Our Government: 2010-06-24
I’m not sure why you’re making the distinction between a democracy and a republic. If you’re referring to “republic” in the Platonian sense, then even in that scenario, people at large had some input to the laws; though the guardians had more. Our government is the same. The people at large have input with their votes for who represents them, and those representatives, like Plato’s guardians, have greaterr influence. But, ours differs from Plato’s Republic in that we can vote out those who don’t rule as we wish. So again, I’m lost on your distinction. Republics and democracies are not mutually exclusive as I understand them, and they can in fact exist as one; as ours does.
Yes, when it comes to individual rights, the founding fathers wanted to protect each person from the changing tides of public opinion — to a degree, when it comes to issues of church and state, unlawful arrest, vigilantism, and so on.
But this is not to say that they wished ALL public opinion to be disregarded in the legal system. If public sentiment didn’t matter in our system, then why have a congress of at all? Indeed, the house and senate provide Washington a finger on the pulse of collective public opinion. Public opinion plays a huge rule in the laws we legislate in our republic.
I watched the video you provided (see it here). It’s a good one. It will take some time to digest all that it said.
But one thing I found missing was that it offered no way for the laws in a republic to change. So this makes the republic just as imperfect as democracy or oligarghy. If a republic indeed embodies limited but unchangable laws, then I would not want to live in such a system; a form of government that would, in light of today’s social and technological advances. quickly become obsolete. It would not allow for the advancement of civilization.
Clearly none of the forms of government mentioned in the video are by themselves perfect. It appears that the best form of government, though admittedly not the ideal form, is a government that combines all the elemental types of government discussed in the video; anarchy, oligarchy, democracy, republic. I believe we do this here in the US. We’re neither a pure democracy, nor a pure republic; nor should we be either. There are elements of oligarchy in our system as well (juries, congress, the Supreme Court in fact), and one could cite examples of dictatorship in our system (like when we must listen to the police when they tell us to stop). The best government is not either-or; but a combination of all types known to man.
June 24th, 2010 at 10:05 am
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