I've seen a lot of stupid fucking discourse lately about righties insisting the US is a 'constitutional republic', as if that phrase means anything, and lib clapbacks about how its an democratic republic, with indirect democracy. And, like, obviously its all a meaningless debate about word definitions, since regardless of anything else the US is, technically speaking, fucked.
By is this push just wholly started by right-wingers to try to 'debunk' people wanting to get rid of the electoral college? The whole debate just seems pointless to me, as I really don't see why it would matter either way. But the way the 'debate' surged up seemingly out of nowhere makes me think its propaganda of some type, but I don't really even know what its propaganda for.
its pretty old, ive been hearing it for decades.
its mostly just a thing they say to insist something good can't happen or something bad can't stop happening. regardless of the actual legal situation
It's a John Birch Society shibboleth for why curbing democracy is good in the name of anti-communism (communism, to Birchers, was anything left of Barry Goldwater including President Dwight David Eisenhower) that has survived within the present day Republican Party as an excuse for why a system that preserves minoritarian rule is good
just a way for people to sidestep any complaints you have about anti-democratic practices here.
"detaining people without trial is undemocratic!" :wojak-nooo:
"well technically we are a republic!" :so-true:
it is a right wing talking point that attempts to justify minority rule
Are we the Roman Empire or more like a particularly large Greek city-state? Things to squabble about
:agony-shivering: yeah, that's about how I've seen it, so I wasn't sure why anyone cared enough to debate about it online
If you want to take it seriously you could say it's the ruling class figuring out which facade fits best on the machinery to legitimate the existing social order, if not you can just jerk off to fat anime tiddies. Either or :shrug-outta-hecks:
ive been hearing it for a long time. its some sort of stupid republican vs democrat feud
socialists must transcend the discussion :kim-drip-too-hard:
We transcend it by calling the system what it actually is: an oligarchy of the oligopoly :wtf-am-i-reading:
i was going more for the meme answer of saying we should be a Democratic Peoples Republic lmao
Because liberals and conservatives have the attention span of a particularly excitable golden retriever, and are thus doomed to have stupid repetitious nonsensical arguments that don't actually deal with systems as they exist
That's not recent, but yeah it's from people who want to defend archaic institutions like the electoral college and the senate.
Publius is Latin. Demos is Greek. Republic and Democracy mean exactly the same fucking thing.
It's just a way for people who grew up praising Reagan to argue that the Republicans are the natural inheritor of power, or for people who grew up praising Hillary to argue that the Democrats are the true protectors of people's interests. Because of their names.
All the shades of meaning attached to the two words in this dumb argument stem from that, and none of the arguments are really intended to convince anyone but the person making them.
Yeah this isn't that recent. It's been around for decades. One of my teachers in elementary school even told us about it.
It does a few things, it makes liberal and conservative look like the extent of all possible ideology. It makes Republicans and Democrats look more opposed than they actually are. It makes Republicans seem more correct in their policies, since they algin with the values of America that supposedly already exist. Whereas Democrats want to change the core society of how America operates. It also muddies the water by proposing that societies only operate on either a solid foundation of laws that must be enforced always, or societies are based on the whims of constantly angry mobs who have no clue what they're doing. You either have laws or complete direct democracy on everything. They also like to cite that one quote from Ben Franklin about how he wanted a republic, but you can find an equal amount of quotes from the founders talking about democracy.
It's all gibberish. Most countries in Earth are republics with some level of democratic input. Republic is a vague term that almost always just means "not a monarchy nor a dictatorship."
but you can find an equal amount of quotes from the founders talking about democracy.
The Declaration of Independence says:
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
historically? constitutional republicans wanted to replace monarchies with laws rooted in a special document. they were fundamentally legalists and never wanted the French revolution to carry on past the abolition of the monarchy and cheered Bonaparte's counterrevolution. democrats wanted the vote - the term eventually came to refer to those who wanted universal(*) suffrage. universal here doesn't mean actually everyone. only their most radical wing wanted suffrage for women or immigrants. rather, universal referred solely to class - instead of restricting suffrage to landholders, they wanted to extend it to all male citizens, regardless of class. their most radical elements wanted genuinely universal suffrage and more - they weren't content with the political revolution of the French revolution and wanted a social revolution to accompany it and to bring true freedom to all. these were the first socialists, or social democrats as they styled themselves then, in the century following the revolution.
that is, the American political parties named themselves after the liberal wings of the French Revolution. these terms have been meaningless since the first world war, when the bourgeoisie completed the transfer of power from the old aristocracy to themselves. or as Marx put it:
The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95.
they're trying to revivify the dead, to wear the costumes of epochs past in the hopes of conjuring up the spirit that had animated those revolutions and unified the people. where the revolutionary bourgeoisie had worn the guise of Rome, the reactionary bourgeoisie of the present try to conjure up the French and American counterrevolutions, trying to sweep the footnotes that became the centerpieces of history in the twentieth century back under the rug in the process.
It’s partisan debate but instead about claiming to have better policies it’s about having a better name
Most people in this thread are looking into it too deeply, like it’s about the inherent structure of the constitution, but it’s all a facade for what boils down to kindergartners arguing over who to name their treehouse after
it's a moron's canned response to the observation that american democracy is a joke. i remember hearing it after the 2000 election
These are the same people who think not knowing what the "AR" in "AR-15" stands for discredits someone's argument, so...
