Sequoia v. Ed Felten

Posted Mar 18, 2008 14:52 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137)
Parent article: Sequoia v. Ed Felten

> Certainly a democracy would have no reason to want to know about the "behavior" of its
voting machines.

Off topic (maybe), but the U.S. isn't a democracy, it's a constitutional republic.  As far as
I know there currently are no pure democracies in the world, since they tend to implode in
just a few years.

Sequoia v. Ed Felten

Posted Mar 18, 2008 15:18 UTC (Tue) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] (8 responses)

That's semantic nitpicking.  "Democracy" is a class that covers a lot of different
governments, whether republics like ours, constitutional monarchies, parliamentary systems, or
what have you.  Saying "we live in a Republic, not a Democracy" contributes nothing to the
discussion.

Sequoia v. Ed Felten

Posted Mar 18, 2008 18:09 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (7 responses)

> Saying "we live in a Republic, not a Democracy" contributes nothing
> to the discussion.

Some of our founding fathers would have disagreed with you!

"Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a
democracy yet that did not commit suicide." - John Adams

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take
away the rights of the other forty-nine." - Thomas Jefferson

I personally hold John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in higher regard than our current leaders,
so I will give careful consideration to what they said.

Sequoia v. Ed Felten

Posted Mar 18, 2008 18:22 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (6 responses)

However, the constitution has changed from that envisaged by the founding fathers: senators
are now elected, rather than chosen by the states, similarly the president is (more or less)
directly elected.  Women and black people can now vote, whereas originally the franchise was
limited to landowners.  So the USA is nowadays a democracy, even if (arguably) it didn't start
off as one.

Sequoia v. Ed Felten

Posted Mar 18, 2008 18:34 UTC (Tue) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link] (5 responses)

> So the USA is nowadays a democracy, even if (arguably) it didn't start off as one.

And it's starting to look like John Adams (see above) was right.

Sequoia v. Ed Felten

Posted Mar 18, 2008 20:24 UTC (Tue) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] (4 responses)

No, he wasn't.  That which is killing the US is not an excess of democracy, but a paucity of
it.

Sequoia v. Ed Felten

Posted Mar 18, 2008 21:12 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (3 responses)

That statement can not be proven to be correct.  At best it may be possible to demonstrate
that it is wrong, but by then the negative consequences may be enormous, and possibly
irreversible.

Sequoia v. Ed Felten

Posted Mar 18, 2008 21:31 UTC (Tue) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] (2 responses)

Considering that the people currently in charge, who are wrecking the country, are about as
anti-democratic as you can get, I think we have convincing evidence that it's correct.

Sequoia v. Ed Felten

Posted Mar 19, 2008 15:41 UTC (Wed) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (1 responses)

I often times take exception to decisions made by our current leaders, but I'm even more
concerned about the general population.  An alarmingly large group of people seem to hold the
naive belief that one person, or group of persons -- the president, or congress -- can "fix
everything," if we just get the right people in office.

The idea is that the rest of us can get back to living our self-absorbed lives without the
dark cloud of scary news on the tube every night.  That'll never work.

Sequoia v. Ed Felten

Posted Mar 19, 2008 17:47 UTC (Wed) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]

Well, no, nor should it.  "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom" and all that.