Is the US a democracy?

[Intense]

You are confusing Direct or pure Democracy with the word DEMOCRACY.


It just makes you look like fools or liars

No, you are.

 

[Truthmatters]

Thomas Jefferson called us a democracy as well as all dictionaries and encyclopedias ...oh and me.


Now how does it serve your party to continue to LIE about this fact?

 

[Intense]

Democracy - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary



de·moc·ra·cy
noun \di-ˈmä-krə-sē\
pluralde·moc·ra·cies








Definition of DEMOCRACY



1

a: government by the people; especially: rule of the majority b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections

The majority doesn't always rule, but surely you know that. What if we let the majority rule when it came to Emacipation, Civil Rights and women voting?? In a democracy those things would have never happened. The majority was against them.

A true democracy doesn't listen to minorities. They govern by mob rule. But you know that don't you??

TM just wants the last word at any cost. Who knew???

 

[Truthmatters]

Search the Jeffersonian Cyclopedia

Thomas Jefferson Collection | Jeffersonian Encyclopedia homepage
University of Virginia Library

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7270. REPRESENTATION, Democratic. --


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7270. REPRESENTATION, Democratic. --
View page | View section
The full experiment of a government democratical, but representative, was and is still reserved for us. The idea (taken, indeed, from the little specimen formerly existing in the English constitution, but now lost) has been carried by us, more or less, into all our legislative and executive departments; but it has not yet, by any of us, been pushed into all the ramifications of the system, so far as to leave no authority existing not responsible to the people; whose rights, however, to the exercise and fruits of their own industry, can never be protected against the selfishness of rulers not subject to their control at short periods. The introduction of this new principle of representative democracy has rendered useless almost everything written before on the structure of government; and, in a great measure, relieves our regret, if the political writings of Aristotle, or of any other ancient, have been lost, or are unfaithfully rendered or explained to us. --

TITLE: To Isaac H. Tiffany.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 32.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1816

You guys just seem to try and bury this post instead of addressing it.

WHY??????

 

[Robert_Stephens]

Why do you keep refusing all the dictionary and encylcopedia defintions ?

Why is it so important to the right to hate the word democracy?


What do you think you will gain from such stupidity?

Are we bound by the Constitution or by a dictionary definition?

Article 4 section 4
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.

Fedora is tipped bigreb! Fedora surely is tipped.

For we are a Grand Idea, with blood on the stones, and the kings men fell, until the last breath,......

Robert

 

[naturegirl]

You are confusing Direct or pure Democracy with the word DEMOCRACY.


It just makes you look like fools or liars

Your own definition says "rule of majority". But you just overlooked that didn't you. The majority doesn't rule in the USA, thank goodness.

You are the one looking like a fool and a liar, true story.

 

[Truthmatters]

Why do you refuse to address the poat where I show Jefferson calling us a democracy?

 

[Truthmatters]

You are confusing Direct or pure Democracy with the word DEMOCRACY.


It just makes you look like fools or liars

Your own definition says "rule of majority". But you just overlooked that didn't you. The majority doesn't rule in the USA, thank goodness.

You are the one looking like a fool and a liar, true story.

what are elections for then?

 

[naturegirl]

Search the Jeffersonian Cyclopedia

Thomas Jefferson Collection | Jeffersonian Encyclopedia homepage
University of Virginia Library

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


7270. REPRESENTATION, Democratic. --


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

7270. REPRESENTATION, Democratic. --
View page | View section
The full experiment of a government democratical, but representative, was and is still reserved for us. The idea (taken, indeed, from the little specimen formerly existing in the English constitution, but now lost) has been carried by us, more or less, into all our legislative and executive departments; but it has not yet, by any of us, been pushed into all the ramifications of the system, so far as to leave no authority existing not responsible to the people; whose rights, however, to the exercise and fruits of their own industry, can never be protected against the selfishness of rulers not subject to their control at short periods. The introduction of this new principle of representative democracy has rendered useless almost everything written before on the structure of government; and, in a great measure, relieves our regret, if the political writings of Aristotle, or of any other ancient, have been lost, or are unfaithfully rendered or explained to us. --

TITLE: To Isaac H. Tiffany.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 32.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1816

You guys just seem to try and bury this post instead of addressing it.

WHY??????

There were a few others involved in setting up the government. Thomas Jefferson didn't do it all by himself. He was open minded and listened to others that were indeed as wise as he was.

