Direct Democracy: Best form of government or tyranny of the majority?

POLL: Direct Democracy or Republican form of government?

It's getting to be election time, and this concept is coming up again. In 2008 Mike Gravel ran on this platform. The idea is that we the people can introduce bills, and vote on them. California has this system, and it has failed there, leaving economists to say that the state constitution has to be thrown away so they can start fresh.

Can we govern ourselves, or is republicanism, i.e. representation in government, important?

I haven't posted in a while, but I wanted to see what y'all think.

This is the issue that gets people freaked out about the electoral college. The whole point was to keep a state like Texas (huge population) from being more important than Rhode Island or Iowa. Even if only 1% of the population of a small state votes, that state gets a say.

The reason we're losing states' rights is that the majority of people have NO idea what that means, or why it was important in the first place. Most people don't understand how important it is that Illinois can ban guns if it wants and Oklahoma can keep them.

It means that even within the USA, you can have a say in your OWN life and how you are governed, separate from how people choose to be governed 2,000 miles away.

I would freak out if a country as far-flung and with as disparate a population as the USA was governed by simple majority. That would be terrible! Loss of states' rights is terrible, too!

reply to post by Schkeptick


A well-informed majority, but with redundancy built in...

reply to post by Rev Paine

A simple majority could work, in a small state with a not too diverse population (say ancient Athens) but not many of those around these days.
Consider, if we really had direct majority rule we could perhaps vote to execute Obama on one of those days when his poll numbers are down ..might regret that the next day ....
Egypt could vote to kill all their native coptic christians to make way for a Muslim state .. well - its obvious to see where this leads.
A representative government, with some brakes on its powers via a constitution is pretty much the only reasonable form of government. All that said there is certainly nothing wrong with having that constitution provide for some direct votes on occasion.

reply to post by Rev Paine


I'd go a 'participatory' model of democracy over a 'representative' model any day.
The trade off is a slower process, but this is also a more inclusive model.
Representative democracy has greater speed of decision making generally, but has been chronically undermined by self interest and lobbying throughout history.

Any system which has chosen to downplay transparency and accountability is not worth it's salt anyway.

In any model, once the democratic process stops focusing on shared services and starts grinding away at private personal behavior between consenting adults; then it's turned to fascist sh*t anyway.

Originally posted by Rev Paine
POLL: Direct Democracy or Republican form of government?

It's getting to be election time, and this concept is coming up again. In 2008 Mike Gravel ran on this platform. The idea is that we the people can introduce bills, and vote on them. California has this system, and it has failed there, leaving economists to say that the state constitution has to be thrown away so they can start fresh.

Can we govern ourselves, or is republicanism, i.e. representation in government, important?

I haven't posted in a while, but I wanted to see what y'all think.

Correct me if I'm wrong but direct democracy based on a majority rules structure of governance? If that's the case, I am against it, fully against it. While it is important at times to listen to the calls and concerns of the majority, we cannot continious rely on the majority when it comes to lawful justice and liberty. There are numerous examples in this nation alone where the majority have gotten it wrong. Slavery, racial segregation, interracial marriages, the Iraq and Vietnam wars are among these examples. There should be fundamental rights protected for the individual that no majority can even overrule, and we must recognize that it takes more than a majority to come to a decision that truly preserves an individuals right to privacy and property.

Maybe for some folks, direct democracy can be implemented with preserving fundamental rights, not to me. Now is a republican constitutional form of government perfect? No, obviously not, but it certainly works better than a system that allows for mob rule. I do believe that if the majority calls for change, we should listen, but we cannot build a system continiously dedicated to the decisions around the majority.

Direct democracy would be an epic fail. The people of the US cannot be bothered to pay attention to politics now. How the heck do you expect them to remain informed on every issue all of the time? I actually believe that our current system is a failure because the electorate just does not care.

Originally posted by Southern Guardian

Originally posted by Rev Paine
POLL: Direct Democracy or Republican form of government?

It's getting to be election time, and this concept is coming up again. In 2008 Mike Gravel ran on this platform. The idea is that we the people can introduce bills, and vote on them. California has this system, and it has failed there, leaving economists to say that the state constitution has to be thrown away so they can start fresh.

Can we govern ourselves, or is republicanism, i.e. representation in government, important?

I haven't posted in a while, but I wanted to see what y'all think.

Correct me if I'm wrong but direct democracy based on a majority rules structure of governance? If that's the case, I am against it, fully against it. While it is important at times to listen to the calls and concerns of the majority, we cannot continious rely on the majority when it comes to lawful justice and liberty. There are numerous examples in this nation alone where the majority have gotten it wrong. Slavery, racial segregation, interracial marriages, the Iraq and Vietnam wars are among these examples. There should be fundamental rights protected for the individual that no majority can even overrule, and we must recognize that it takes more than a majority to come to a decision that truly preserves an individuals right to privacy and property.

Maybe for some folks, direct democracy can be implemented with preserving fundamental rights, not to me. Now is a republican constitutional form of government perfect? No, obviously not, but it certainly works better than a system that allows for mob rule. I do believe that if the majority calls for change, we should listen, but we cannot build a system continiously dedicated to the decisions around the majority.

Well said, sir. The representative republic is flawed, but not so much that one group is forced under the boot of another through a simple majority vote. As the saying goes "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch."

Often followed by "Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."

/TOA

I tend to agree with my friend Southern Guardian. As King Charles I of England said, "Democracy was a greek drollery based on the assumption that there are extraordinary abilities in very ordinary people".