Posted on 09/15/2018 7:57:13 AM PDT by rktman
Editors Note: This article is part of a series that attempts to answer the question: Is democracy dying?
Democracy is a most unnatural act. People have no innate democratic instinct; we are not born yearning to set aside our own desires in favor of the majoritys. Democracy is, instead, an acquired habit.
Like most habits, democratic behavior develops slowly over time, through constant repetition. For two centuries, the United States was distinguished by its mania for democracy: From early childhood, Americans learned to be citizens by creating, joining, and participating in democratic organizations. But in recent decades, Americans have fallen out of practice, or even failed to acquire the habit of democracy in the first place.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
If so, the statists, SJWs, socialists and deep-staters killed it.
To leftists, “democracy” only occurs when leftists are put into power. QED.
“Democracy” is predicated upon the voters accepting the results of elections, especially the results of elections they lose.
Democracy dies when Democrats refuse to accept the result of an election they lost.
That's not even democracy. That's socialism, at best. The guy's an idiot.
Democracy: two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner.
The Constitution describes ours as a Republican form of government. Democracy is not mentioned.
Correct. That’s a good example of how we are not a democracy. We are a constitutional republic.
Even alleged constitutional law professors such as Obama, say we are a democracy. I seldom hear anyone call us a republic except the people here on this site.
the atlantic suggests that its republicans who have got out of the habit of democracy. when in truth, its the democrats who have done so.
That's just groupthink.
It’s interesting if typical that the author asserts without evidence that Trump is violating the norms of democratic governance. Um . . . as far as I can see he’s doing his best to restore democratic governance in the face of a relentless assault from the Deep State.
He could hardly be more wrong it he tried, Trump's core support comes from Americans who vote in almost every election. It's true that Trump supporters seldom participate in the "rituals of democracy" if he means riots.
Leftists define democracy by the results of the elections, not the process.
Face to face interactions or meetings that will fit into an auditorium become rarer and less effective when millions of people and millions of dollars are involved. The loss of ethnic homogeneity and values consensus also makes it harder for people to work together. That may be a bad thing but it's something we have been living with for a while. If not for a century, then certainly for the last 20 or 30 years or so.
I don't see Trump as undemocratic ("building an autocracy"). In some ways he is more democratic, cutting through layers of bureaucratic impositions and elite-imposed consensus that voters never actually agreed to. I suppose it's true that rampant populism can be an enemy of republican government, but so can the administrative state and the rule of elites. That, of course, is something you won't hear from elites or would-be elitists.
Are we (or were we) a democracy? We all know about representative government and direct democracy, I hope. But if Britons, Swedes, and Spaniards can talk about their governments as democratic, in spite of the monarchical figureheads, then in some sense we are (or were) a democracy too.
About fifteen years ago, my youngest brother, a local government activist and, at the time, a small town mayor and city councilman, noticed that citizen interest and participation in government was on the wane. He attributed it to a general sense of complacency, the decline of local news coverage, and a lack of galvanizing issues. Reporters I knew said the same, as did state and national conservative activists.
The tide has now turned. My brother was recently drawn into yet another local issue. To his surprise, this time the issue, a foolish and permissive new sign ordinance, has stirred local public interest based solely on word of mouth and a new willingness of people to take action to rein in government when it goes wrong.
More broadly, this forum, the rise of the Tea Party after Barak Obama's election, and the extraordinary success of Donald Trump, all reflect a new rising of citizen interest and activism.
The dedication of Americans to democracy and self-government is essential to who we are. Those reflexes and interest in government may seem to diminish from time to time, but that they do so is a sign not of weakness but that Americans are taking time to recharge and gather strength for new effort to come.
We were giving up, you say? The Hell we were -- we just reloading and waiting for better targets!
Democracy, two Wolves and one Sheep deciding what’s for Dinner.
from the left who argue that democracy isn’t (shouldn’t be) for everyone
America's demise began after the Civil War and we are witness to it's final death throes.
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