Democracy = Socialism? Conservative Movement endgame in sight.

[Cain]

Fuck it.  I don't even know why I bother posting any more.

[Doktor Howl]

Fuck it.  I don't even know why I bother posting any more.

For those of us who make an effort to understand you without feeling the need to pick?

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I liked this thread until it became a "let's complain about enki" thread. If you continue in that vein, I promise not to post responses.

[Doktor Howl]

I liked this thread until it became a "let's complain about enki" thread. If you continue in that vein, I promise not to post responses.

Music to my ears, shitneck.  You wreck everything you touch here.

[Cain]

I liked this thread until it became a "let's complain about enki" thread. If you continue in that vein, I promise not to post responses.

So you'll only continue to attempt to jack this thread once it goes back on topic?  Oh, I got it alright.

You and me.  We're going to have a lot of fun from now on. 

[the last yatto]

WHAT?
Its not like Rome was built in a day

[Brotep]

For fucks sake Enki, I wrote those 6 sentences in my OP precisely so I wouldn't have to put up with pedantry from idiots looking to score cheap points by going "BUT TEH TEABAGGERS R TECHNICALLY CORRECT!"  Yes, I know they are, but they're using their technically correct viewpoint to push a dangerous fallacy as part of a deeply authoritarian agenda.

This.

"We all have our own ideas of politics. That's fine," Schnell said. "What was not fine is that I think this district is putting too much emphasis on politicizing and not enough on academics.

The most disturbing thing about this is how perfectly reasonable it sounds. Except that the US. already. IS. a. democratic. republic.

Parents also were troubled by other works by the essay's author, William P. Meyers, including "Vampires or Gods," a satire about the possibility that Jesus and other deities were really vampires.

Just so we know who we're dealing with here   

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I liked this thread until it became a "let's complain about enki" thread. If you continue in that vein, I promise not to post responses.

You mean, you liked this thread as long as you ignored the OP were able to use it as a platform from which to pretend that everyone else is ignorant of the pedantic, irrelevant points you desired to spout in order to make yourself feel clever.

Once again, the Kruger-Dunning effect rears its head, this time accompanied by the kind of dreary condescention that can only come from someone who is not only unaware that they are incompetent, but is smugly secure in a sense that everyone else is actually less competent than they are.

Try actually reading and understanding the OP.

[LMNO]

For what it's worth, I am always interested in what Cain has to say about politics (among other things, but I'll stick to the point), especially about the kinds of strategic moves one side is making, and how something innocuous sounding as apparent pedantry can be masking a deeper intention of rebranding.

That is, in order to change the meaning of the word "democracy" (to mean "socialist"), they are stressing the pedantic classification of our political system.

By pretending towards precision, they mean to skew definitions.  You have to admit, it's pretty clever.

[Cainad (dec.)]

For fucks sake Enki, I wrote those 6 sentences in my OP precisely so I wouldn't have to put up with pedantry from idiots looking to score cheap points by going "BUT TEH TEABAGGERS R TECHNICALLY CORRECT!"  Yes, I know they are, but they're using their technically correct viewpoint to push a dangerous fallacy as part of a deeply authoritarian agenda.

One that only functions by association with another totally incorrect conflation. If the proper denotations were used all around, there wouldn't be much of a problem, would there?

You just implied that the Solution™ to all of this is if everyone involved was properly educated and intellectually honest.

And by "everyone involved," we're talking about human beings.

Go sit in the corner and think about what you've done.

[johnnybrainwash]

OK, if there's going to be any pedantry in this thread, it's gonna be by your Papa Brainwash, and it's going to have a point other than showing off.

First of all, "republic" has more than one possible meaning, and "democracy"? Forget about it. People use it for whatever the hell they want. So when we talk about this, let's not pretend we have the authority to tell everyone else exactly how they're allowed to use them.

Republic has taken on the meaning of representative democracy through years of casual usage. But to look at its historical meaning, and the one that people have in mind when they demand a republic, it's really something quite different. It means that the affairs of state are "res publica", a public affair. That public may be narrowly defined as a small oligarchy or broadly defined as all adult citizens, but the essence is that it's not a personal affair- not a king or an emperor or the like.

TL;DR: Republic = No More Kings!

Everything from here to the next TLDR is a bunch of wank and may be safely skipped:

A republic doesn't have to be a democracy- lots of Italian city-states were ruled by merchants and suchlike, with no input from "the people".

A democracy doesn't have to be a republic- the UK is certainly a liberal democracy, but it has a Queen who still serves as head of state. It's actually against the law to advocate a republic.

At the time of the Constitution, "democracy" was still a dirty word in many circles, including the Founding Fathers. They thought that suffrage should be limited to those who had a certain type of stake in the new republic, generally defined by race, gender and the ownership of property. Letting the rabble vote would be irresponsible, because they had nothing to lose by voting for bread and circuses.

It only took until Andrew Jackson to establish that we would be a democratic republic. This version of democracy was still pretty narrow compared to today, but it established a direction that we would continue in until at least 1964- broadening suffrage first to all adult white men, and eventually to all adults 18 and over.

It's quite possible to say that the founding fathers didn't mean us to be a democracy, but in order to hold that position today, you have to undo bedrock American principles and 200 years of history. More specifically, you need to tell me who's going to lose the vote. Because if we're not a democracy, why are all these people voting?

If teabaggers are going to insist that we're a republic and not a democracy, then let's call them on it.  Whose vote are they going to take away? More importantly, which class of oligarchs would they like to put in charge? Anyone who tries the republic-not-a-democracy line should be challenged on these questions. I don't expect them to have good answers, because my experience is that this argument is typically used by people who are more contrarian than they are informed. But it would be lots of fun to watch them try to explain why they don't support democracy.

TL;DR: WHY DO YOU HATE DEMOCRACY, TEABAGGER?

The no-democracy thing won't keep the teabaggers from voting- they don't expect themselves to be the ones excluded. But it is a good way to make them look bad and drag them further down.

[LMNO]

I suspect you posted this in the wrong thread.


Props to the Howl.

[Doktor Howl]

OK, if there's going to be any pedantry in this thread, it's gonna be by your Papa Brainwash,

Dirty Old Uncle Dok agrees with this assbaggery.

[johnnybrainwash]

Yeah, I was just noticing that.

[Doktor Howl]

Yeah, I was just noticing that.

Hang on...