Quote Originally Posted by daihashi
This is just a pet peeve of mine but why do people always say "if we lived in a true democracy".

This would be ok to say if we our country and government was built on a system of democracy but fact is that we're a republic.

Sorry... off topic.
sorry that im continuing an off topic post, i really am but this is a very very very good point he made! till just about this moment, i had the wrong perception and upon some google hits, i figured daihashi is correct

Are we a republic or a democracy?

and i quote

Chief Justice John Marshall observed, "Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."
The framers gave us a Constitution that is replete with undemocratic mechanisms. One that has come in for recent criticism and calls for its elimination is the Electoral College. In their wisdom, the framers gave us the Electoral College so that in presidential elections large, heavily populated states couldn't democratically run roughshod over small, sparsely populated states.

Here's my question: Do Americans share the republican values laid out by our founders, and is it simply a matter of our being unschooled about the differences between a republic and a democracy? Or is it a matter of preference and we now want the kind of tyranny feared by the founders where Congress can do anything it can muster a majority vote to do? I fear it's the latter.
Thank you for tippin me off about something that I was totally wrong about.

this is the wrong topic to discuss this, but now i have a ton of new questions and topics of debates that i must find partners and answers to!

like: Why in the world are we then exporting "democracy" (something we totally are not) by means of military (or any other means we use)?

Please DO NOT answer to this question here, i think i will add a thread later on if i feel like debating it around here. but this is just an example of what is goin on in my mind right now.

again I apologize to the OP for thread hijack and I have no intentions of making this subject go any further on this thread, count this post as a note in parenthesis!