How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy? | Hacker News Reader

How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy?

nytimes.com

17 pointstastyface13 comments

The founders probably assumed people would elect ethical people so no ethics are in our system. Even businesses have rules about conflict of interest, hiring relatives, etc, but our government, nothing.

Without that it’s been failing and perhaps those ethics should rest on a popular vote and not representatives so it doesn’t get ruined, but then mob rule could always ruin it, which is why we have a republic that is slow to change with all these checks and balances but no ethics.

Quite the opposite. The founders knew leaders would be unethical, so they designed a system to divide power amongst the branches of the federal government and the states. Unfortunately, the leaders have been slowly eroding those divisions over time, consolidating power in the federal government and the imperial Presidency.

The founders understood power. Their solution to monarchy was polyarchy, defined by a written constitution. A contract. Law.

A republic is an empire of laws, not of men.

And the oath of office, 5 USC 3331, is to support and defend the Constitution. Not a person.

If you have no ethics, an oath of office is meaningless.

Ultimately, men enforce the laws. They are only as rigorous as the enforcers decide to make them.

I'm not so sure, they seemed awful critical of the British crown. I think what they didn't consider was a legislature that wouldn't wield its removal authority only days after being attacked by a violent mob. Or a Supreme Court that would invent an idea of executive immunity that renders all ethics statutes moot.

John Adams said the Constitution was intended for a moral people. The text isn't self enforcing, it takes people who will support and defend it.

It may be we're out of virtue and don't deserve the Constitution anymore.

We don't know the How, but we can agree on the When - when it will be too late.

I don't think the meaning that you give to that word is the same as the one used in the rest of the world. Democracy is about elections (presidents, referendums, whatever), where every citizen is able to participate and vote freely. And in that, US may well is (and has been for quite some time) functionally an oligarchy.

That a legally elected government then oppress part of the population, put weird laws or sink the economy is within the rules of the game. Citizens are responsible for what they choose, at least if they all can choose for it freely.

But if whole sections of the population can't freely participate, or can be punished somewhat if doing so, then you didn't had a democracy to start with, even if the government was a symbol of peace and prosperity.

When the next pandemic hits, for people who don't remember the last one.

Why would the next one end any different from the last one - a return to normalcy?

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