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The founding fathers were more worried about letting poor people and the uneducated vote. It wasn't a concern over the structure of the democratic system, it was "most people don't know what's good for them and shouldn't be allowed to govern themselves". The idea behind the electoral college was that the 'best citizens' in each community would be electors, and would not be themselves elected by the mass of the citizenry. This sentiment began to change by the early 1800s with the rise of Jacksonian politics and democratic ideals, but the founding fathers didn't really conceive of the US being a democracy at all by the modern definition of liberal mass democracy. I think I might be sounding too harsh here. One of the biggest problems is that modern industrial/post-industrial society is completely different from the preindustrial world of the 1780s. Mass politics did not exist. The democracy of Athens, Rome, and the founding fathers was more of a "democracy for the 1% noble elite" than a "democracy for all age of majority adults". The industrial revolution created the conditions necessary for political participation from the majority of society, and in the 1780s obviously that hadn't happened yet. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Jul 30, 2014 |
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Jul 30, 2014 17:42
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Gleri posted:As a Canadian and as someone who works in criminal justice the American system, at least in some states, of having elected judges, prosecutors and sherrifs seems really crazy and dangerous to me and is the most obvious instance of too much democracy. How on Earth can a judge be an impartial arbiter of disputes involving potentially unpopular parties if the judge is elected? Criminals, and the criminally accused are invariably going to be conflated with the convicted in the minds of the public, are always going to be deeply unpopular. They're in many ways the most vulnerable class of people in society and constitutional protections are only going to go so far if the accused don't have the resources to hire a good lawyer. Directly elected judges can be a pretty scary thing, yes. IIRC direct election of judges was started by progressive/left wing reformers in the late 1800s, but I think a large reason for why it is still around is because conservatives want 'tough on crime', meaning 'tough on minorities' red meat to throw to the base. What the OP is describing, though, is a fairly prominent strain of American political ideology that essentially rejects the idea of popular sovereignty. It's basically a component of libertarianism of the Ron Paul / Ayn Rand variety. They love to break out quotes from the founding fathers to support the idea that the government has no right to inconvenience the wealthy ever, for any reason. And the fact is, the founding fathers probably would have agreed with them.
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Jul 30, 2014 18:22
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Typo posted:Why not? The FBI is a counterintelligence agency operating within the US and the police department for the federal government, and the CIA is a foreign intelligence agency spying on other countries. Their goals don't overlap at all
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Aug 1, 2014 01:52
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