George Bush AWOL?

[Fat Old Guy]

"In all of his education at Yale, George Bush never learned that this is a Republic. He uses the word democracy. What is his Yale degree in history worth, not the paper it is printed on."

 

Wheeler, if you'd care to crawl into the 21st Century and read something published in the last 20 years, you'd find this . . .

 

Democracy, political system in which the people of a country rule through any form of government they choose to establish. In modern democracies, supreme authority is usually exercised by popularly elected representatives. The representatives may be replaced by the electorate according to the legal procedures of recall and referendum, and they are in principle responsible to the electorate.

 

and you'd also find . . .

 

Republic (government), form of state based on the concept that sovereignty resides in the people, who delegate the power to rule to elected representatives and officials. In the theoretical republican state, republic and democracy may be identical.

 

[ScouterPaul]

FOG

Your wrote the following:

 

Democracy, political system in which the people of a country rule through any form of government they choose to establish. In modern democracies, supreme authority is usually exercised by popularly elected representatives. The representatives may be replaced by the electorate according to the legal procedures of recall and referendum, and they are in principle responsible to the electorate.

 

Article II of the Constitution states the following:

 

Section 1. The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same term, be elected, as follows:

 

Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.

 

This according to my memory is called the Electoral College. As of 2000 Electors in 24 States are not bound by State Law to cast their vote for a specific candidate.

 

I would have to say that our country is not a democracy based on your definiton.

 

REPUBLIC - A commonwealth; That form of government in which the administration of affairs is open to all the citizens. In another sense, it signifies the state, independent of its form of government.

 

Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition, P. 1302

 

COMMONWEALTH - ...It generally designates, when so employed, a republican form of government, -one in which the welfare and rights of the entire mass of people are the main consideration, rather than the privileges of a class or the will of the monarch; or it may designate the body of citizens living under such a government. [Emphasis added]

 

Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition, P. 278

 

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (When the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence."

 

United States Constitution, Article 4, Section 4,

 

GOVERNMENT (Republican Government) - One in which the powers of sovereignty are vested in the people and are exercised by the people, either directly, or through representatives chosen by the people, to whom those powers are specially delegated.

 

Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition, P. 695

 

I do not want to appear to be supporting Wheeler in any way, however, we are clearly a Republic and not a democracy.

 

[NJCubScouter]

I don't get to agree with FOG all that often, so let me take this opportunity to do so. FOG says:

 

Democracy, political system in which the people of a country rule through any form of government they choose to establish. In modern democracies, supreme authority is usually exercised by popularly elected representatives. The representatives may be replaced by the electorate according to the legal procedures of recall and referendum, and they are in principle responsible to the electorate.

 

That first sentence is a definition of modern democracy that I have never seen before, but it is a good one. It ties in with the definition of "republic" that FOG also posted, which concludes with the acknowledgment that a modern representative democracy and a republic can be one and the same thing. The only quibble I would have with it is that maybe it also needs to have something about the people retaining actual power to change the form of government. Meaning, the people can "choose to establish" a government but if the head of government decides to become a dictator and enforces this through his/her control of the government, and the people have lost the ability to change the form of government, it has ceased to be a democracy. This can change back and forth. For example, up until a few years ago, Pakistan was a democracy, and it probably will be again, but right now it is not.

 

To address what Scouter Paul said, I think the only essential characteristic of a democracy is the first sentence of FOG's definition. You seem to be focusing on the second sentence, and showing how it differs from the U.S. government. Literally speaking, you are correct that the president of the U.S. is not a "popularly elected representative." But that sentence says that supreme authority is usually exercised by popularly elected representatives. This is true, because in most democracies other than the U.S., the legislature (parliament or whatever) is the ultimate authority, and decides who is going to be in the "government" (prime minister and other officials.) Even where there is a monarch (such as the UK, Norway, the Netherlands, etc.) the legislature still has supreme authority because the monarch has no effective political power, and the legislature may abolish the monarchy. The UK does have the House of Lords, but I think if push came to shove, the House of Commons would win. France has a hybrid system with a directly elected president with significantly less power than the president of the U.S.

 

The U.S. also has a hybrid system known as "separation of powers" where neither the executive or legislative branches have "supreme power" and where the chief executive is chosen by elected representatives from the states (electors) rather than by popular vote. As we are all well aware, the winner of the popular vote does not always win the election (and sometimes not the real winner of the electoral vote either, but let's not go there, shall we? ) But even in the presidential election, "the people" are indirectly choosing the president, so I think the U.S. still loosely fits into the second sentence of FOG's definition.

 

The part about "recall and referendum" is probably meant to have "usually" attached to it as well, though perhaps it should be "sometimes." The federal government does not have recall and referendum, or for that matter, truly national elections. Many states in the U.S. have recall and/or referendum. New Jersey just adopted recall for elected officials at all levels, about five years ago, but does not have referendum at the state level. (Meaning that any public questions must be placed on the ballot by the Legislature, not by petition.) I am not aware of whether other nations have these features at the national level, though I do know that many European nations have had national referendums on major issues such as joining the EU and adopting the Euro as the national currency.

 

But at the core of everything, the U.S. is both a representative democracy and a republic. Differences in detail do not change that.