Constitutional Republic?

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Why is it that politicians constantly say that the United States is: 1. A Democracy, or 2. A Republic? These are our representatives in government and they don't even know what kind of system of government they are in. If we were a democracy we would simply have a vote to superglue all politicians mouths shut and decide what the people feel like doing. On the other hand if we were a Republic we would have representatives doing whatever the hell they want. We are a Constitutional Republic or to be more precise a Federal Constitutional republic. It would be nice to hear at least one representative who understood this
.

This is 2014, not 1778. Our country is officially a plutocracy. Any voter who thinks he/she has any influence on what our "government" is going to do is delusional.

Constitutional
"A constitution exists that limits the government's power makes the state constitutional".
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consti ... l_republic

a. Our Constitution is viewed as a "living document" that may reinterpreted when people of power want it to be.

b. Is there any limit on the power of the federal government ? The Patriot Act and ACA demolished any last beliefs in a limited government. Now the government can do anything it wants because "it may be linked to terrorism" and the ACA set a precedent that government can access a fee on a citizen for not doing something.

Thus, perhaps, we may be more accurately named a pseudo-constitutional form of government.

Republic
Republic is "a form of government in which power resides in the people"
source, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic

Many argue that USA is an oligarchy or plutocracy as noted above, and power does not reside with the people, but with the wealthy elite who buy the politicians.

To help keep this going:


A revolutionary war was fought to establish freedom, then a constitution was adopted to keep the revolution in place...but now the people are neither properly informed, united nor sufficiently armed to keep it going.

Maybe we the people should be more informed.

Republic comes from the latin, "res publica". It means public affair. Who can better address the affairs of the public than the public itself? Democracy is not incompatible with Republicanism. We don't have a pure democracy in America, no, but our political structure is baseed on representative form of democracy. We choose our leaders through voting, which in other so-called "republics" or "democratic peoples republics", the public plays no active part in choosing their lawmakers and leaders (and the leaders often come from oligarchic dynasties). We also, have constitutional limits that limit lawmakers from being able to rule by whatever whim them fancy. These concepts of democracy, republicanism, and constititionalism are not incompatible, and I think its a foolish and dangerous assumption people are making today.

Everyone often quotes James Madison on democracy being the most vile form of government, but he wasn't the only founding father with an opinion. (btw,In the age of social media, peoples entire political opinions are being shaped by increasingly smaller quotes and snippets as the national attention span continues to decline at an alarming rate.) Here's a quote from one of my favourite of the founders,

"It is on this system that the American government is founded. It is representation ingrafted upon democracy. It has fixed the form by a scale parallel in all cases to the extent of the principle. What Athens was in miniature America will be in magnitude. The one was the wonder of the ancient world; the other is becoming the admiration of the present. It is the easiest of all the forms of government to be understood and the most eligible in practice; and excludes at once the ignorance and insecurity of the hereditary mode (the truly vile form of government), and the inconvenience of the simple democracy." Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

Now, lets not make the mistake of interpreting the will of any of these people from the past in some literalistic fashion. They had opinions made through life experience just like we do, and I agree with some of them, not because I'm supposed to revere them unconditionally like a religious practitioner glazing over a holy book, but because I feel they are based in sound reason and logic that can be tested and weighed through my own present day experiences.

I feel that there is a rising fundamentalism for the founding fathers and that certain propagandists with a certain agenda (eroding the democratic process on behalf of a faction of American corporate culture that values the bottom line more than the interests and good of the rest of society) that spend time defining the past in one, little discreet package by telling gullible people what the monolithic opinions were of the founding fathers. The fact is they didn't have these monolithic opinions and were very wide ranging in their beliefs and ideas on what the American experiment should be.

