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When did America become a democracy?

When did America become a democracy

  • 1776

    Votes: 1 9.1%
  • 1789

    Votes: 2 18.2%
  • 1865

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 1920

    Votes: 2 18.2%
  • 1964

    Votes: 2 18.2%
  • Not there yet

    Votes: 4 36.4%

  • Total voters
    11
Ah here it is:

By about 1860, most white men without property were enfranchised. President Andrew Jackson, champion of frontiersmen, helped advance the political rights of those who did not own property.

But I have to concede that the point of having property owners being the only ones eligable to vote is not entirely without its merit because then non-property owners could just vote to infringe upon the rights of the property owner, ie wealth/land redistribution.
 
star2589 said:
I think the keyword there is healthy. Its possible for an unhealty society to have a technically democratic form of government..

I don't know if I'd feel comfortable classifying an unhealthy government as democratic. I mean, China's democratic on paper. I think we all can agree that if a democracy isn't functioning properly, it's not a democracy.

yes, agreed. I think its hard to consider it a democracy if any of its people dont have the right to vote, with the exception of minors.

For sure. Felon's not being able to vote is a little iffy to me.

star2589 said:
hello! :2wave: and thanks. I just came here from a very strongly conservative forum. over there, if your anything less than extremely conservative, they will think you're a flaming liberal and a troll. so, I feel vindicated now :mrgreen:

Damn liberals. ;)
 
Trajan Octavian Titus said:
Ah here it is:



But I have to concede that the point of having property owners being the only ones eligable to vote is not entirely without its merit because then non-property owners could just vote to infringe upon the rights of the property owner, ie wealth/land redistribution.

No, no. You have to take all three criteria together or it's not a democracy. Your civil liberties can't be voted away.
 
Kelzie said:
So if you were analyzing a country today where women and black people couldn't vote, along with people that didn't own land, would you say that was a democracy?

You're asking me when did we became a Democracy, and I said 1789 because that's when we started voting, we may not have been an equal or just democracy, but we strictly speaking were... if we weren't a democracy, what were we?
 
Kelzie said:
So what if just half the people could vote. Would that still be democratic?

It was a different era you can not place modern ideals of social justice into the context of a pre-civil war era America. The fact that we were Democratic is precisely what allowed us to enact the social reforms in the first place. For the era we were the most Democratic nation on the face of the plannet.
 
Synch said:
You're asking me when did we became a Democracy, and I said 1789 because that's when we started voting, we may not have been an equal or just democracy, but we strictly speaking were... if we weren't a democracy, what were we?

I'd say strictly speaking we weren't. Anytime the majority of the population has no say in the government, by definition it isn't democratic.

I don't know. Partial democracy. White-rich-man-ocracy.
 
Trajan Octavian Titus said:
It was a different era you can not place modern ideals of social justice into the context of a pre-civil war era America. The fact that we were Democratic is precisely what allowed us to enact the social reforms in the first place. For the era we were the most Democratic nation on the face of the plannet.

I most certainly can. I'm not debating that at the time they thought they were democratic. I'm saying by our standards today they weren't.
 
Kelzie said:
No, no. You have to take all three criteria together or it's not a democracy. Your civil liberties can't be voted away.

The Bill of Rights was only a check on the power of the Federal Government not that of the states until after the Civil war when the passing of the 14th amendment and the equal protection and due process clauses therin, allowed for the incorporation of the Bill of Rights onto the the State Governments.
 
Trajan Octavian Titus said:
The Bill of Rights was only a check on the power of the Federal Government not that of the states until after the Civil war when the passing of the 14th amendment and the equal protection and due process clauses therin, allowed for the incorporation of the Bill of Rights onto the the State Governments.

And your point being? If you do not have political liberty, political equality and popular sovereignty you do not have a democracy. No matter what the states say. Voting someone's land away would (arguably) be a violation of political liberty and therefor not democratic.
 
Kelzie said:
I most certainly can. I'm not debating that at the time they thought they were democratic. I'm saying by our standards today they weren't.

But it is because we were Democratic that allowed the social reforms to be enacted, you don't give the F.F.'s enough credit they created the Constitution in such a way as to provide a fluid government that could change according to the attitudes and beliefs of the society of the time. Most of the founding fathers hated slavery and Jefferson himself wanted it abolished in the original Bill of Rights, however, they knew that the people and the southern agrarian states would never go for it. They sacrificed their principles in order to get the Constitution ratified.
 
I think our two party system prevents us from being a true democracy.
 
Kelzie said:
And your point being? If you do not have political liberty, political equality and popular sovereignty you do not have a democracy. No matter what the states say.

Well you have to think of the context at the time the states were more like individual countries and the state constitutions were just as important as the Federal Constitution and they were separate ie the Federal Government could not interfere with the legislation of the individual states, the Bill of Rights was just as much a protection from the Federal Government of the individual states as it was of the individual citizenry residing in those states. I guess the whole point is that if we were not Democratic then the 14th amendment would never have been implemented in the first place.

Voting someone's land away would (arguably) be a violation of political liberty and therefor not democratic.

And that's why property owners were the only ones who were allowed to vote.
 
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Trajan Octavian Titus said:
Well you have to think of the context at the time the states were more like individual countries and the state constitutions were just as important as the Federal Constitution and they were separate ie the Federal Government could not interfere with the legislation of the individual states, the Bill of Rights was just as much a protection from the Federal Government of the individual states as it was of the individual citizenry residing in those states. I guess the whole point is that if we were not Democratic then the 14th amendment would never have been implemented in the first place.



