American Political System: Difference between revisions
Added wikilink
(Replaced imported image with free alternative from Wikimedia Commons) |
(Added wikilink) |
||
Line 10:
There is a feeling among some Americans that there may be a reality distortion field of some sort that follows the outer edge of the Capital Beltway (a highway that circles DC). Attempts to prove this fail to obtain federal funding.
Since the United States is a republic, you will occasionally find people trying to tell you that the United States "is not a democracy." This may or may not be true, since a republic and a democracy are technically two different forms of government, but a republic can still use democratic processes. So ask the person doing the claiming what he means before nodding sagely. The essential issue here is that the founders thought direct democracy (after the fashion of, say, [[Ancient Greece|ancient Athens]]) was a generally bad idea; for example, [[Thomas Jefferson]] claimed "''A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.''" More colloquially, "Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on dinner."
When people of other nations are trying to understand the rather odd political behavior of the USA, they would do well to remember that the United States is literally just that: fifty individual states, each with their own constitution, all under the aegis of a central federal government. The relationship between the federal government and the state governments can get contentious, to the point that there [[The American Civil War|was a civil war about it]].
| |||