The United States is a constitutional Republic. It is not a Democracy. Benjamin Franklin has been credited with the following quote: "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote." When rights are determined by the majority, only the majority have rights. Why should a plethora of Californians have the right to elect a president who wants to restrict the gun rights of a few West Virginians? The electoral college protects the minority of U.S citizens. Congress has a Senate chamber for the same reason. The House of Representatives (a.k.a. the lower house) represents the nation's populace but the more powerful Senate (a.k.a. the upper house) does not.
Well said.
Why SHOULD a large number of Californians have the right to elect a president?
What a wonderful bit of illusion you created there. Actually, "Californians" don't have that right and wouldn't if the EC were gone. If the EC were eliminated or rendered moot, the president would be elected by the people of the US.
So, answer me this:
Why SHOULD a few Montanans have more say in who will be president than people who live in California?
Regarding your first sentence, you are confused by simple words. This is a Constitutional Republic and the Constitution specifically lays out the rules by which the public elects representatives into offices of the government. So, we are not a direct democracy, we are a representative democracy. In any case, you spout bullshit produced in the fields of small states that want to disenfranchise people. Republicans do not want democracy. Clearly, through the leader they follow, they do not want a democracy of any description. They want a king.
Oh and your propaganda fluff is very nicely destroyed in this article:
Enabling sustained minority rule at the national level is not a feature of our constitutional design, but a perversion of it.
www.theatlantic.com
‘America Is a Republic, Not a Democracy’ Is a Dangerous—And Wrong—Argument
Enabling sustained minority rule at the national level is not a feature of our constitutional design, but a perversion of it.
Dependent on a minority of the population to hold national power, Republicans such as Senator Mike Lee of Utah have taken to reminding the public that “we’re not a democracy.” It is quaint that so many Republicans, embracing a president who routinely tramples constitutional norms, have suddenly found their voice in pointing out that, formally, the country is a republic. There is some truth to this insistence. But it is mostly disingenuous. The Constitution was meant to foster a complex form of majority rule, not enable minority rule.
The following is an indictment of the Republican Party's intent to subvert our Representative Democracy and as you say rule through a Republic:
If the polls are any indication, more Americans may vote for Vice President Biden than have ever voted for a presidential candidate, and he could still lose the presidency. In the past, losing the popular vote while winning the Electoral College was rare. Given current trends, minority rule could become routine. Many Republicans are actively embracing this position with the insistence that we are, after all, a republic, not a democracy.
They have also dispensed with the notion of building democratic majorities to govern, making no effort on health care, immigration, or a crucial second round of economic relief in the face of COVID-19. Instead, revealing contempt for the democratic norms they insisted on when President Barack Obama sought to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat, Republicans in the Senate have brazenly wielded their power to entrench a Republican majority on the Supreme Court by rushing to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The Senate Judiciary Committee vote to approve Barrett also illuminates the disparity in popular representation: The 12 Republican senators who voted to approve of Barrett’s nomination represented 9 million fewer people than the 10 Democratic senators who chose not to vote. Similarly, the 52 Republican senators who voted to confirm Barrett represented 17 million fewer people than the 48 senators who voted against her. And the Court Barrett is joining, made up of six Republican appointees (half of whom were appointed by a president who lost the popular vote) to three Democratic appointees, has been quite skeptical of voting rights—a severe blow to the “democracy” part of a democratic republic. In 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder, the Court struck down a section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that allowed the federal government to preempt changes in voting regulations from states with a history of racial discrimination.
I can understand why Republicans don't want a Democracy of any type, including the Representative Democracy that we currently have. They don't represent the future, they represent the past. They have no new ideas, they only cling to the myth of an America that never was. As in "Make America Great Again". America wasn't great for everybody. I want an America that is great for everybody. I want a better future, not a shitty past.
So I vote for and by my actions work to sustain the democracy your kind of people would take away from us. And take away our future.
