I don't think you aren't an American if you aren't a supporter of democracy, per se, but I do think the principle is a fairly core tenet of what it is, or at least is supposed to be, to be "American". I would be unsurprised if other people said you were un-American for feeling this way.
The Founders took great pains to LIMIT the amount of democracy in our system, because they understood the problems with democracy. The house of Representatives was the only democratically elected part of the government for a reason. We ignored them at our own peril..
This is democracy. You cannot have self-governance without democracy. If not everyone is enfranchised, not everyone has self-governance. You can quibble about representative democracy, but it's still democracy at its core.
Now yes, as the other poster mentions, many of the tenets of the founders' approach to representative democracy were intended to limit political participation by people who were not white, male, and landowners. Thankfully, many of those policies [edit: have since been changed].
> The house of Representatives was the only democratically elected part of the government for a reason. We ignored them at our own peril..
Keep in mind that by the definition you're using here, there's a solid argument to make that neither the US senate nor the US presidential elections are "democratic" today due to the inherent undemocratic nature of the electoral college and differing vote values of residents of different states. So this is still the case, and perhaps you've misidentified the problem.
(I always wonder why we deify a bunch of mostly 30 year olds from 270 years ago as though they had the perfect ideas about government and we haven't learned anything in the intervening centuries)
How exactly do you figure? I'm looking at women's suffrage in 1920, Reconstruction era and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and North Carolina's property requirement removal in 1856 and I'm not sure if our ideas of short-lived are similar.
So like I think its probably most precise to say that they were usually long-lived, but not universally. I'll reword my prior comment but leave this here.
Slavery was terrible, but when people look at history I have often had people point to the 3/5's clause in the constitution as an example of racism. They don't understand that is was the abolitionist that fought for that, the slave owners wanted all slaves to be counted as whole persons, it would have given them more power and likely could have resulted in slavery lasting longer.
You never learn that the original draft of the Declaration Condemned slavery as one of the crimes committed by the King, Jefferson writing "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him". no documented reason has been given for why that was removed but most believe it was because of just 2 colonies, South Carolina and Georgia.
To paint history with a modern lens destines you to never understanding and thus never learning from it.
>>keep in mind that by the definition you're using here, there's a solid argument to make that neither the US senate nor the US presidential elections are "democratic"
The Senate should not be voted on at all IMO, I think that 17th Amendment has been a net negative for the nation. It has take the voice of the states out of the Federal government and has lead to a HUGE consolidation of power, elimination of checks in the system, and over all been bad for the republic.
As far as the electoral college, and democracy, if you support federalism, and believe the in the Idea of 50 United States coming together for the common economic and defensive goals then the electoral college is very democratic, however if you are a supporter of "America" where by the States are not really independent and to be treated as sub servant vassals of the Federal government then you would view it as non-democratic.
Given the US Constitution allows for the States to come together to overrule the federal government or even abolish it I would say we are a collection of 50 States united under a common set of laws and principles, i.e the United States of America.
>>I always wonder why we deify a bunch of mostly 30 year olds from 270 years ago as though they had the perfect ideas about government
I dont really think I have done that here, nor do I normally, Infact I am huge believer in the statement of "The US Constitution has either authorized the government we now have, or has been powerless to prevent it, in either case it is unfit to exist"
I have massive problems with the US Constitution but I highly doubt we are going to agree with what those problems are, as my problem with the US Constitution is it has given TOO MUCH power to government, has allowed for massive "interpretation" of the text to all the federal government do just about anything it wants.
I want a VERY VERY VERY small limited "night watchmen" like government, not this large overarching parental government that we look to for the solution to every problem in our lives
I look back to the original constitution, you see racism and an attempt put white men in power, I see a set of principles for limited government that would start the world down the path of the greatest expansion of Individual freedom in world history. Of course the US Constitution did not exist in a vacuum, and was not the sole reason for this expansion, but it was part of it.
I wish they would have had the ability to get more individual freedoms for everyone into our founding (many tried) I wish we would have more limited on governmental power, but I also understand the political realities of the day.
In the 200+ years since we have done alot of good things to advance those principles and expand individual freedom, some things too longer than they should have. However we have also done alot of things that will in time start to erode those freedoms as government(s) consolidate power, and begin to provide an outsized portion of necessitates of life.
You absolutely can though. There aren't really problems with it. The problems you describe aren't problems with the ethical lens you look at history with. They're just historical facts that I guess you thought I didn't know. As for "anything good about history" I'm not really sure what you mean. History is amoral. It isn't good or bad, it just is. I think it's good to analyze it through a wide variety of lenses. Analyzing actions both via modern and contemporary lenses makes sense, both have value!
> Slavery was terrible, but when people look at history I have often had people point to the 3/5's clause in the constitution as an example of racism. They don't understand that is was the abolitionist that fought for that, the slave owners wanted all slaves to be counted as whole persons, it would have given them more power and likely could have resulted in slavery lasting longer.
Right so to rephrase this: neither the north nor the south consider black people worthy of citizenship/personhood. Both (and admittedly primarily the south) were willing to use them as a political football anyhow though. Like the north's position here isn't noble or anything. It's all bad. Its an interesting historical fact, yes, but there's no ethical lesson to be found.
> You never learn that the original draft of the Declaration Condemned slavery as one of the crimes committed by the King, Jefferson writing "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him".
I mean but you still do learn this. Nothing stops you. It just again, isn't noble. It's perhaps worse? The colonists had no excuse. They knew slavery was monstrous and yet the allowed their new nation to be founded with it, and kicked the can down the road (Article 1, Section 9).
Like do you not find it terribly hypocritical to use this as one of the intended reasons to declare independence, and then turn around and do it yourself immediately? Like judging Jefferson by Jefferson's own ethics, he was "violating [human nature's] most sacred rights of life & liberty".
> The Senate should not be voted on at all IMO, I think that 17th Amendment has been a net negative for the nation.
Sure, yeah, even if we assume that's true (I think the federal system is fairly problematic, but let's pretend it's not), the rampant fraud in senate appointments wasn't great.
> has allowed for massive "interpretation"
I agree with you here. Comparing the US constitution to any modern European constitution and for example one thing we've learned is that a constitution should be written with precision, not in vague flowery language.
> I look back to the original constitution, you see racism and an attempt put white men in power, I see a set of principles for limited government that would start the world down the path of the greatest expansion of Individual freedom in world history.
I see both, but by your own admission it failed at getting you limited government, and the racism is still around.
Because it is.
> They don't understand that is was the abolitionist that fought for that
No, they didn't.
Abolitionists fought for...abolition. But there weren't many around among the Framers.
People who were neither slavers nor politically allied with them (but also not abolitionists in any substantial sense fought for slaves not to count for apportionment.
> the slave owners wanted all slaves to be counted as whole persons,
That's true, but no one fought for the 3/5 compromise. That’s why it's called a “compromise”. And it's closer to the position of the racist slaveholders than that of the also racist, but less so, people who were fine with slavery existing but against giving extra votes to slaveholders (by exactly the degree that 3/5 is closer to 1 than 0.)
Splitting the difference between racist, slavery accepting factions, in a way which favors the more racist one is, well, pretty racist.