A Republic or a Democracy?

MEDICARE FROM BIRTH TO DEATH
There is no need to establish a new government authority to handle health insurance,
nor should any new agency be developed.
MEDICARE is already the National Health Insurance and should be issued at birth with SS#’s.
To pay for this:
All 10 million + government employees have their taxpayer funded health benefits
transferred to MEDICARE, which becomes the National Health Insurance Carrier.
An average payment of $12,000. – $30,000. is now being paid per year per person
to insure government employees at all levels with taxpayer money going to private
carriers.

This should be illegal. We already have a National Health Plan. Why are we allowing
all that money to be paid to private health insurance companies? We are talking about
$20,000,000,000 ( 20 Billion) would be injected immediately into our MEDICARE system,
paying for all uninsured citizens to be on MEDICARE as well. The only administrative thing
that needs to be done is to change the current age restriction backward to birth. That can be
effected with a stroke of a legislative pen.
Existing commercial insurance companies can continue to insure all the major
corporations. Employees who receive health benefits in the private sector may
use either their MEDICARE or the plan purchased by their employer.

how typical that the NYTimes would give credence to a passage by a cliche liberal deconstructionist like Akhil Reed Amar once a republican form of governance becomes “inconvenient”.

the republic safeguards everyone from ‘mob’ rule.

I’ve been watching the HBO series, Rome, and highly recommend it to anyone who has lost faith in American democracy and parliamentary procedure. We can never forget the lessons the Founders of of the United States learned by studying the failures of classical antiquity, (the Roman and Greek systems of governance). we needs checks on power.

it is clear a minority of Americans favor instituting an Obama single-payer health plan. If a filibuster can protect us and our country from going broke, then so be it.

Excellent comments from Mr. Schiff, with nothing more to be said!

The US system seems essentially a two-party system.

As a system of democracy it is closer to the one-party system we knew from Russia than any European democracy. I know this is a provocative comment in the ears of most American´s, but consider this;

Most European countries have more than a dussin parties representing their citizens in their legislative. This gives a voice to people of many differing points of view.

In the US, the system is more or less relegated to voting for either the Democratic or the Republican party. Yes, it is possible to elect outsiders, but in all practicallity this doesn´t happen. The system have long ago been wired in a way where money dictates the potential winners and losers of the elections. The money flows into only those two parties. Ergo its a two-party system. The fix is in. Who can imagine either of the two controlling parties in the US changing the laws to equal the playing field. Its never going to happen.

And consider this; does the horrifically low voter turnouts for the US elections reflect this fact? I believe so. When there are essentially only two points of view to vote between, the democratic system doesn´t rellay demand any active thinking by the voters. There are not, like in Europe a multitude of perspectives that requires analysis and participation by its citizens. The US system makes the voters lazy and complacent.

In several democracies around the world, it takes only a couple of years from the forming of a new way of thinking, for that to constitute itself into a new party that can find its way to the voters and become elected to some kind of position of power or at least vocal platform.

I sometime smile when I hear the US preaching democracy around the world. Democracy is an idea you always have to work on. It should not be boiled down to two opposing points of view. It should never be set in a way that disenfranchises the voters.

I would hope the US one day could be a country where the politicians in Washington represents perhaps five or ten parties with each their own perspective and thus forces the voters to reflect upon the nuances of perspective.

“Of course the Senate is undemocratic,” said a Times reader, “we live in a republic not a democracy.”

On the contrary the U.S. does not have to be just a republic, or just a democracy. According to a Grade 10 Civics teacher I had, “Democracy isn’t perfect, but it’s the best system we have”. Similarly, there is room for improvement, but improvement often means change. Can the United States of America be a Democratic Republic? Maybe, but I think it is currently at a point in history where it’s actions will redefine the labels we categorize systems with for a new generation.

It seems that the US originally was envisioned both as a democracy in the make-up of the House of Representatives and as a republic in the original make-up of the Senate (which was chosen by state legislatures, not by direct vote; although I suppose that a person could argue that the state legislatures all were democratically elected….). It’s not clear that these two forms of government are mutually exclusive, which might explain some of the confusion….

Well lets put this in one scenario:

An Alien ship or ships arrive to negotiate a treaty but there are so many nations on Earth and United Nations is powerless agency to decide anything so Alien command demands that Earth’s government abandon their constitutions, institutions and government structures to form singular structure to negotiate this treaty otherwise everyone of them will be eliminated one by one (don’t bother firing nuclear weapons as we will shush them before they can reach us) . Now option left to earthlings is to draft a government structure that represents the entire planet in singular form to represent humanity as single civilization.

This scenario whenever it occurs bound test our constitutions, institutions, structures and values in its ultimate forms.

Better get ready to learn, un-learn and re-learn to survive.

This country was founded on the desire to become a democracy, but 250 years later it is still a republic. Our elected leaders make the decisions and the majority of Americans don’t participate in the system and everyone is not equal, therefore, America has yet to become a democracy. Democracy will most likely never be achieved in America, the closest thing to democracy in the world are the European socialist systems. It still holds as an idea with layers and many facets. As long as America keeps the electoral college system in tact, we are not a democracy.
Upon the nation’s founding, the federalists and founding fathers clearly were in the 1 percent minority that was governing the small nation and making decisions, because they were the educated, elite. To some extent that remains true today. It would have been the greatest lie known to man to call this country a democracy in an era of slavery and white male rule.

Numerous compromises were made in forging this nation, many of them evil, suboptimal, and obsolete. Tallying “three-fifths of a man” was one. Setting up the “repubocracy” chimaera was another.

The mere fact that the fillibuster exists is enough to demonstrate that the senateitself has become irrelevant. The People of the United States want the public option. They will not let themselves be defied by the smug, venal, parvenue kleptocrats in our so-called assembly of the oldest and wisest. Their bloated irrelevance will soon be found littering the midden-heap of history.

Athens and Sparta were democracies in the true sense of the word.
The United States has an elected form of government, hence by definition and also in practice it is a republic.

umm. it is a republic. he cites founding fathers who insisted that the new government be “democratic,” but the fact of slavery and the Senate’s indirect elections for 150 years makes that a little hard to swallow. if you think people like george hearst were elected to the senate democratically, then I’d have a few questions for you. the truth is that the country has become more and more democratic even though it has always been a republic. just because a few founding fathers believed the country to be a democracy doesn’t mean that they established one. They didn’t. But they gave us the inspiration and the legal means to evolve into one.

I recall that when AZ became a state, the Governor, W.P. Hunt, was a Democrat. He advocated for the right to initiate a bill before the people, those divisive tools of manipulators over land rights: lotteries, marriage, and obscure leeway for business disguised as aids to society. We got rid of those pay-day loan folks, or they have to go by July of next year. But we have also introduced a lot of garbage. To each his opinion, and the right to end around the legislature. Imagine such a thing on the national level with the venom and spit thrown around vs intelligent debate by folks pretending to give us the news.

I don’t trust anyone these days, especially folks who tell me what I want to hear. But things have become more insane that I can remember. Is it just because I care about the wars, the financial crisis, the health insurance crisis, and the education crisis that I’m aware of all the nonsense out there? Or is it the horrible legacy of our previous mistakes that make me more terrified for our nation’s future than I ever have been?

Don’t worry, Pubbies and Finance can’t frighten me or move me with their propaganda. That doesn’t scare me. It’s what folks who move on their orders are capable of doing.

#20
I didn’t know that people could reach this level of moronity.