re: #121 Nerdy Fish

I swear to fucking Christ, if one more clueless moron spouts off with that “republic, not a democracy” bullshit, I’m going to punch something. It’s an excuse to get away with authoritarianism under the guise of “following what the Founders intended.” They didn’t intend on the minority being able to completely stonewall all attempts by the majority to do anything.

In fairness, the Framers/Founders were fairly skeptical of democracy, at least as they understood it at the time. There’s a reason why the only directly elected offices in the federal government were in the House of Representatives. Everything else was sort of an indirect election - you voted for state legislators who then picked Senators and/or Presidential Electors. Of course, the problem with those indirect elections was that the central issue in state legislative races quickly became “who are you going to appoint as senators and electors?” So most legislatures pretty quickly established “advisory” elections for both positions.

But the entire point of a representative republic is that it is based on democratic principles and the consent of the governed.