[flanked-evergl]

US is in almost no way democratic. There is not enough unity for that. The idea and reasoning behind Democracy was that a people (i.e. a demos) rules itself. But in US there is no longer one people, and it's fracturing even faster and more.

[simonask]

I don't think it's helpful to be flippant in this analysis. The US falls in the category of flawed democracies, together with Botswana, Indonesia, India, Mongolia, Philippines, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and many other countries with, shall we say, significant potential for development.

I don't think anybody who has actually lived under a pre-democratic regime would call the US "no way democratic". There are many democratic aspects of the US, and it has reasonably strong institutions. But it seems that most Americans have not yet realized what category they're in, and think that the US is some kind of front-runner.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index

[flanked-evergl]

That index confuses voting or even liberal democracy with democracy.

A multitude of different peoples voting to rule over the others is not democratic and will never be democratic. Just because the voting process is secure does not make it democratic. What makes it democratic is that a people rules themselves, nothing else.

Zulus ruling over Xhosas is not democratic just because the Zulus give the Xhosas votes because Zulus and Xhosas are two different peoples, and contrary to popular belief, soil is not magical and a Xhosa born on territory ruled by Zulus does not make him a Zulu.

Jews ruling over Palestinians is not democratic just because the Palestinians have votes because Jews and Palestinians are two different peoples, and contrary to popular belief, soil is not magical and a Palestinian born on territory ruled by Jews does not make him a Jew.

Reinventing the dictionary will only confuse you, it won't change reality. Nominalism is not only stupid, it's wrong.

[simonask]

This betrays a simplistic understanding of democracy. In short, its meaning cannot be derived from decomposing its etymology, and your take here is ... certainly unique.

Democracy is not just voting. Actual full democracy is predicated on a fairly large number of fundamental rights, as well as duties. Democracy is antithetical to majority rule, in which the rights of minorities can be ignored or trampled by the majority.

Zulus ruling over Xhosas can never be democratic, because nobody is "ruling over" anybody else in a democracy, no matter their ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, and so on.

Some people call what I'm describing here "liberal" democracy, but that's to distract from the fundamental fact that there is no meaningful definition of democracy that isn't liberal. If we're not free and equal, we cannot participate in democracy, and therefore it isn't democracy.

[flanked-evergl]

> Actual full democracy is predicated on a fairly large number of fundamental rights, as well as duties.

This is an entirely modern idea and really has nothing to do with the concept. It's the typical leftist tendency to appropriate a word that people see as good and then redefine it to be something which the leftist themselves want, and then hope that people still associate it with good.

It's the same thing with the word nation, love, marriage and a multitude of other concepts.

> Zulus ruling over Xhosas can never be democratic, because nobody is "ruling over" anybody else in a democracy, no matter their ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, and so on.

Zulus making laws for Xhosas is most definitely Zulus ruling over Xhosas. Just because the Zulus also give the Xhosas rights to vote does not make them one people or mean that all of a sudden, Xhosas are ruling themselves.

Demos is a synonym for ethnos, and for all of history except maybe the last 80 years people would have understood democracy as self-determination of ethnic groups. The reason why everyone wanted democracy has always been that peoples, i.e. ethnic groups, want to rule themselves, and don't want to be ruled by others.

If Palestinians are 10% of the electorate in a Jewish nation state then they can never write laws for themselves, they can never rule themselves. There can be no democracy for Palestinians in a situation like that.

If Zulus and Xhosas each make up 50% of the electorate then voting is not democratic, it's a battle for one ethnic group to try and rule the other, and the weapon is just voting.

Xhosas don't want to be ruled by Zulus, Zulus and Xhosas don't want to be ruled by Afrikaners, Afrikaners don't want to be ruled by the English, Poles don't want to be ruled by Germans or Russians, Russians don't want to be ruled over by Lithuanians, Jews don't want to be ruled over by Arabs, and Palestinians don't want to be ruled by Jews.

Everyone knows this, even you. Redefining words won't change this. Nominalism won't change this.

Almost invariably, even under the most favourable conditions of rule by another ethnic group, an ethnic group will still want to rule themselves.

«What is the good of telling a community that it has every liberty except the liberty to make laws? The liberty to make laws is what constitutes a free people.»

[simonask]

> This is an entirely modern idea and really has nothing to do with the concept.

