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China is not a democracy. You have the rights the government says you have.
by erkose 8y ago
China is not a democracy. You have the rights the government says you have.
- dgzl 8y agoAmerica isn't a democracy, and you have natural born rights protected by the Constitution.
- erkose 8y agoI'm confused. China is not America.
- dgzl 8y agoYou said your phase as if the reason Chinese people don't have natural rights is because they don't live in a democracy, which is why I compared to US. Granted, we're much closer to democracy than them, but in a more strict sense, we're also not a democracy.
- chrisco255 8y agoWe are a republic. We always have been. We've sprinkled in some democratic elements.
- dgzl 8y agoWe have many Democratic elements. We elect our Representatives, many times we elect our own laws, and we even indirectly elect businesses, voting with the wallet. But yes, generally speaking we live in a republic hybrid, for good reason.
- chrisco255 8y agoElecting representatives to manage the government is the defining part of a republic. When citizens are voting on laws themselves, they are practicing actual democracy. That's relatively rare in the U.S. and it also only happens at the state and local level.
- int_19h 8y agoWe are a representative democracy and a republic. Those things aren't mutually exclusive. When people say things like "US is a republic, not a democracy", they're using the archaic definition of "democracy" from 200 years ago. Modern English has a different definition.
- chrisco255 8y agoThe definition of republic has held up. It's still true that we are a republic, even under modern English. Some call it a democratic republic but notice no one calls it a republican democracy.
- int_19h 8y agoWe call it "representative democracy". But it's usually redundant, because all modern democracies are representative. Some have more direct democracy features than others (e.g. Switzerland, or some western US states with their public initiative process), but they're still fundamentally representative.
- chrisco255 8y agoWe don't call this a representative democracy. We're just not a democracy. Majority vote doesn't even determine the president. Even in the house and the Senate, bills have to pass BOTH in order to become law...and remember, Senators don't line up with population figures...they represent whole states. The definition of republic is 2000 years old. It's okay to use it.
- dragonwriter 8y agoThe US is (by Constitutional design) both a representative democracy and democratic, federal republic. “Republic” alone is correct, but overly nonspecific; essentially any government that isn't a hereditary monarchy or similar system where government power isn't private and heritable is a republic. > The definition of republic is 2000 years old. Well, sure, there is a definition that old (older, actually), but the one you seem to be using (the colloquial American one referring specifically to a system of elected representatives) is much newer, peculiar to American non-technical usage, and equivalent to “democratic republic” and very close to “representative democracy” (differing only in that the latter can coexist with constitutional monarchy.)
- golem14 8y agoAnd you don’t even have those in many cases.