Comment Re:Flaws in our democracy (Score 1) 904
Some people with dark skin who lived in a certain antebellum representative democracy would like to have a talk with you.
We weren't really a representative democracy at that point since large segments of the population couldn't even vote. "Constitutional Republic" is the accepted term so far as I know.
In the meantime, remember that we inherited most of our law from England, which had a legislature when we broke from them.
A legislature that the king can and did dissolve at will. After a few rounds of this the legislature enters a state of learned helplessness, assuming a powerful sovereign. Plus, only nobles were allowed to be members of the upper house; the House of Commons was not nearly as powerful back then (and the name was deceptive; few actually had the right to vote). The UK is not now and never has been a democracy, which was my original point.
I was responding to a very broad, extreme argument that sovereign immunity and state secrets are somehow anathema to democracy per se, despite the fact that they have historically been a part of pretty much every government I've ever seen or heard of.
That's because they are anathema. We are not a democracy. At this point, I wouldn't even call America a constitutional republic. We are an oligarchy. We don't respect our own Constitution and freely ignore it when it gets in the way of precioussss state secrets.
Of course, I don't believe we should even have a standing army, let alone an NSA, Federal Reserve or CIA outside the full jurisdiction of Congress.
As far as actually respecting the Constitution our framers gave us, you'll find me slightly to the right of Antonin Scalia.
Ah, well that explains a lot. Those dark-skinned folks who were originally worth 3/5ths of a person would like to talk with you.
I guess you'll find me to the left of Thomas Jefferson, but we don't live in Jefferson's Republic. We live in Scalia's Oligarchy.
