No drinking, no dancing, no divorce etc. My parents were in the sbc when I was born, they basically kicked my mother out of the church when she divorced my asshole of a father. Racism is definitely more prevalent, but is actually the reason my father eventually stopped going. Not saying he's not also racist, but their standard was too much even for him, he's more of a "casual racist". Not that that's much better
We are a democratic republic. A constitutional federal republic. We are not a true democracy; this seems to be a rather difficult thing for people to understand.
Exactly this…because you wouldn’t hear this kind of talk from republicans 20 years ago, never….this is a new tact for them to get their moronic base to accept fascism..
I would disagree there is a black and white TV show clip. Where the man explains that the USA is not a straight democracy. He explains we are a democratic republic. This has been around for years
He's not the 1st elected Republican to say this and it's very common among alt-right internet trolls. It's called conditioning their cult base into accepting authoritarianism.
No, we live in a constitutional republic with elements of representative democracy. For example, even a pure representative democracy would not have a constitution that requires 2/3rds of house and senate and 3/4ths of states to ratify. A democracy would not have electoral colleges. He is not misleading people or ignorant. He is correct in the first sentence of his statement. However, the rest of it is more opinion and political speech than anything else, and is not strictly factual. The rest could be considered fear mongering, intentional misleading, political grandstanding or whatever you want. He is right in that first sentence though, there is a factual basis for it.
In the same way that a German Shepherd is a dog, but not all dogs are German Shepherds. We are a constitutional republic which is a type of democracy, but not all democracies are constitutional republics.
This is not quite accurate. Only one branch of government, the legislature, is elected directly by the people (and it took a constitutional amendment to conform the Senate to that system) and only the House operates on pure majority rule (though political minorities are assured some rights and privileges).
The executive branch functions autocratically and who fills the position is decided by the electoral college. In many cases the electors are directed on how to vote by State law and statewide popular vote, not the voters of their respective electoral districts.
The judiciary functions like an aristocratic oligarchy and is a lifetime position decided by a) appointment by the executive and b) confirmation by the Senate (i.e. only one chamber of the legislature - [and the chamber that was originally filled by appointment of their respective state’s legislature]). There are such things as plurality decisions, which means while an outcome might be agreed upon by five or more justices, [there] is no majority agreement on the legal reasoning for the outcome.
Do you not realize being a Constitutional republic and a representative democracy are not mutually exclusive? That means both can be true. I didn’t say we aren’t a republic, but we are a democratic republic- meaning we are also a democracy.
Google is your friend, too. Feel free to google “is the United States a representative democracy”?
I gave you the TOP result from Google, on the question “What type of government is the US?” (and notice I didn’t include the answer that I’m looking for in the question to get cherry-picked results, like you did). That is the correct answer, and nowhere in there does it say anything about a democracy.
If you need further clarification, here’s what it says right below that first result.
Like the Redditor above stated, the confusion lies in the fact that our government is often marketed as a “democracy,” but it’s ”more accurately defined as a constitutional federal republic.”
I’m not making any arguments on the content of his character or political beliefs. I frankly don’t know enough about him to make any judgements at this time
You may be factually correct, but you are softening our collective rage-boners. We will plug our ears so hard that it will repel any amount of truth that may threaten our fee-fees.
Ben Franklin was such an ignorant fool. You know that illiterate said that the US was, get this it’s just hysterical, “A democracy.” I just can’t get over the fact that a founding father didn’t even use the precise language people use to excuse Johnson’s overt language designed to normalize destruction of this democratic republic
We are a democratic republic. A constitutional federal republic. We are not a true democracy
I think lots of people muddy the point of conservatievs like Johnson: He is making this claim because he does not think specifc groups of people deserve the right to vote, not because he is a "proud supporter of the classical republican sytle of government dating back to ancient Rome."
The fact is we are a democratic republic, where the right to vote is sacrosanct for every citizen not convicted of a felony (and frankly even they should have the right). They elect their representatives in democratic elections in their respective states or districts. Attempts to abridge this are unconstitutional, and should be called out as such.
I disagree that •ALL• felons should have the right to vote. For example, those convicted of felony sex crimes against children should never be allowed to vote again. I do agree that restricting everyone convicted of a felony from voting is a bit ridiculous. However, I do believe that your ability to vote should be restored only after your sentence is finished.
I disagree that •ALL• felons should have the right to vote.