 

[Truthmatters]

Thomas Jefferson Collection | Jeffersonian Encyclopedia homepage
University of Virginia Library

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


7270. REPRESENTATION, Democratic. --


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

7270. REPRESENTATION, Democratic. --
View page | View section
The full experiment of a government democratical, but representative, was and is still reserved for us. The idea (taken, indeed, from the little specimen formerly existing in the English constitution, but now lost) has been carried by us, more or less, into all our legislative and executive departments; but it has not yet, by any of us, been pushed into all the ramifications of the system, so far as to leave no authority existing not responsible to the people; whose rights, however, to the exercise and fruits of their own industry, can never be protected against the selfishness of rulers not subject to their control at short periods. The introduction of this new principle of representative democracy has rendered useless almost everything written before on the structure of government; and, in a great measure, relieves our regret, if the political writings of Aristotle, or of any other ancient, have been lost, or are unfaithfully rendered or explained to us. --

TITLE: To Isaac H. Tiffany.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 32.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1816

You guys just seem to try and bury this post instead of addressing it.

WHY??????

There were a few others involved in setting up the government. Thomas Jefferson didn't do it all by himself. He was open minded and listened to others that were indeed as wise as he was.

So you are calling Jefferson a lair or a fool?

 

[naturegirl]

You are confusing Direct or pure Democracy with the word DEMOCRACY.


It just makes you look like fools or liars

Your own definition says "rule of majority". But you just overlooked that didn't you. The majority doesn't rule in the USA, thank goodness.

You are the one looking like a fool and a liar, true story.

what are elections for then?

We wouldn't have the Civil Rights Act, the Emancipation Proclamation or Women's Suffrage if we were a true democracy. If I were you I'd stop, you're really embarrassing your side.

 

[naturegirl]

You guys just seem to try and bury this post instead of addressing it.

WHY??????

There were a few others involved in setting up the government. Thomas Jefferson didn't do it all by himself. He was open minded and listened to others that were indeed as wise as he was.

So you are calling Jefferson a lair or a fool?

Naw he was a great man with a great mind that HELPED write the Constitution. Those were his ideas, doesn't mean they were followed to the letter now does it??

 

[Texanmike]

Well it is nice to see that while I was away nothing changed. TM is still asking questions to which the answer is obvious and the rest of the board plays her game. Seriously TM, give it a break. If you think this is a pure democracy then go to Congress and place your vote on all of the bills that are voted on. You will quickly find out that this is a representative republic. It finds its roots in democracy but it makes up for some of the shortcomings in the democratic process.

There is nothing else to say.

Mike

 

[Intense]

You are confusing Direct or pure Democracy with the word DEMOCRACY.


It just makes you look like fools or liars

Your own definition says "rule of majority". But you just overlooked that didn't you. The majority doesn't rule in the USA, thank goodness.

You are the one looking like a fool and a liar, true story.

what are elections for then?

You pick

a) To perpetrate an Illusion that the Individual matters.

b) To elect your Keepers.

c) To Elect Representatives to best Represent the Will of the Governed through passing Legislation, and through Reason, making sound decisions and choices, on their own, to best serve our interest.

Who we vote for is only a small part of Government, considering the depth of Government, TM. Executive, Legislative, Judicial. Federal, State, and Local. Administrative Bureaucracy engulfs us.

 

[peach174]

I think that Thomas Jefferson described what we are as a Republic best in his letter to Samuel Kercheval
June 12, 1816

It's rather long but I think well worth the read to help us all get back on track to the Republic that we should be.

SIR, -- I duly received your favor of June the 13th, with the copy of the letters on the calling a convention, on which you are pleased to ask my opinion. I have not been in the habit of mysterious reserve on any subject, nor of buttoning up my opinions within my own doublet. On the contrary, while in public service especially, I thought the public entitled to frankness, and intimately to know whom they employed. But I am now retired: I resign myself, as a passenger, with confidence to those at present at the helm, and ask but for rest, peace and good will. The question you propose, on equal representation, has become a party one, in which I wish to take no public share. Yet, if it be asked for your own satisfaction only, and not to be quoted before the public, I have no motive to withhold it, and the less from you, as it coincides with your own. At the birth of our republic, I committed that opinion to the world, in the draught of a constitution annexed to the "Notes on Virginia," in which a provision was inserted for a representation permanently equal. The infancy of the subject at that moment, and our inexperience of self-government, occasioned gross departures in that draught from genuine republican canons. In truth, the abuses of monarchy had so much filled all the space of political contemplation, that we imagined everything republican which was not monarchy. We had not yet penetrated to the mother principle, that "governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it." Hence, our first constitutions had really no leading principles in them. But experience and reflection have but more and more confirmed me in the particular importance of the equal representation then proposed. On that point, then, I am entirely in sentiment with your letters; and only lament that a copy--right of your pamphlet prevents their appearance in the newspapers, where alone they would be generally read, and produce general effect. The present vacancy too, of other matter, would give them place in every paper, and bring the question home to every man’s conscience.

