How often has one read or watched the news, only to be told that America, as the leading democratic power, must do this or that because it is in the interest of all free peoples to promote democracy? Democracy has become so overused as to become a synonym for all that is good in the world, especially identified as rainbow-headed unicorns with the wings of a Pegasus, flying unhesitatingly from imagined world to imagined world, the latest one progressing ever more and more toward all that is holy. Democracy, it seems, is freedom, goodness, truth, dignity, and beauty.
This is the absurdity that now surrounds us. Honestly, the unicorns would be preferable. One only has to watch the tumultuous and tenebrous storms of emotion that brew and blow on Twitter to see how well the democratic impulse tends toward goodness.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/04/not-democracy-bradley-birzer.html
One thought on “Not a Democracy ~ The Imaginative Conservative”
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Spirit of Cecilia 
The USA is certainly NOT a pure democracy or a direct democracy. We are, in fact, a democratic republic or a constitutional republic. We are a democracy in the sense we are a “free society.” I think you are right, however, that our republican government is damaged in part because of fanatics who want to dismantle constitutional aspects of our Republic such as state’s autonomy (home rule), local control of education, and our Electoral College which really is the last remnant of the importance of the autonomy of individual states. If the Senate were abolished (to have only direct representation) and if the Electoral College were abolished(to have direct national popular elections) then the states would become nothing more than geographic notions like Gaul or Cornwall or Galicia. The USA will thrive as long as 1) we remain committed individual rights and to natural rights such as life, liberty, and property 2) we remain a Republic under the US Constitution with the states retaining many sovereign rights. All too often I hear K-12 education, state colleges, all courts, etc. should be federalized -under the direct control of the central government. We have already gone too far as it is. One of the reasons Hillsdale is immune from Federal pressures is that it is not addicted to Federal loans (and creeping Federal bureaucratic regulations). A free society needs true DIVERSITY and many centers of power not one. Statism, in the final analysis, is believe in centralizing power and ultimately, belief in dictatorship and one-party rule.
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