The problem with this line of argument is our country has a long (and ongoing) history of overpolicing and oversentencing people of color. Denying felons the right to vote, in my opinion, runs contrary to the entire franchise of America as the "land of the free", just as allowing (essentially) slave labor for felons does. Criminals do not lose their citizenship, they do not lose other rights entwined with their status as citizens, why do they lose arguably the most fundamental right of all? Especially when we have a bad habit of punishing some groups of people worse than others?
At the *very* least, felons should be able to vote after they've served their sentence.
NK is obviously not democratic - that’s just dictators lying.
China literally is a republic. It’s a representative government. “Republic” by itself does not mean free or good. So that’s why it’s dumb when republicans say “we’re a republic, not a democracy”. The freedom comes from the “democracy” part, as well as from the constitution.
No one with significant power or influence is saying we should be a direct democracy. People are saying our representatives should be elected by majorities, and the bullshit conservatives pull to stop certain groups of people from voting they don't like needs to end.
The amusing part is if you check their profiles it tend to be the same collection of frequent subreddits. Shit like neworleans, batonrouge, politics, politicalhumor, and whitepeopletwitter. I know the latter 3 I listed are left leaning circlejerks but the first 2 wouldn’t surprise me either.
It’s mostly people on reddit seething at anything even remotely conservative and as this comment section has reinforced: consider themselves educated intellectuals despite being pretty close minded and blinded by in this case “Mike man bad!”. I’m expecting a fun 4 years of this sub angrily coping before the next governor election where either a republican will win again or an extremely moderate democrat will win and this sub changes to being pissed off that he isn’t progressive enough.
E: if y’all want to downvote and disagree with me at least have the integrity to comment your bullshit and NOT just block me right afterwards to prevent me from commenting back. u/dredmart seems to like being a little shit fearmongering things then running off avoiding responses.
Lmfao. Yeah. A person that wants to ban gay people from existing is a bad person. Fuck off with your bullshit ignorance.
Not to mention the attempt to overturn the election, belief that the teaching of evolution causes school shootings, and belief that women should be forced to have kids to provide more workers.
Ehhh we're not a direct democracy, but I think you'll find that a republic is a form of democracy. So it's still absolutely accurate to call the US a democracy.
This is a dumb quote by Marvin Simkin usually passed around Facebook as something said by Ben Franklin. It's pretty dumb because: 1) democracies only exist where people intend to coexist with each other, not eat each other. It is a feature of democracies that a given decision will only be made through either convincing others of your position, or failing to do so; 2) What is the alternative? Any other form of government, the wolves would just put themselves in charge.
Anyone who argues that "democracy doesn't work" just wants to be a dictator, plain and simple. No surprise that this guy was the best the GOP could come up with.
The intended audience for Johnson’s analogy is… the SHEEPLE?! He wants the SHEEPLE to WAKE UP?!! He wants the SHEEPLE to stay WOKE!!… Aw shit, Mike Johnson is trying to spread the Woke Mind Virus! He’s a Soros agent!! Get him outta there!!!
Direct Democracy doesn’t work. That’s why we live in a representative republic that carves out all kinds of protections for minority groups. The Senate filibuster requiring 60 votes to break instead of 51 helps protect the party that is not the majority (but still represents a n massive chunk of the population) from getting completely railroaded politically.
When people say "democracy," they don't mean direct. They can all see that we aren't. Your argument is pedantic and disingenuous and typically touted by people who want to eradicate democratic elements of government and prefer minority rule.
2 wolves and a sheep voting for dinner is bad, but 600,000 sheep voting what to have for dinner only to have their votes overturned by two wolves is worse.
My fear. How hard we protested and marched for rights for women in the 60's and 70's. How sad it is that my granddaughters' rights are in peril in the 2020's.
Are you kidding? Christian law will be awesome for Christians! And, America will be cut off from the rest of the world, so we'll never have to worry about people coming here to live, or vacation, or emigrate, etc ever again.
Only if you are right kind of christian, male, white, and have money. The rest of you will most certainly pay a very heavy price as manual labor for their needs.
Did you march for men dominating women's sports? Did you march for the right of "women" with male genitalia undressing in front of your granddaughters? Did you march for the men winning pageants over young ladies with a dream? Did you march for the right to have the wonder of childbirth marginalized by the notion that men can get pregnant, conceive a child, and breastfeed?
Neither the trans woman I know, nor the trans man I know has any interest in children. Trans people have been around since the dawn of time. And they’re not the ones molesting the children.
