Please. Please stop. Lose the language. Refrain from displaying your ignorance by understanding before you speak. Free speech is a right, but reckless use of speech is a personal hazard.
Let’s face it, we are all guilty of speaking without knowledge. The tongue is a loose canon. It often engages before the brain has time to give it direction. I’m guilty, even here, where I have time to think out and measure my thoughts.
But this one has been going on for years. Media pundits, politicians, and the average American perpetuate the lie over and over and over.
The United States is not a Democracy. Yet that term is used to describe us by even those who govern us, people who should know better. I know, I’ve ranted about this before, but it is an issue that needs to be addressed, just as often as the lie is perpetuated. It is the only way to clean it from our country conversation, and discourse.
Our Founders, whether you are in the camp that insists on vilifying them or the camp that wishes to inflate them to Deity, wisely chose not to be a Democracy. A democracy is governed by the will of the populace – mob rule. They determined that the best government was one which held interest for the serious governing of the country’s business, which was why Senators were previously selected differently than they are now, and by a Representative House composed of members which were elected by the people of each state. Remember, when the country was formed, one of the biggest concerns was that a Union of the states would be overpowered by a Federal Government, which has become an issue we face today.
Aside from creating a Republic rather than a Democracy, they attempted to further protect us from ourselves by creating an Electoral College system of voting. This system gives each state electors, which determine the winner of our Presidential race. Without our electoral college, our country would be ruled by the largest cities in the nation. Look at a map of the nation after the recent election:
Now here is a map of Political Counties:
If it weren’t for our electoral college, all of our elections would be decided by a few of those blue blotches on the map, the largest population centers of the nation. Now, if you are a Democrat, you might be excited by that, unless your cities started having a mass exodus as has been taking place over the past few years. Our Founders believed that our elections should be decided by the country as a whole, rather than by mob rule of our large cities or heavily populated areas.
There has been much use of the words Dictator, Fascist, and Tyrant in the recent election. Democracies most often fall or devolve to these types of government. A strong Republic never will. We must elect representatives for President, for the US Congress, for State Congress, and for local governments who actually represent us. We have to get out of mindlessly re-electing people just because we’ve become familiar with their name, because they’ve held office for a long time, or because they represent a party. Think about whether or not they are representing you or simply holding an office. We have members of congress who are only about maintaining their job, or supporting their party, and have forgotten that their responsibility is to represent those by whom they were elected.
So, please, let’s stop calling ourselves a Democracy, ruled by the heartlessness of mob rule, forgetting and discarding the least of us, in favor of the most of us. We need to be proud of the fact that we are a Republic, and we seek to find fairness for all. And, we must stop the idea and conversations which proclaim that a popular vote would be a better way to elect a President than the Electoral College, which helps to ensure we all have a say.