But inequality of representation in both Houses of our legislature, is not the only republican heresy in this first essay of our revolutionary patriots at forming a constitution. For let it be agreed that a government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns (not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city, or small township, but) by representatives chosen by himself, and responsible to him at short periods, and let us bring to the test of this canon every branch of our constitution.

In the legislature, the House of Representatives is chosen by less than half the people, and not at all in proportion to those who do choose. The Senate are still more disproportionate, and for long terms of irresponsibility. In the Executive, the Governor is entirely independent of the choice of the people, and of their control; his Council equally so, and at best but a fifth wheel to a wagon. In the Judiciary, the judges of the highest courts are dependent on none but themselves. In England, where judges were named and removable at the will of an hereditary executive, from which branch most misrule was feared, and has flowed, it was a great point gained, by fixing them for life, to make them independent of that executive. But in a government founded on the public will, this principle operates in an opposite direction, and against that will. There, too, they were still removable on a concurrence of the executive and legislative branches. But we have made them independent of the nation itself. They are irremovable, but by their own body, for any depravities of conduct, and even by their own body for the imbecilities of dotage. The justices of the inferior courts are self-chosen, are for life, and perpetuate their own body in succession forever, so that a faction once possessing themselves of the bench of a county, can never be broken up, but hold their county in chains, forever indissoluble. Yet these justices are the real executive as well as judiciary, in all our minor and most ordinary concerns. They tax us at will; fill the office of sheriff, the most important of all the executive officers of the county; name nearly all our military leaders, which leaders, once named, are removable but by themselves. The juries, our judges of all fact, and of law when they choose it, are not selected by the people, nor amenable to them. They are chosen by an officer named by the court and executive. Chosen, did I say? Picked up by the sheriff from the loungings of the court yard, after everything respectable has retired from it. Where then is our republicanism to be found? Not in our constitution certainly, but merely in the spirit of our people. That would oblige even a despot to govern us republicanly. Owing to this spirit, and to nothing in the form of our constitution, all things have gone well. But this fact, so triumphantly misquoted by the enemies of reformation, is not the fruit of our constitution, but has prevailed in spite of it. Our functionaries have done well, because generally honest men. If any were not so, they feared to show it.

But it will be said, it is easier to find faults than to amend them. I do not think their amendment so difficult as is pretended. Only lay down true principles, and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people. If experience be called for, appeal to that of our fifteen or twenty governments for forty years, and show me where the people have done half the mischief in these forty years, that a single despot would have done in a single year; or show half the riots and rebellions, the crimes and the punishments, which have taken place in any single nation, under kingly government, during the same period. The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management. Try by this, as a tally, every provision of our constitution, and see if it hangs directly on the will of the people. Reduce your legislature to a convenient number for full, but orderly discussion. Let every man who fights or pays, exercise his just and equal right in their election. Submit them to approbation or rejection at short intervals. Let the executive be chosen in the same way, and for the same term, by those whose agent he is to be; and leave no screen of a council behind which to skulk from responsibility. It has been thought that the people are not competent electors of judges learned in the law. But I do not know that this is true, and, if doubtful, we should follow principle. In this, as in many other elections, they would be guided by reputation, which would not err oftener, perhaps, than the present mode of appointment. In one State of the Union, at least, it has long been tried, and with the most satisfactory success. The judges of Connecticut have been chosen by the people every six months, for nearly two centuries, and I believe there has hardly ever been an instance of change; so powerful is the curb of incessant responsibility. If prejudice, however, derived from a monarchical institution, is still to prevail against the vital elective principle of our own, and if the existing example among ourselves of periodical election of judges by the people be still mistrusted, let us at least not adopt the evil, and reject the good, of the English precedent; let us retain amovability on the concurrence of the executive and legislative branches, and nomination by the executive alone. Nomination to office is an executive function. To give it to the legislature, as we do, is a violation of the principle of the separation of powers. It swerves the members from correctness, by temptations to intrigue for office themselves, and to a corrupt barter of votes; and destroys responsibility by dividing it among a multitude. By leaving nomination in its proper place, among executive functions, the principle of the distribution of power is preserved, and responsibility weighs with its heaviest force on a single head.
The organization of our county administrations may be thought more difficult. But follow principle, and the knot unties itself. Divide the counties into wards of such size as that every citizen can attend, when called on, and act in person. Ascribe to them the government of their wards in all things relating to themselves exclusively. A justice, chosen by themselves, in each, a constable, a military company, a patrol, a school, the care of their own poor, their own portion of the public roads, the choice of one or more jurors to serve in some court, and the delivery, within their own wards, of their own votes for all elective officers of higher sphere, will relieve the county administration of nearly all its business, will have it better done, and by making every citizen an acting member of the government, and in the offices nearest and most interesting to him, will attach him by his strongest feelings to the independence of his country, and its republican constitution. The justices thus chosen by every ward, would constitute the county court, would do its judiciary business, direct roads and bridges, levy county and poor rates, and administer all the matters of common interest to the whole country. These wards, called townships in New England, are the vital principle of their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its preservation. We should thus marshal our government into, 1, the general federal republic, for all concerns foreign and federal; 2, that of the State, for what relates to our own citizens exclusively; 3, the county republics, for the duties and concerns of the county; and 4, the ward republics, for the small, and yet numerous and interesting concerns of the neighborhood; and in government, as well as in every other business of life, it is by division and subdivision of duties alone, that all matters, great and small, can be managed to perfection. And the whole is cemented by giving to every citizen, personally, a part in the administration of the public affairs.
The sum of these amendments is, 1. General Suffrage. 2. Equal representation in the legislature. 3. An executive chosen by the people. 4. Judges elective or amovable. 5. Justices, jurors, and sheriffs elective. 6. Ward divisions. And 7. Periodical amendments of the constitution.

