Those who do well in school, and on their finals, are the ones who spend TIME studying and thinking about what they've studied. The time you spend studying pays off. More time spent, more payoff in terms of understanding and knowledge and ability to more easily assimilate more knowledge. It's exponential. The more you learn, the easier learning becomes.

Deny Finals only if you're unprepared and fear you may flunk.

[edit on 5/30/2006 by dubiousone]

dubiousone
I wasn’t going to post anymore, as I am getting ready to travel. But I stopped by the computer at my folks house and upon reading your post I feel I must reply.

“ Deny Finals” My goodness man it’s a joke… “Deny finals” was something I put up 2 semesters ago between writing final papers to vent a little frustration. I graduated last month with a bachelor’s degree in history. I was president of my schools history honor society Phi Alpha Theta. I’ve made the deans list several times. I assure you I am no slacker. I could not have graduated without studying. I am going to Egypt to learn a new language, and I assure you, I will not succeed if I do not study. My ideas and opinions may disagree with yours but that does not make them illogical. I feel that most of the discussion that has taken place on both sides of the issue has been very logical and well thought out.

Maybe you should consider “Deny Humor” for yours.

Vagabond & Two Steps: Well, perhaps I am speaking in more purist terms because I hear Democracy when most people mean something else.

It's bothersome to me that this word is thrown around so often improperly, making it seem as if we are a Democracy, even a Representative type.

On a side note, I would say that Madison would be against a Democracy, and I might venture to say the same with Franklin, although I haven't gotten much into his writtings yet.

I'm terribly behind.

Anyway, a democracy is terribly dangerous to rights, property, and everything this country stands for.

Democracy is simply Mob-Rule. Now what you have in America as stated befor is a Constitutional Republic, It is not a direct-democracy but uses representation, or in-direct democracy. So to say that america is a demoracy to me very far fetched. Pretty much their are two ways to form a government, government of the few and government of the many. Now the difference between a dictatorship, paternal conservatism, oligarcy, and communsion is quiet small on the notin that the few rule the many. While in a democracy the many rule themselves. But as also stated befor the founding fathers werent to fond of democracy. And even today i dont believe america has a democracy, you could compare america to a oligarcy, the few rich (corporations) rule the many. Its just a illusion of the two major political parties in america. They are both corprate friendly.

Democracy can be stuiped but only in the way its applied and the policies that the democracy put into power. So really a democracy is as good as the people are themselves.

Democracy may be a "stupid idea" and can be describe as "mob rule", but tell me? what would you rather have?

Absolute Monarchy?
Authoritarian?
Theocracy?
Anarchy?
Communism?
Totalitarianism?
Fascism?
Dictatorship?
Despotism?
Tribalism?

Those are a typical few, but if you dont like Democracy, how do you want to be ruled? Atleast you have a say in democracy...always remember that.