[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 45 points 1 year ago

Wasn't there a founding father quote where they specifically said they needed to avoid "too much" democracy or else the masses would get empowered and use that against the business owners, or something to that effect?

I am blanking on the specifics of it but perhaps if I throw that out there someone will know what I'm talking about.

[-] Assian_Candor@hexbear.net 40 points 1 year ago

Madison, federalist 62, excerpts are posted elsewhere here

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 25 points 1 year ago

Oh lmao I didn't even read down because I didn't expect it to be here so early in the thread.

[-] Assian_Candor@hexbear.net 33 points 1 year ago

Tbf it is extremely egregious, the man in no uncertain terms says if we have too much democracy the people will seize the means

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 27 points 1 year ago

Yeah it's one of the most candid examples of class war being waged by their side.

[-] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 23 points 1 year ago

Probably not what you're looking for, but Hamilyon called Democracy a disease in his final letter.

[-] zifnab25@hexbear.net 17 points 1 year ago

That's pretty standard loser talk. If Jefferson had had his ass handed to him repeatedly, he likely would have penned similar shit.

[-] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 14 points 1 year ago

Considering Hamilton grounds his support for federalism in his opposition for democracy, I don't think so

[-] zifnab25@hexbear.net 11 points 1 year ago

Liberal democracy has plenty of problems, as evidenced by the failure of the Articles of Confederation.

Opposition to American Democracy in 1776 relative to aristocracy was a matter of margins. And the Jacksonian Democracy that would govern American through the majority of its existence absolutely sucked balls.

[-] RedDawn@hexbear.net 17 points 1 year ago

Yeah, James Madison. Noam Chomsky brings this up frequently and one of his lectures is where I first learned, many years ago now, about the idea that founding fathers set out not to create a democracy but to protect themselves and their wealth from democracy. Runs quite contrary to what we get taught as school children.

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[+] Fuckass@hexbear.net 38 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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[-] sicklemode@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago

This is just completely delusional. The narrative that the US is flawed and was violent in the past, but now is democratic is wrong but still understandable. But the idea that the US has always been democratic is just

Here is my response on the US ever being a legitimate, or democratic country: President of Socialist Party of Zambia: Human development is not sustainable on basis of plunder

[-] footfaults@hexbear.net 35 points 1 year ago

You claim the US is a democracy and yet you close the thread and use your mod powers to argue and nobody can reply. Curious

very-intelligent

[-] Finger@hexbear.net 28 points 1 year ago

no more half measures walter

[-] betelgeuse@hexbear.net 32 points 1 year ago

Democratic Republics tend to descend into fascist states. It's not a coincidence. The system you're trying to save is why we have fascism.

I had forgotten just how much some people have absolutely no historical knowledge about anything but are completely convinced they know everything. Fucking read The Constitution. You don't have to be an academic to understand what this shit was and is.

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[-] barrbaric@hexbear.net 31 points 1 year ago

[+] motherfucker@hexbear.net 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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[-] Assian_Candor@hexbear.net 30 points 1 year ago

Democracy is when you get to choose between old man yelling at cloud and most indicted man in the world who is also old

[+] SunriseParabellum@hexbear.net 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

[deleted]

[-] SootyChimney@hexbear.net 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

10% of voting-age citizens in the US are not allowed to vote (disproportionately minorities). Of the rest, turnout is usually ~55% and the vote for either party is usually around or under half.

So in the absolute best case scenario, the government is put in by 25-30% of the voting age population, the overwhelming majority of whom are wealthy, white and/or old. So not much has changed.

Obviously without mentioning the many other issues, including the two-party system offering effectively zero choice for any voters anyway.

[-] charlie@hexbear.net 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm amazed they can put up a curtain with a big sloppily handwritten sign that says "everyone can vote now" and the majority doesn't bother to peek behind that curtain and see the lie.

[-] iridaniotter@hexbear.net 27 points 1 year ago

Purdue? The guys that tell me how to cite works in my academic essays??

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[-] Tachanka@hexbear.net 27 points 1 year ago

we have always been a democracy

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

CW: Cartoon violence

[-] freagle@lemmygrad.ml 23 points 1 year ago

Don't forget the Senate was designed from the beginning as a body to represent the interests of the minority.

[-] emizeko@hexbear.net 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability.