I have thrown out these as loose heads of amendment, for consideration and correction; and their object is to secure self-government by the republicanism of our constitution, as well as by the spirit of the people; and to nourish and perpetuate that spirit. I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. Our landholders, too, like theirs, retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries, and be contented with penury, obscurity, exile, and the glory of the nation. This example reads to us the salutary lesson, that private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.
Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. It is this preposterous idea which has lately deluged Europe in blood. Their monarchs, instead of wisely yielding to the gradual change of circumstances, of favoring progressive accommodation to progressive improvement, have clung to old abuses, entrenched themselves behind steady habits, and obliged their subjects to seek through blood and violence rash and ruinous innovations, which, had they been referred to the peaceful deliberations and collected wisdom of the nation, would have been put into acceptable and salutary forms. Let us follow no such examples, nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of ordering its own affairs. Let us, as our sister States have done, avail ourselves of our reason and experience, to correct the crude essays of our first and unexperienced, although wise, virtuous, and well-meaning councils. And lastly, let us provide in our constitution for its revision at stated periods. What these periods should be, nature herself indicates. By the European tables of mortality, of the adults living at any one moment of time, a majority will be dead in about nineteen years. At the end of that period, then, a new majority is come into place; or, in other words, a new generation. Each generation is as independent as the one preceding, as that was of all which had gone before. It has then, like them, a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its own happiness; consequently, to accommodate to the circumstances in which it finds itself, that received from its predecessors; and it is for the peace and good of mankind, that a solemn opportunity of doing this every nineteen or twenty years, should be provided by the constitution; so that it may be handed on, with periodical repairs, from generation to generation, to the end of time, if anything human can so long endure. It is now forty years since the constitution of Virginia was formed. The same tables inform us, that, within that period, two-thirds of the adults then living are now dead. Have then the remaining third, even if they had the wish, the right to hold in obedience to their will, and to laws heretofore made by them, the other two-thirds, who, with themselves, compose the present mass of adults? If they have not, who has? The dead? But the dead have no rights. They are nothing; and nothing cannot own something. Where there is no substance, there can be no accident. This corporeal globe, and everything upon it, belong to its present corporeal inhabitants, during their generation. They alone have a right to direct what is the concern of themselves alone, and to declare the law of that direction; and this declaration can only be made by their majority. That majority, then, has a right to depute representatives to a convention, and to make the constitution what they think will be the best for themselves. But how collect their voice? This is the real difficulty. If invited by private authority, or county or district meetings, these divisions are so large that few will attend; and their voice will be imperfectly, or falsely pronounced. Here, then, would be one of the advantages of the ward divisions I have proposed. The mayor of every ward, on a question like the present, would call his ward together, take the simple yea or nay of its members, convey these to the county court, who would hand on those of all its wards to the proper general authority; and the voice of the whole people would be thus fairly, fully, and peaceably expressed, discussed, and decided by the common reason of the society. If this avenue be shut to the call of sufferance, it will make itself heard through that of force, and we shall go on, as other nations are doing, in the endless circle of oppression, rebellion, reformation; and oppression, rebellion, reformation, again; and so on forever.
These, Sir, are my opinions of the governments we see among men, and of the principles by which alone we may prevent our own from falling into the same dreadful track. I have given them at greater length than your letter called for. But I cannot say things by halves; and I confide them to your honor, so to use them as to preserve me from the gridiron of the public papers. If you shall approve and enforce them, as you have done that of equal representation, they may do some good. If not, keep them to yourself as the effusions of withered age and useless time. I shall, with not the less truth, assure you of my great respect and consideration.