I'll end with another quote from Paine (referring to a clause in the 1688 constitution of England that decreed that all men and their posterity be bound to the document to the end of time)

" The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man
has no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow. The Parliament or the people
of 1688, or of any other period, had no more right to dispose of the people of the present day, or to
bind or to control them in any shape whatever, than the parliament or
the people of the present day have to dispose of, bind or control those who are to live a hundred or a thousand years hence.
Every generation is, and must be, competent to all the purposes which its occasions require. It is
the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated. When man ceases to be, his power and
his wants cease with him; and having no longer any participation in the concerns of this world, he
has no longer any authority in directing who shall be its governors, or how its government shall
be organised, or how administered. "

That fee associated with the ACA exists so insurance companies can no longer deny people coverage. Had the right been concerned with ordinary people, and had championed cracking down on insurance abuses instead of spouting the tired old idiocy that they couldn't interfere with the free market, we might never have ever needed or heard of the ACA. And by the way, the plan the ACA is based on is originally a Republican plan.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.



Also .. the second Orwelian doublethink of "Freedom is slavery" applies here.

The ACA gives us more freedom by removing the burden of having to decide whether to buy something we may not want or need. The burden of having to think is slavery, so by letting the government think for us, then we are more free.

Freedom is slavery!

"Something we may not want or need" ? I would think Americans who have found insurance to be too expensive or have been denied coverage as definitely something they'd want and need.
And as far as living without the ACA being freedom - what, freedom to die?

This is probably blasphemy on WP, but I liked not having mental health coverage. I had one uncle who was on budeprion, and frankly I would have prescribed a divorce from his verbally abusive wife long before mucking around in his brain. Almost every drugging case that I've seen reminds me of doing back surgery when PT would work as well of better. (Even if the drugs make you feel better, remember that booze or heroin might do the same. Doesn't make it healthy.)

And I've seen some really spooky cases of people who weren't obviously ill being put on very invasive treatments that they didn't want. Some were forced, but others were just hurt and vulnerable to pressure. The outcomes were bad enough that I'd be surprised if they were better than non-treatment.

One of the best defenses against that was to just not carry coverage. I don't see how that's any worse than someone choosing to be DNR/DNI because their condition isn't treatable anyway. Or declining mammograms or PSA screening because they don't improve long term outcomes.

The men who signed the Declaration of Independence were strongly in favor of the USA being a republic governed by state and national Constitutions. As a general rule, democracies only last 200 years or so, before they collapse due to corruption. Much of what's happening now is precisely what the Founders strove to avoid.

Two more things about the ACA:

1: For those who can budget, a catastrophic policy wasn't a bad deal. It meant that I almost never had to deal with an insurance company.

2: If it's fair to ask men to pay for women's higher health care costs, then it's fair to ask women to pay for men's higher auto insurance claims. You can't have it both ways.

(Sigh) You aren't going to ever die from not driving due to lack of insurance. That's a senseless argument.

The parts of Obamacare that regulate premiums are separate from the ones that guarantee coverage, so you'll have to explain why you think that changing the former would deny anyone care.

What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If women don't have a problem with billing individuals more because of their gender when those individuals happen to be men, then I don't see how they can be offended when they have to eat their own soup.

By the way, as someone who chose to bike commute rather than pay those bigoted rates, I did have to accept a much higher risk of dying. Vehicle accidents kill a lot more young people than spontaneous illnesses do, and biking and walking are a lot more dangerous than driving. That's especially true in the winter. I have studded tires, a downhill helmet, good lights and padded gear, but biking on ice is still sketchy.

Bigoted? In the past, insurance companies had called being a woman a pre-exisiting condition, and either charged them higher rates or even denied them coverage. Try to tell me how that's any less bigoted in comparison.

The political system used by the United States is a democratically elected constitutional republic. The Constitution for the United States of America says as much at Art. VI, clause two, that "[t]his Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding."

Substituting a different political system for the current one in the United States is allowed and may be accomplished according to the existing requirement of the Constitution at Art. V, which states that "[t]he Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate."

Now, what the people do individually or in groups (including, sometimes, some very large and influential groups) in preference for different political systems such as democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, authoritarianism and others such as theocracy and anarchy is completely their right. But, doing so is in addition to the democratically elected constitutional republic of the United States, not instead of. What should be (or what could be if we "interpret" the Constitution falsely) and what is are two different ideas. That conundrum is what has flummoxed opportunists of both major parties and political adversaries (like so-called globalists and other various think-tank comrades) for 225 years. The best that they can do is convince the people that what the Constitution has meant for two centuries isn't really what it means now; in other words, con, hoax and trick us.