It's Voltaire (1694-1778). Depending how you count, The Enlightenment is or isn't part of modernity.

Did you think democracy was not a modern idea? It unequivocally is. The word comes from Ancient Greek, but what they did had almost nothing to do with the current definition of the word.

This focus on ethnic groups that you have is simply just not germane to this discussion. Democracy as it is currently understood does not have anything to do with "ethnic self-determination" (reeks of Blut und Boden - what the hell does it even mean to have an "ethnic self"?).

I don't know if you are inspired by neo-fascist thought or what's going on, but your understanding of democracy is extremely unconventional.

[graemep]

I think its possible to take a stronger position as the roots of the modern idea are definitely pre-modern and not significantly influenced by ancient Greece. Democracy and human rights evolved together. From things such as the Witan and the moots in England ( https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofp... ) and traditional laws that were gradually extended over time (the Magna Carter, for example). Similar histories in other countries too.

> reeks of Blut und Boden

Definitely linked to that sort of thinking. It sounds very inspired by 18th/19th century ideas of race (the ideas based on science that was debunked by the mid 20th century and has been thoroughly disproved by genetics).

The problem with these sorts of arguments is they take little bit of truth and some real examples (there are societies with politics is very tied into ethnic identities, there are groups defined by culture and language that want their own states) and treats them as the norm.

[flanked-evergl]

> It's Voltaire (1694-1778). Depending how you count, The Enlightenment is or isn't part of modernity.

Find me one single definition of Modernity that excludes the 18th century.

[graemep]

That is only an issue if you have sufficiently deep ethnic divisions within a country that people automatically vote on ethnic lines.

[prasadjoglekar]

All the more reason to let states and local governments do more. Rather than a unitary congress or executive that only 1/2 the people (+/-) like.

[9dev]

The only way to fix things would be proportional representation and moving away from the two party system.

[Guvante]

On the one hand giving parties more power sounds a little gross.

On the other hand I don't know a solve for every bill having less than a handful of votes that are bipartisan...

[wffurr]

3 or 5 member multi-member voting districts determined by a geographic clustering algorithm using approval voting.

[Guvante]

Honestly I am surprised that tackling a method of easily collecting approval votes hasn't been done yet.

Like even in the abstract "here is what a voting sheet would look like" that isn't meaningfully more complex.

To be clear I think it is a hard problem and so far is the biggest detractor to alternative voting schemes.

However given all that I agree with your point that it is a meaningful path forward.

[Guvante]

A lot of things are easier at the federal level.

After all the federal budget is so large because you can swap states but you can't get away from the IRS.

[psychoslave]

There is not much example of actual democracy at scale though. Even Switzerland which is often cited as the closest form of actual democratic governance is still not ticking all of the basics of a democratic checklist.

[simonask]

No. The average Democracy Index of Western Europe is 8.05 (full democracy), while the US scores 7.65 (flawed democracy, trending downwards). Just below Poland, just above Botswana.

You might shrug and say "well pobody's nerfect", but the disparity between the American narrative and the reality is actually quite extreme.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index

[subscribed]

I don't think this index holds much value TBF.

Look at the what The Economist is and promotes. I'd have about as much trust in Faux News Independent Press index.

I used to work and live in Poland for almost a decade (I visit friends there often), and I live and work on the UK and to be fair Poland seems far more democratic. Actual independence of the Judiciary, proportional representation Parliament, vacatio legis (as opposed to UK's "hey, that's your new tax code, effective immediately"), growing local democracies (despite 50 years of Soviet occupation, thanks to the betrayal from the West).

[psychoslave]

Is the index measuring how wealth distribution minimize disparity? How policies debates are driven by spontaneous needs from general public, and how solutions are proposed and refined through open to everyone debates, how programs (not some random face) are voted be it as whole or per compatible submodules? How imperative mandate are dully applicated and how any tentative of corruption is punished with several years of being forbidded of taking any mandate?

[simonask]

Their methodology is freely available, you can easily find the answers to those questions.

[holoduke]

That index is a product of the institute itself. Funded by non democratic values. Worthless junk / progoganda piece if you ask me.

[flawn]

Then check V-Dem, you might argue they're flawed as well but then I'd suggest you to provide counterexamples for why the US should be considered a functioning democracy, and is not on the way to a fully authoritarian state.

[simonask]

It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely better than this lazy dismissal.