—James Madison

[-] thoro@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 year ago

The father of the Constitution, everyone!

[-] KurtVonnegut@hexbear.net 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

TRIGGER WARNING, SA:

Also, not-so-fun fact, President James Madison had a sister. She was half-black. She was the daughter of the president's father (wealthy plantation owner James Madison Sr.) and one of his slaves. I'll let you infer the sexual assault implications there.

Not-so-fun fact 2: President James Madison had a son. He was one-quarter black. He was the son of the President and his sister-slave. I'll let you infer the incestuous sexual assault implications there.

Not-so-fun fact 3: Jim Madison, the illegitimate son of President James Madison and his sister, was also a slave (since his mother was a slave). President Madison never freed him. Jim worked in the Madison family kitchen, and during President Madison's presidency, Jim worked in the White House kitchen. He was there when the British burned the White House down, and was even ordered to run back into the burning building to save a flag. Jim fell in love with a white woman, who also loved him back, and for this crime, President Madison, his father-owner, sold him away to a Tennessee plantation. (It was actually Dolly Madison who ordered this to happen.) President Madison never saw his son again.

Not-so-fun fact 4: To this very day, President James Madison's white descendants refuse to take a DNA test to prove they are related to his black descendants. His black descendants have family legends that are independently verifiable with recently unearthed entries in Dolly Madison's diary, proving their claims.

I never though I would hate a president more than Andrew Jackson or Thomas Jefferson, but IMO James Madison was the most vile human being ever to be commander-in-chief. At least Jefferson freed all his children when he died. But Madison, the author of the American Constitution, sold his nephew-son away, an act so inhuman I can barely conceive of it.

For further reading: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/52772978

[-] Biggay@hexbear.net 14 points 1 year ago

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

[-] KurtVonnegut@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The Madison story sounds improbable at first, but the overwhelming amount of evidence of slave owners taking advantage of their female slaves (especially part-white slaves) makes it much more believable. I mean, Jefferson's black descendants actually do have solid DNA evidence on their side, so Madison wouldn't be the first president to be a documented r*pist. Sally Hemmings was 15 when that started, BTW.

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[-] ZoomeristLeninist@hexbear.net 25 points 1 year ago

i love how in amerikan schools we are taught the senate was created to protect the uwu smol bean states. as if the states themselves would be oppressed. a piss poor attempt at obscuring the purpose of representation, but it somehow worked

[-] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 14 points 1 year ago

Sometimes it is taught as opposing "mob rule" as though when people are in a group their opinions change rather than just get emboldened.

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[-] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 18 points 1 year ago

The second method will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States. Whilst all authority in it will be derived from, and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. - Madison, 1788

Minority, of course, being rich people.

[-] Assian_Candor@hexbear.net 16 points 1 year ago

“The opulent minority” as he puts it

[-] Flinch@hexbear.net 21 points 1 year ago

this is truly, the Fediverse fedposting

[-] culpritus@hexbear.net 20 points 1 year ago

I really hate those authoritarian tankies so much! Now, how else can I abuse my mod powers to piss off more tankies...

wonder-who-thats-for

[+] robinn2@hexbear.net 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

[deleted]

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[-] MCU_H8ER2@hexbear.net 17 points 1 year ago

You can't even directly vote for the president here.

[+] nekahat@hexbear.net 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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[-] a_talking_is2@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago

You know, i'm starting to think that nobody to right of Lenin even know what the word "democracy" means.

[-] SuperZutsuki@hexbear.net 13 points 1 year ago

Well, democracy is literally communism so you should be happy that you're living in Mao Biden's communist utopia biden-leftist

[-] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 12 points 1 year ago

It's crazy

Smug liberals stop using ableism to insult their enemies challenge. Difficulty level: I N S A N E maybe-later-honey 🍷 🍷 maybe-later-kiddo

[-] jack@hexbear.net 12 points 1 year ago

Thought about calling this out as well, I'm glad you did. This is a extremely naturalized form of ableist discourse (along with insane, stupid, etc) and I know I mess it up sometimes, though I try earnestly to use words that are equally vigorous but not ableist language.

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[-] Posadas@hexbear.net 12 points 1 year ago

196?

More like 1984

TRIGGER WARNING, SA:

the_dunk_tank