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"Curtis L. Russell" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news[email protected]
> On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 20:31:37 GMT, "Mark Jones"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
>> by the citizens. To be a democracy would mean that we
>> are allowed to directly vote on federal issues. Instead, we
>> have elected people do the voting for us.
That's nonsense. Democracy means "rule of the people". There's nothing
inherent in that notion that says the entire people must directly
participate in decision making. That's why we differentiate between
participatory democracies and representative democracies.
> You are arguing two different sets of definitions. Yours matches
> pretty much what you get when discussing the two in Political Science
> 101 (contrary to Muttley's earlier comments). OTOH, his definitions
> are pretty much from the dictionary for commonly accepted definitions
> of the words, which removes nuance on one hand (so he can combine
> dictatorships and republics) and origins on the other.
The People's Republic of China is not a democracy. The constitutional
monarchy of Australia is a democracy. Did your political science lecturers
manage to cope with those two facts or did they simply avoid them as being
inconvenient?
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news[email protected]
> On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 20:31:37 GMT, "Mark Jones"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
>> by the citizens. To be a democracy would mean that we
>> are allowed to directly vote on federal issues. Instead, we
>> have elected people do the voting for us.
That's nonsense. Democracy means "rule of the people". There's nothing
inherent in that notion that says the entire people must directly
participate in decision making. That's why we differentiate between
participatory democracies and representative democracies.
> You are arguing two different sets of definitions. Yours matches
> pretty much what you get when discussing the two in Political Science
> 101 (contrary to Muttley's earlier comments). OTOH, his definitions
> are pretty much from the dictionary for commonly accepted definitions
> of the words, which removes nuance on one hand (so he can combine
> dictatorships and republics) and origins on the other.
The People's Republic of China is not a democracy. The constitutional
monarchy of Australia is a democracy. Did your political science lecturers
manage to cope with those two facts or did they simply avoid them as being
inconvenient?
--
A: Top-posters.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet?