What's wrong with American democracy and how can it be fixed?

uhuhuhuhuh.

plato is overrated.

#dealwithit

and when we say "tyranny" its not what ancient greeks had in mind. the word in itself is not negative and wasnt meant to be that way. plato hated democracy, and he advocated (as you said correctly) an aristocracy which is more based on gene-based creation of "good leaders" and only in this case hereditary. he didnt propose a "normal" aristocracy in our meaning of the word, its usually just perceived like that because he said that wisdom cannot evolve from a working class (obviously a very elitist thing to say).

plato, especially his politics are overrated. he effectively tried to recreate ancient sparta with a few minor tweaks here and there (arts / culture training instead of military drill). when i read his politeia i seriously thought whats up with that?
 
Gotta call you on this one Ben because this is the biggest party line pail of shit.

One of the first of these absurd organizations was Moveon.org which was created to get Bill Clinton past the political hurdle when Monica Lewinsky admitted the Bill liked to shove his cigars in her vag before smoking them.

The Democrats have been using these 501-c3 organizations for years very effectively. They only started bitching about them when the Republicans started using them too.

So, if you want to eliminate them for both sides so that neither side has an advantage, I am all for that. But, if the big bad Republican money was so powerful, why did Romney lose?

The biggest problem with American Democracy is that our government is way too big, and too wasteful. IRS spends 50 mill on parties and now Obama is going to spend 100 million on a safari trip to Africa with the fam. This while we can't afford to pay firefighters.

Wise up folks. A huge government is just hugely dysfunctional. Ironically, that is now the excuse that the administration is using for all of these scandals. "How can we be responsible for watching all of these people who work for government agencies?" "Our solution is to hire another 90,000 government employees to oversee these employees, that fucked up in the first place." Do you honestly believe that works?
 
These have zero influence on American citizens. It would be just as worthwhile to make up your own party and promote it locally. You'd probably have better luck than most of these groups
 
Oh no I agree, they should all be gone. 501-c3 is BS plain and simple.

We need either publicly funded elections, or anyone can spend what they want, but it all has to be disclosed and easily accessible to the general public. One or the other. Instead we have neither.
 
It would be nice if we could just have an truly non-partisan fact checking of the messages themselves. If an attack add is verifiably false, the people behind it should be slapped with huge fines.

The problem is that you are more likely to encounter a pink unicorn than a unbiased fact checking org.

The real problem with our government is that recent polls show that half the country believes that the president lies like a dog terd on a Persian rug. Germany, the European country with the strongest economy, has formally stated that Obama is a huge disappointment, and Russia and China don't take him seriously. The U.S. has gone from the strongest nation on earth to a joke in less than 5 years. Good luck blaming George Bush for this.
 
But I dont like the whole tax exempt-ness of those groups in the first place. Why should they be tax exempt? Political ad's are not bettering the community, whether they are left, right, or center.

Fact checking also does no good since most of America is too lazy to do so.

Politics has never really been honest, but the money in it allows it to be even shadier than usual these days.
 
Forgot to mention that the overwhelming majority of conservative groups that were targeted are not responsible for political adds. Some of them were pro-life groups, some were groups that were attempting to educate people about the constitution. You may not agree with them politically, but they have the same right to exist as planned parenthood or any other non-profit.

Here's an example of how things have changed for the worse. I think most people in this country believe as I do that the KKK is a horrible group. Still, the police had to protect them and ensure their right to free speech as long as they weren't breaking any laws. They have the right to speak and we all have the right to not listen or we are also within our rights to tel them to fuck off. We didn't hit them tons of audits or have SWAT raid them, without probable cause that they had committed a crime.

We are going to learn in the next few weeks and months that the Whitehouse instructed the IRS to discriminate against conservative groups. We are going to find that they authorized illegal surveillance of investigative reporters from AP, CBS, FOX and probably others too.

I hope you guys are pissed about this. This is setting an extremely dangerous precedent. Even if you are still in love with Obama, you have to be concerned that Republicans might use these same strong arm tactics on liberal groups when the political landscape changes. Bringing the weight of the government down on people or organizations, just because you don't like their politics or think they are going to say something bad about your policies is wrong and pretty terrifying.
 
the electoral college is completely fucked anddd everyone who runs sucks plus the majority of the population is slightly or fully retarded
 
I was very naive back then, the only thing I personally believe as of right now is that Scott Vollmer was one of the shooters, children died and that is all.
 
I have posted way to much in this thread, but felt it was necessary to leave this here. I would vote for Elbert for president without hesitation.

 
not saying he impacted western thinking at least up until the renaissance (when aristotle became the "main" philosopher) like noone else.

however he is regularly treated with too much respect and people dont even try to understand him.

 
None of it matters, the US is going to continue in it's steady decline no matter who is in power, just with a much steeper decline depending on who is in power. It'll look like a 3rd world country in a couple of decades or so.
 
i.e. a legislative gridlock (just giving you some key phrases you can expand on OP).

A few more points:

- There is a severe lack of participatory democracy due to federal elections only attracting just over 50% of voters, which means, imo, the people who don't vote feel disenfranchised. It should be a legal obligation for the entire populace to register to vote, like here in NZ.

3 ways you could immediately increase democracy in America:

1) Vastly reduce the electoral period to, say, 3 months. The American federal election is a three ring circus; an electoral beauty contest at best. Not only does performing to a crowd and distracting society from focusing on real issues consume literally half of an electorates term, creating legislation and implementing it becomes far tougher, due to time constraints.

2) There should be a maximum amount any one electoral candidate is allowed to spend during their campaign.

3) The power of lobbyists should be greatly diminished, and they shouldn't be allowed to physically set foot on Capital Hill.
 
There are a bunch of problems that contribute to the struggle of the American Democracy.

First off the, just like everyone else has said, the "two party system" has major issues. People have become to defined by the party that they associate themselves with. Therefore, reform policies, new legislature, and even getting rid of old and useless laws has become such a headache because the Republicans and Democrats are split so clearly it's difficult to compromise.

Also, TECHNICALLY, the U.S. is not a true democracy. If it was the American people should be able to vote on every issue every single time. Instead, we are a republic meaning we elect people to do that for us.

This leads into the next issue, today unlike back when the Constitution was first written any politician who wants even a small chance at being elected for any major government position has to be wealthy. Since this limits the perspective candidates by such a large amount it restrains the political potential of the American people, this also makes politicians feel "elite", leading to the corrupt politics of today.

Last, the American people in general are extremely poorly educated on whats going on within our country. If we want to see an improvement within our political system it has to start with people believing they can change things from the ground up, and as of right now most people just don't care enough to do anything substantial.
 
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.”

- Alexis de Tocqueville

I suggest you read "On Democracy in America"
 
It fucking pisses me off when Republicans try to use their name to sound benevolent. The Republican Party of the 1800s was the more liberal party, and thus shouldn't be associated with today's Republican Party only due to name.
 
I was listening to Rush and he played parts of this video. I'll admit I got choked up. If only we had more politicians like that man.
 
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