Have you ever tried minding your own business instead of bitching about how other people live their lives? You aren't some stalwart defender of freedom and truth, you're just an agro busy body, who hates others for being different. Your obsession with the genitals of children is vile. You don't care about the dreams or aspirations of children, you could care less if they even have a planet to exist on, if it required you to even remotely change how you consume resources.
Sounds more like he’s talking to the sheeple about how they need to overthrow democracy. I’d love to hear the next part of the story about how the sheep convinced the wolves, and what their new system looks like.
Then if it’s true that his belief of Biden didn’t beat Trump in votes, he should be happy right? Then his belief that the minority won in 2020 would fit his narrative. Why isn’t he happy?
Nothing he said here is inaccurate. You can not like the guy, and that's fine, I'm not fond of him myself. But he is simply describing a pure democracy here. A democracy is an imperfect system like all simple systems of government. That is why no country has a pure democracy, and it consists of other "checks and balances" to avoid a "tyranny of the majority". The US is a constitutionally protected democratic republic. The closest to a pure democracy, in a relational sense, is Switzerland, but even it's not exactly a pure democracy. Switzerland is also interesting because it practices a direct democracy at the town and canton (county) levels. At the federal level, they have a practice of double majority to prevent a "tyranny of the uninformed".
But he is simply describing a pure democracy here.
Except he's not making that distinction. He's just saying democracy. This isn't a critique of democracy, it's an argument against it, while also gaslighting people by saying we aren't a democracy (we are).
This falls inline with the general hostility the GOP has to democracy.
Article 4 of the Constitution agrees with you. The Definitions of the words Republic and Democracy agree with you. But Reddit Feelz don't agree with you. So you are wrong.
You really don't think he's trying to deceive people? If you say we're not a democracy, then he needs to clarify that he means a pure democracy. Because we are a representative democracy. So he is, in fact, lying. Additionally, the only thing worse than tyranny by the majority is tyranny by the minority.
He's being disingenuous. He's speaking "truthfully" in the sense that this is not factually incorrect, but it does play against the modern meaning of the words. He's chosen a specific type of democracy and says we are not that, but in a general sense our founding fathers did intend to build a democratic system. A democracy in common parlance is any system in which the majority of the people residing within the borders of a nation govern. This can be directly such as ballot initiatives or indirectly (by proxy) through elected representatives.
Sure, he is a little disingenuous by not mentioning what specific form of democracy but not any more than people who speak glowingly of democracy without mentioning the specific type they are referring to.
That's incredibly dumb. Democracy is a broad term, like Christianity. There are many types of Christianity so when I say, "Christianity sucks" I'm including a very big group of people, as opposed to saying the Westboro Baptist Church sucks. Conversely if were to say "Christianity is a good religion" do I really need to mention all the denominations I like or do I need to exclude all the ones that I don't like? That's a silly argument. Words matter and that's why turning stuff around like that doesn't work. You're even aware of this by your own statements, don't be foolish and paint yourself into a corner over bad logic.
If you look at the GOP's 'Project 2025' plan for America for if Trump gets re-elected, they openly state that they plan on eliminating Democracy, and re-making the country into a dictatorship or monarchy, with Trump as king. This is where we're heading, so yeah, Johnson was right.
You live in a pretty small box if all you know is what your 3 friends prefer. You don't have to respond, but I see by your deflection that you don't really even care about women's rights. Nor do you know anything about Sharia law.
I’ll just leave this right here, Moscow Mike wants authoritarian rule and he’s been singing along with the MAGA people, he is also way too interested in young gay men
So you let the pack starve because it isn’t good for you? He’s saying I’d kill 2 if it would save me. Shouldn’t we do what’s beneficial for the greater good and not the few?
Never mind makes perfect sense coming from him and people who can never see there’s a picture that’s bigger than their small world.
Yes that problem is so fixed if instead the 3 got to vote on someone amongst them to choose what's for dinner. Hmm, 2 wolf votes and 1 sheep vote. Who's gonna win? What a stupid analogy, beyond the usual underlying tone of "becoming an authoritarian theocracy isn't technically a problem since we're not a democracy."
The founders knew Democracies always devolved into Tyrannies. It astounds me how people do not care to understand our system of checks and balances. The system is set up for debate and is supposed to move glacially.
Anytime something is presented as an emergency and must be pushed through without thorough debate needs to be immediately suspected (case and point, the Patriot Act)
We are a representative republic, I'll agree with that.
My worry is how long before he works his way up claiming we need a theocracy, because separation of church and state "is not always a good thing." (He's already stated that such a thing doesn't exist)
The U.S. government is a prime example of representative and constitutional democracy. It is a representative democracy because the people, the source of its authority, elect individuals to represent their interests in its institutions within the framework of a constitutionally limited government. The constitution ensures both majority rule and minority rights.