And that's why property owners were the only ones who were allowed to vote.

Except we weren't democratic and it was...so that argument doesn't fly.

And the only reason the 14th amendment was ratified was the southern states had to do it or they wouldn't get any aid to recover.
 
Kelzie said:
Except we weren't democratic and it was...so that argument doesn't fly.

How could the 14th amendment have been passed if we were not Democratic?

And the only reason the 14th amendment was ratified was the southern states had to do it or they wouldn't get any aid to recover.

Umm most of the former confederate states didn't get a vote. And so what if their readmittance to the Union was incumbant upon their ratification of the 14th amendment, they lost the war after all, and besides that's precisely what gives the Federal Government its power over the states; the ability to grant or withhold funding.
 
I didn't vote in the poll, since I believe it's based on a false understanding of democracy.

It isn't a boolean-- you can't simply look at a government and declare that it either IS or IS NOT a democracy. Every government has democratic elements, and no government is purely democratic; the best you can do is look at two governments and compare which is more democratic and which is less.

While I am a firm believer in the principle of democratic government, I do think that a particular government can become too democratic-- typically by promoting unlimited government-- and that the proper state of any healthy society is going to fall between the two extremes.
 
Korimyr the Rat said:
I didn't vote in the poll, since I believe it's based on a false understanding of democracy.

It isn't a boolean-- you can't simply look at a government and declare that it either IS or IS NOT a democracy. Every government has democratic elements, and no government is purely democratic; the best you can do is look at two governments and compare which is more democratic and which is less.

While I am a firm believer in the principle of democratic government, I do think that a particular government can become too democratic-- typically by promoting unlimited government-- and that the proper state of any healthy society is going to fall between the two extremes.

Well it certainly wasn't an all inclusive list. However, I do not believe you can have a democracy without those things.
 
Trajan Octavian Titus said:
How could the 14th amendment have been passed if we were not Democratic?

Just because a law is passed doesn't make a country a democracy.

Trajan Octavian Titus said:
Umm most of the former confederate states didn't get a vote. And so what if their readmittance to the Union was incumbant upon their ratification of the 14th amendment, they lost the war after all, and besides that's precisely what gives the Federal Government its power over the states; the ability to grant or withhold funding.

I didn't say I had a problem with it.
 
Kelzie said:
Just because a law is passed doesn't make a country a democracy.

Umm when that law is voted on by congress yes it does, that's the whole basis of a representative Democracy. We elect our representatives to write, enact, and enforce the type of legislation that we the people want them to. Congress was elected to office to represent the people and both houses of congress voted to to enact the 14th amendment and hence forth it was put to the states for ratification by the state legislature.
 
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Trajan Octavian Titus said:
Umm when that law is voted on by congress yes it does, that's the whole basis of a representative Democracy. We elect our representatives to write, enact, and enforce the type of legislation that we the people want them to.

Not when 3/4 of the population isn't represented by the Congress.
 
Kelzie said:
I don't know if I'd feel comfortable classifying an unhealthy government as democratic. I mean, China's democratic on paper. I think we all can agree that if a democracy isn't functioning properly, it's not a democracy.

I think of a democracy more in terms of the process than the outcome. so, if you have a technically democratic society filled with corrupt individuals, the outcome is going to be a corrupt society.

but when your looking at it in terms of the outcome, the definition in terms of the process certainly isnt very useful.
 
Kelzie said:
Not when 3/4 of the population isn't represented by the Congress.

Congress was elected to office to represent the people and both houses of congress voted to to enact the 14th amendment and hence forth it was put to the states for ratification by the state legislature so how exactly isn't that a Democratic process?
 
Trajan Octavian Titus said:
Congress was elected to office to represent the people and both houses of congress voted to to enact the 14th amendment and hence forth it was put to the states for ratification by the state legislature so how exactly isn't that a Democratic process?

Like I said. They didn't represent 3/4 of the population. That's not democratic.
 
Kelzie said:
Like I said. They didn't represent 3/4 of the population. That's not democratic.

Our Constitution by its very nature allowed the people to see the error of their ways and through the Democratic process enabled us to change paths, that's the whole point of Democracy, in that the people themselves are the best arbiters of their own destiny. If the Founding Fathers were alive today they would not be at all suprised that the people themselves would have voted to allow others to vote it is their faith in the inherant goodness of mankind that allowed them to place the future of our nation in the hands of a radical Constitution that the entire world thought would have no chance suceeding.
 
Trajan Octavian Titus said:
Our Constitution by its very nature allowed the people to see the error of their ways and through the Democratic process enabled us to change paths, that's the whole point of Democracy, in that the people themselves are the best arbiters of their own destiny.

Democracy doesn't have a "point". It's a system of government. And when only 1/4 of the population can vote, it's not democratic. Sorry. There's no way to twist is so that it is.
 
Kelzie said:
Democracy doesn't have a "point". It's a system of government. And when only 1/4 of the population can vote, it's not democratic. Sorry. There's no way to twist is so that it is.

If the Founding Fathers were alive today they would not be at all suprised that the people themselves would have voted to allow others to vote it is their faith in the inherant goodness of mankind that allowed them to place the future of our nation in the hands of a radical Constitution that the entire world thought would have no chance at all in succeeding but succeed it did and today we are the the most equal and Democratic nation on the face of the earth.

If we were not Democratic then the people would not have been allowed to vote for the right of others to vote. If we were not Democratic then what were we?
 
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