Here We Go With The "America's A Republic, Not A Democracy" Shit Again.

[TrollBuster9090]

About ten years ago, the President of the Junior Libertarian Debating Club, Rand "herd moronity" Paul penned an Op/Ed claiming that the United States is a REPUBLIC and not a DEMOCRACY, and then proceeded to count the number of times the Constitution mentions Republic, while failing to mention democracy. (It's very clever, actually. Because that way, you can weasel in a double entendre involving the names of the REPUBLICAN vs. DEMOCRATIC Party. It also fits in very nicely with the argument that the POPULAR VOTE shouldn't determine elections...)

Having a decree from their brain-trust champion, the knuckle-draggers considered themselves enlightened. Cue the John Kennedy-style yokalisms about "a democracy is when a wolf, a bobcat, and a jack rabbit all have a vote on what they should eat for dinner."

Well, in fact, anybody with TWO BRAIN CELLS to rub together can tell you that a REPUBLIC is a FORM of a DEMOCRACY. A constitutional republic is one of many forms that a democratic government can take. (It's like insisting that trucks are made of STEEL and not METAL. It's laughable, but they're proud of it.)

So, now we're at it again. No doubt under the influence of experimental steroids that are keeping him up at night, Rand Paul's comedic side kick Mike Lee is tweeting the meme again. Claiming that democracy isn't the point. That peace and liberty are. Okay, so....what are you saying? That you want us to set Ron Paul senior up as a Platonian philosopher king? So, like I said, here we go with THIS shit again...

Link to tweet

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. it's that pesky prospefity that bugs me...

[Eliot Rosewater]

2. If they knew anything about what a democracy is or a republic, they would not say this shit.

They know nothing, they know that they want the power and are about to lose it.

These are terrorists, but I called the GOP that 15 years ago.

[Thomas Hurt]

3. Democracy is the objective you lying sack of shit...

Rank democracy would a pure democracy without representatives but all citizens voting on all laws and gov't matters.

Or

Rank democracy is just another two word newspeak term for socialism...you christofascist theocrat.

[regnaD kciN]

4. Don't credit Rand Paul with this...

I've been hearing the same argument since my college days in the 1970s. Most of the time, the point is that we have elected representatives running the show, while, in a "true democracy," there would simply be popular referendi every time a major issue needed to be decided. A republic, as those who advanced the argument would frame it, was to ensure that decisions would be reasoned and not inflamed by popular sentiment. Strange that it doesn't seem to work that way, but rather the opposite...

[sanatanadharma]

6. In this republic in which we stand...

...the republican party types are clearly the least reasoned and the most inflamed voters, according to popular sentiment.

[safeinOhio]

5. Banana Republic?

[Jim__]

7. Prospefity? I guess literacy isn't the objective either. - n/t

[BlueNProud]

11. Ha ha wtf. I kept looking at that thinking is that a word I'm not aware of?

[TrollBuster9090]

14. Cofeve, prospefity...whatever. I think Lee and Trump have the same

...drug dealer.

[meadowlander]

8. A republic is a form of representative democracy.

[IndianaDave]

9. If Mike Lee accepted his election to the Senate -- by the people -- as legitimate,

He has destroyed his entire argument. How the hell does he think he ascended to this office? So, it's democracy for him, but for nobody else? Idiotic BS!

[NutmegYankee]

10. A REPUBLIC is any system where the government is a public matter vs private.

For instance Monarchs and Despots treat the government as their personal possession. A republic operates the government for the people. Now that doesn't mean democracy or rights. Russia, China and North Korea are all republics. What makes us different, and even many Constitutional Monarchies, is Democracy - defined as protection of civil liberties and universal suffrage.

[betsuni]

12. Just read this about the democracy/republic thing in Hacker and Pierson's "Let Them Eat Tweets":

The slogan dates back to the John Birch society, 1961.

"Its message is simple: those who think a 'simple majority' should generally get what it wants (democracy) are subverting the framers' vision (republic). But the framers used the term 'democracy' and 'republic' in a completely different way. When they said 'democracy' they meant direct democracy, as in ancient Athens. They used 'republic' to describe democratically elected representative government -- that is, the form of government that every democratic state has today. The distinction had nothing to do with whether elections should be decided by majority vote or whether those elected representatives should operate on the basis of majority rule.

"But the historical misreading isn't the real problem with the democracy/republic slogan. The real problem is that those who invoke it are not, as a rule, making the reasonable argument that the rights of vulnerable minorities should be protected or that some decisions should require supermajorities. They are arguing that democracy itself is a problem, because it threatens the property and power of powerful minorities, and that any departures from democracy that serve to protect against that threat should be preserved. This complaint with majority rule is far from the framers' concern that unfiltered majority rule might allow rash policymaking. It is closer to ultra-libertarian Ayn Rand's description of democracy as 'a social system in which one's work, one's property, one's mind, and one's life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose.'"

My nutty right-mother repeated the democracy/republic thing a lot in the 90s. Took me a long time to figure out what the hell it meant.

[crickets]

17. This sounds like an interesting book. Thanks for the excerpt. nt

[betsuni]

18. It's excellent, I love it!

Subtitle is "How the Right rules in an age of extreme inequality." Clear, well written explanation of how the Republican Party became what it is today. I'd like to force everyone who does the both sides nonsense to read it. Am thinking of doing an OP to recommend it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. Vox has a good piece on it, showing its links opposing civil rights

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Sen. Mike Lee’s tweets against “democracy,” explained

The John Birch Society, a radical faction in the postwar conservative movement, helped popularize the “republic versus democracy” distinction in the 1950s and ’60s. According to Nicole Hemmer, a historian of the conservative movement at Columbia University, the idea really took off on the right during the conservative fight against civil rights legislation and Supreme Court rulings expanding the franchise.

“It goes back to the ‘republic, not a democracy’ chants from the 1964 [Republican] convention,” she tells me. “Conservatives rejected the one-person-one-vote standard of the Warren Court, a set of arguments deeply entangled with their opposition to the Black civil rights movement.”
...
The Birch-style “republic, not a democracy” argument allows Republicans to cast moves to expand democratic opportunities and make government responsive to popular support for particular policies — abolishing the Electoral College and filibuster, per Lee’s spokesperson — as examples of the bad kind of “democracy,” of giving too much power to the people and thus enabling oppression. Tools that allow for minority rule, for Republicans to govern even when majorities of voters reject them, are transmuted into features of our good “republic.”
...
The idea that majority rule is intrinsically oppressive is necessarily an embrace of anti-democracy: an argument that an enlightened few, meaning Republican supporters, should be able to make decisions for the rest of us. If the election is close, and Trump makes a serious play to steal it, Lee’s “we’re not a democracy” argument provides a ready-made justification for tactics that amount to a kind of legal coup.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21507713/mike-lee-democracy-republic-trump-2020

[ThoughtCriminal]

13. Like the "Peoples REPUBLIC of China"?

No, we are a democratic republic. Rome was a republic, Nazi Germany started as a republic.

Conservatives suck at these silly word games. They just hate democracy because most people hate them.

[brush]

15. Fascist wannabes make that argument.

[keithbvadu2]

16. Possibly a Rand Paul supporter. McConnell as well?

Possibly a Rand Paul supporter. McConnell as well?

[Le Roi de Pot]

20. Why did I notice the nipple???

Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!

My eyes need bleach