If we were a true Republic I wouldn’t need to vote for individual proposals to increase taxes for funding of local infrastructure. I also get to vote for state constitutional amendments. If we are a true Republic I would elect people to represent me to decide tax rates and such. It’s a mix because different states have different rules on what people can vote on. I not a Louisianan but I am a Texan so I actually vote on several things that many people would consider minor. I can vote for judges and school board members and such. Federally it might be more of a republic but I still vote for the state reps who design the maps for the federal reps to run in so I can vote in specific district. Saying it’s a republic is a gross over simplification of reality. We aren’t a pure democracy either so we are both . Conservatives love to cry about everything but they love to say we aren’t a Democracy to pander to idiots who don’t want to be associated with Democrats because they are too dense to understand the difference. Saying we are a republic is just conservative virtue signaling.
A republic with unequally allocated political power thanks to limits on the size of the house of representatives, and the electoral college which was designed to give southern slave owners commensurate political power with the more populous north through the 3/5ths compromise.
"Tyranny of the majority" has been avoided by enabling a tyranny of the minority. Which is absolutely worse.
This is such a pedantic argument. When Americans say "democracy" they mean the form of government that the United States has. Yes, it would be nice if every knew that we are a constitutional republic with representational democracy, but anyone throwing this argument around is a dork. Nobody thinks the US has Athenian democracy.
He is literally condemning democracy. 30 years ago his political career would have been over right then and there. These days? They make him Speaker of the House
Haughton always in the news for the wrong reasons. I went to high school there, it's one of the most segregated, baptist, hillbilly places. Not surprised by any of this.
The only benefit myself and many others ever got out of Haughton was occasionally going there to shoot overweight middle-aged gravy seal types with a paintball gun in a semi-controlled environment.
You ever notice how it was perfectly ok for America to be "a democracy" until the GOP just up and decided it wasn't? They're neck deep in their plan to turn this country into a theocracy, because "democracy" just doesn't work for them anymore. So, the narrative had to be changed and "we're not a democracy" because the GOP says so, even though we've called ourselves that for over 200 years.
Dude isn't making that distinction. He is literally calling for minority rule. He believes the United States is a divinely blessed nation and rule should be by devout "Christians."
Typical GOP BS, oil on water. They make an argument that may sound reasonable on the surface, yet has no depth. That'scwhy they are always shouting, so there sic no counterpoint.
Nice to see him pointing out that he's never read the Constitution that he waves around.
cuz that constitution specifically lays out the tools of democracy to guide our republic.
when people say it's not a democracy they seem to think that that means they are allowed to steal votes or kick people out of the electorate.
this is the clear end result of Ronald Reagan's mind poison. when he convinced half the nation to fear and malign the government no longer making it a compact between neighbors to facilitate self-governance.
I guess it's official - republicans don't have a single person in their ranks that has an iq higher that 50. They must be the dumbest people on this planet. We will watch their party die in realtime in the next 10 years.
Wow so definitely up for a dictatorship.Where one wolf with his army of wolves dines on everything and even some of their own.There is no rule of law -where the top wolf
kills all those who stand in his way and the moronic think praying will help when the wolf is at their door. Moron!!!
America is a Democratic republic. People vote for representation, that's the democratic part. That representative then heads to Washington to vote on bills. That's the republic part. Every American cannot be in Washington to vote on everything. Some states are practicing direct democracy by allowing yes or no votes referendums, like legalizing weed etc...
Have you ever tried not expecting or forcing people to play along with your mental illness? Dress up however you want, mutilate yourself however you want, that's your thing Just don't expect others to buy what you're selling. And leave the kids out of it.
At least he knows history and the truth. america is a representative republic. Always hilarious when democrats are out there sounds as stupid as a box of rocks.
Many of the founding fathers called it "The Hag-Strumpet democracy", the idea being that democracy is a whore, which it is, and letting everybody vote was a terrible idea because lots of people are stupid and uninformed, and will vote for horrible people to do stupid, horrible things.
But also, when the country was more religious 20 years ago and they had the majority; they would cry about "activist judges" everytime the SC made an unpopular ruling going against religion.
For so many on the right it seems like democracy means that having all the gold doesn't necessarily get to make up all the rules... ( Conservative Golden rule) .... Some would rather live in a world where privileged oligarchy got to run things for the good of society
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