A real democracy would have to give power to the people. That would mean letting the people decide over important decision like whether or not going to war, whether or not to change a certain law etc.
In other words, there ought to be public votes on every important subject that is likely to have a large impact on the general population.
For that to function there would have to be a huge raise in general education first, so that the population would have the ability to choose wisely.
Public representatives would have to be shielded from bribery and possible corruption. They should have to consult psychologists regularly and be under constant observation by differing public agencies to ensure they act in the best interest of the people, not of a certain lobby.
Instead of being dependent on sales, certain industries with a dangerous potential, such as weapon manufacturers and pharmacy companies, should be owned by the state and funded publicly, so that nobody gets stupid ideas like starting wars in foreign countries or poisoning people’s food to make them sick, just for the sake of boosted sales figures.
All media companies should be under public control constantly, making it impossible for mass media campaigns to significantly influence and manipulate the attitude of the population’s majority.
And many, maaaany more stuff would be necessary for a real democracy to actually work. Changes so radical that they will probably never occur.
And, as always, the disappearance of religion would massively help speeding up the whole process.
I don’t think it’s practical to have referendums on every subject. Representation works fine, if you can be sure your representatives aren’t voting the way their campaign financiers tell them to. That’s why the #1 priority has to be campaign finance reform and lobby reform.
Everything else follows logically from not allowing industries to buy politicians. Forget the State owning industries, just make it impossible for industries to give politicians money or favors. Forget public control of media companies, just (through public financing of elections) ensure that all political candidates can buy the same amount of airtime.
Few comments on this.
First, the poll in question asked if Americans wanted reform this year, period. Not necessarily the reform bill in Congress at the time.
This poll - by the same organization - may clarify what I’m saying: https://www.gallup.com/poll/121997/americans-healthcare-reform-top-takeaways.aspx
It appears that most people want to change the health care system, but didn’t like the changes put forth in this particular bill. Not that it matters, because it passed anyways.
It also doesn’t matter, at least pertaining to McCain, however, because it’s not McCain’s job to fight “for the American people.” It’s McCain’s job to fight for the people of Arizona, his electorate. So, to determine what he should or shouldn’t have done, it would be better to find a poll on what Arizonans think. Considering Arizona is a fairly conservative state, I would guess that they’d be against the congressional bill. I can’t really be screwed to find a poll, but if you’d like to look, feel free.
If you want to talk about how the American republic is supposed to work, it’s worth looking into what the founders originally intended.
One of the things the founders most feared was the tyranny of the majority - that a group would take control of their government and reform it to their own ends. This is why they created a republic instead of a pure democracy: the idea being that while a pure democracy could fall to tyranny by creating a situation where someone could take control of the “unwashed masses” of the public and use it to overpower the government. They felt that a republic was better because the elected representatives - ideally, the best and brightest that the nation could produce - would resist such things. Well, that didn’t work out so well (see: political parties.)
The other thing they were really big on was trying to get things to move slowly when being passed into law - which makes sense. Better one thinks things through instead of heedlessly passing something that turns out to be garbage (see: stimulus.) The way they tried to do this was to create as much gridlock as possible in the congress by having people elected to represent, not the American people as a whole, but a set electorate. A senator was to represent only the people of his state, and a congressman (i.e. member of the House of Representatives) was to represent an even smaller area - his own district. In this way, they would be representing very diverse groups of people, and the idea was that - seeing as the interests the people of a state like Massachusettes would conflict greatly with the interests of the people of a state like South Carolina - it would take a very long time and much negotiation for the two to agree on anything. Thus a bill could only be passed after it was truly good and helped the people of both states.
As can be seen, the idea was not, as we see it today, to pass as much legislation as possible, as quickly as possible. It was to pass very LITTLE legislation, so as to ensure that the legislation was of good quality. If we MUST have government passing legislation, this is the way it ought to be.
exactly…the swedish goverment had plans for nuclear bomb in the 50’s … and the general public hated the idea 'cause of “immediate destruction upon pressing the button”…so they scrapped that. The Finnish government however…they looked like it could be the hallmark of democracy, and all they did to protect the general population was to be ass-fucked by the russians. I’m a Finn. the finnish president Kekkonen invited russian highranking officials to his sauna…and practically made them sign treatis under the threat of 100+ degrees in the sauna, but the finnish ppl never heard of this …so because of this Finland is still “a free country” ehum…small lol…some shit is better to be not told or otherwise tha ppl will go apeshit
EDIT: sorry to revive a dead thread but democracy is important…even if it’s not all that I hoped for
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