 

[Truthmatters]

a republic is a type of democracy so we are a democracy just the same

 

[Truthmatters]

Well it is nice to see that while I was away nothing changed. TM is still asking questions to which the answer is obvious and the rest of the board plays her game. Seriously TM, give it a break. If you think this is a pure democracy then go to Congress and place your vote on all of the bills that are voted on. You will quickly find out that this is a representative republic. It finds its roots in democracy but it makes up for some of the shortcomings in the democratic process.

There is nothing else to say.

Mike

Dear lying POS, where did I say we were a pure of direct democracy?

 

[poorrichard1776]

With elections decided by the candidates who "sell out" the people by raising the most money, most elected officials can't represent or act in the best interests of the people. Their political indebtedness to campaign contributors preclude their ever earning their paychecks by acting in the best interests of the people. Congrss has not earned their paychecks in a long long time. They have acted in the best interests oftheir own political carrers, their own political parties and rarely act to keep kids safe anymore. I have to put forth an alternative form of government that can represent the people better than what we have now. Jefferson said, "A little rebellion erery once in awhile is not such a bad thing." The founding Fathers of this country especially the Anti-Federalists wrestled with the question of the sizing znd empowerment level of the Federal government. These fundemental concerns of the Anti-Federalists remain unresolved. They feared that the state and local governments would be left to operate with the "crumbs" that the Federal government left behind. States rights and local government rights are a mute point if there is no way to fund the goals of the people. We are stripping far too much cash to Washington DC and then expecting the Congress to return the money where it needs to go to keep the economy strong. The Congress is not smart enough to micro-manage the entire US economy from Washington DC. The first action needed to restore the economic system to it's full potential is to recognize the limitations of the federal government. We probably can't even micro-mange the economy from the state capitols. We should fire Congress, establish an internet Congress, succeed from the Federal and State IRS systems and task the county government to work on achieving energy independence at least in the rural counties and leave the cash in those counties to achieve the goal. The Tea Party is basically the reincarnation of the Anti-Federalists of the 1780's and need to evolve into the Common Sense political Party.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Well it is nice to see that while I was away nothing changed. TM is still asking questions to which the answer is obvious and the rest of the board plays her game. Seriously TM, give it a break. If you think this is a pure democracy then go to Congress and place your vote on all of the bills that are voted on. You will quickly find out that this is a representative republic. It finds its roots in democracy but it makes up for some of the shortcomings in the democratic process.

There is nothing else to say.

Mike

Dear lying POS, where did I say we were a pure of direct democracy?

"At the birth of our republic..." Thomas "TM is sans clueless" Jefferson

 

[Texanmike]

Your own definition says "rule of majority". But you just overlooked that didn't you. The majority doesn't rule in the USA, thank goodness.

You are the one looking like a fool and a liar, true story.

what are elections for then?

You pick

a) To perpetrate an Illusion that the Individual matters.

b) To elect your Keepers.

c) To Elect Representatives to best Represent the Will of the Governed through passing Legislation, and through Reason, making sound decisions and choices, on their own, to best serve our interest.

Who we vote for is only a small part of Government, considering the depth of Government, TM. Executive, Legislative, Judicial. Federal, State, and Local. Administrative Bureaucracy engulfs us.

I hope you're not offended when I say that I believe you missed the key point of what this country is. This country is a place in which you must be vigilant of our freedom. It was, by design, a country in which an individual could collect with like minded individuals and decide how he/she was to be governed. Any person or collection of people have the ability and the right to ceede whatever freedom they wish up to a higher level of government. Of course it requires other people be complicit in this action. The danger is that once you grant a level of government more authority it is virutally impossible to get it back.

Take the first of your possibilites into consideration. The illusion is not that the individual matters, the illusion is that the individual cares. With a voter turnout not even approaching 50% and an electorate that is largely uneducated. Next, lets look at your statement about keepers. We never elect our keepers, we empower them with our elections. We trade our freedoms for their power and we do it with a smile. We elect representation but not representatives.

The biggest mistake that we make is to discount our local elections. If you really want to effect your lifestyle send your local officals out to reclaim authority from your larger officials.

Mike