Rick,
I concede that the US of A is not a pure democracy. If you use the
definition of pure democracy, it is majority rule. What we have in the US a
form of democracy, that why I said "loosely." We also have a document to
balance it, our Constitution, along with the all the amendments, which
guarantees certain rights to every citizen of this nation. Democracy is
also defined as a system of government in which supreme power is vested in
the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of
representation usually involving periodically held free election. The
Constitution spells out how our President, Senators, and Congressional
Representatives are to be elected, who is eligible to hold those offices
and the term for each. Because of this, we are a republic, a nation
governed by a chief of state (in modern times usually a president) who is
not a monarch and supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to
vote and is exercised by elected officials and representatives responsible
to them and governing according to law. Therefore, I repeat, and maintain,
we in the United States, are a democratic representative republic. Several
states refused to ratify the original Constitution until the first ten
Amendments, The Bill of Rights, was added to the existing document. Let's
not go there as that will really take off on a tangent though. In
conclusion, let me add this as an example. In a pure democracy if the
majority of the people in this land decided all men had to wear a beard
which had to be longer then your hand when clenched in your fist. If it be
too short, than said man must be jailed until his beard grows out to a
acceptable length. That would be the law of the land and we would have to
abide by it. Sound familiar? It should, it was one of the rules decreed by
the ruling body of Afghanistan, the Taliban.
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