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Comment by petermcneeley | Hacker News Reader

The united states does not promote democracy for the simple reason that the US is not a democracy and is foundationally opposed to demos.

The united states is a republic whos purpose (in contrast) is "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. "

As for externally the US does not have a track recorded of democracy promotion. My primary source is of course Noam chomsky but you can find research on this pretty much everywhere.

"While the U.S. claims to have a tradition of “promoting democracy” in Latin America, justification for U.S. intervention has been questionable and inconsistent. U.S. support for Latin American regimes has coincided with favorable economic policies rather than with the strength of democracy within a country"

https://commons.emich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1147&c...

EDIT: clarification.

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> The united states is a republic whos purpose is "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. "

It's true that James Madison was deeply concerned with a tyranny of the majority supplanting core constitutional rights, a flaw in democracy first identified by Aristotle.

> In a letter to Thomas Jefferson in October 1788 James Madison expresses lukewarm support for the idea of a bill of rights since “repeated violations of these parchment barriers have been committed by overbearing majorities in every State.”

> [...]

> He continues to believe that the real threat to liberty will come from “the majority of the Community” and not from “acts of Government”.

To say that the United State's purpose is to protect the minority is way off base. After all, the country was born as an opposition to the idea of people not being represented by its government and instead at the behest of a very small minority of royalty and aristocrats.

Chomsky covers your exact comment quite thoroughly here https://youtu.be/6a1yf_PA5Bs?t=165

So instead of summarizing it and putting it into the context of this discussion and how it might refute my point, you're just going to link to it as though to say "look Chompsky said something about this therefore I'm right"?

Im not "right" and Im not refuting your "point". This isnt reddit. This is HN on a Saturday; a single comment can result in a 20 min video from 1997 from some old man comparing the views of people that have been dead for hundreds of years.

Your comment was "Chomsky covers your exact comment quite thoroughly here." Is it really that far a reach for someone to see the attached video as a low effort stand-in for their argument given that comment?

If you just wanted to post a Chomsky interview video, I of course have no issue with that.

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