When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
"The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived."
James Madison
However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. George Washington
Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples’ liberty’s teeth. - George Washington
We have heard of the impious doctrine in the Old World, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. James Madison The Federalist No. 45
I am guessing that you are nothing but a parrot incapable of real debate. The Government belongs to the people, and it is the will of we the people that mold and build this nation not the Government.
The Constitution was never static so your request is naive at best.
And true the House of Representatives, The Presidency, and the Judicial system do not have direct democracy in their functions. Im not sure why you are pointing out the obvious as if no one knows how our Government works. I am guessing that your line of argument is aimed at people that have no clue about how the Government works. BTW I am not one of those people so your tactic is falling flat on its face.
Obama? Why are you talking about Obama the election is over?
In the most pure democracies of Greece, many of the executive functions were performed, not by the people themselves, but by officers elected by the people, and representing the people in their executive capacity.
Prior to the reform of Solon, Athens was governed by nine Archons, annually elected by the people at large. The degree of power delegated to them seems to be left in great obscurity. Subsequent to that period, we find an assembly, first of four, and afterwards of six hundred members, annually elected by the people; and partially representing them in their legislative capacity, since they were not only associated with the people in the function of making laws, but had the exclusive right of originating legislative propositions to the people. The senate of Carthage, also, whatever might be its power, or the duration of its appointment, appears to have been elective by the suffrages of the people. Similar instances might be traced in most, if not all the popular governments of antiquity.
Lastly, in Sparta we meet with the Ephori, and in Rome with the Tribunes; two bodies, small indeed in numbers, but annually elected by the whole body of the people, and considered as the representatives of the people, almost in their plenipotentiary capacity. The Cosmi of Crete were also annually elected by the people, and have been considered by some authors as an institution analogous to those of Sparta and Rome, with this difference only, that in the election of that representative body the right of suffrage was communicated to a part only of the people.
From these facts, to which many others might be added, it is clear that the principle of representation was neither unknown to the ancients nor wholly overlooked in their political constitutions. The true distinction between these and the American governments, lies in the total exclusion of the people, in their collective capacity, from any share in the latter, and not in the total exclusion of the representatives of the people from the administration of the former. The distinction, however, thus qualified, must be admitted to leave a most advantageous superiority in favor of the United States. But to insure to this advantage its full effect, we must be careful not to separate it from the other advantage, of an extensive territory. For it cannot be believed, that any form of representative government could have succeeded within the narrow limits occupied by the democracies of Greece
You completely took this out of context, which was dishonest and makes your claims invalid because of your dishonesty. The thing is that Madison was talking about the faults of the pure democracies of Greece, he was not saying that our Government excludes the people. He was saying that the democracies of Greece excluded the people. You just simply got it wrong.
And to your last point give it up man, America is a type of a democracy but not a pure democracy. And no one has claimed in this entire thread that America is a pure democracy yet you keep arguing against that premise as if someone said. Why is that? Is that the only argument that you know or something?