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Re:Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amend... by magduf on Friday May 24, 2019 @10:27AM (#20001877)
They don't see it as their country going down, they see it as "making it great again". As the other poster said here, what a very large fraction of the US really wants is a religious ethnostate, and they're very good at voting for that, so that's where we're headed.
Re:Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amend... by geggam on Friday May 24, 2019 @11:28AM (#20002556)
That is why the US was created as a Constitutional Republic. To prevent the catastrophe of a pure democracy

Problem is the leaders of the country are profiting from the demise.

I see an "interesting" future for the next 20 years of the US

Re:Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amend... by mcv on Sunday May 26, 2019 @03:15AM (#20013577)
If you mean the fact that the US doesn't have proportional voting and a president can be elected on a minority of the popular vote, then I'm afraid those seem to be exactly what's causing the problem here. It magnifies the impact of the group that wants this theocratic ethnostate, and enabled the election of Donald, who would not have been elected otherwise.
Re:Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amend... by magduf on Friday May 24, 2019 @12:28PM (#20003133)
>That is why the US was created as a Constitutional Republic. To prevent the catastrophe of a pure democracy

Why do people like you bring up this canard? Can you point to any pure democracies, anywhere, ever, aside from Ancient Greece? The US isn't special; every decent country (and many not-so-great ones too) now is a democratic republic of some kind, usually constitutional (UK is a notable exception here).

Re:Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amend... by geggam on Saturday May 25, 2019 @09:56AM (#20009066)
Because as you age you see how change is implemented. You watch the drift.

Example. In my youth police were called peace officers. Their main mission was to enforce the peace at the expense of bending the law.

Today law enforcement disrupts the peace to enforce the law. Society is not better off because of it.

Watching presidents change what they called the nation from Republic to Democracy has also been something that happened. A republic is a nation of laws where everyone has the same rules. A democracy is simply a majority vote and currently the constitution and the laws are being marginalized.

That is why folks bring up this "canard"

FYI calling something constitutionally guaranteed, a canard is exactly to what I refer

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.

ARTICLE IV, SECTION 4

Re:Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amend... by mcv on Sunday May 26, 2019 @03:26AM (#20013602)
> A republic is a nation of laws where everyone has the same rules.

Not necessarily. A republic is simply a country without a monarch. China is a republic. Iran is a republic. Russia is a republic. Democracies that are not republics include places like Denmark, Netherland, Sweden and Spain.

The canard you're bringing up stems from a weird misunderstanding of what republics and democracies really are. Democracies have laws, the same rules for everyone, they have constitutions that (try to) guarantee equal rights. Democracies often have better "rule of law" than many republics, but ultimately, they believe that the authority stems from the people and that the government serves the people rather than the other way around.

Fortunately many republics are also democracies. France, Germany, and, as many people would really, really like to believe, the United States of America. The fact that so many Americans don't really care about democracy, undermine its legitimacy with misleading arguments, and support an electoral system that denies minority representation while letting the loser of the popular vote win the presidency, is really sad.

Re:Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amend... by geggam on Sunday May 26, 2019 @08:38AM (#20014608)
You do realize the ability of the representative to override the majority vote in a republic was by design as the founders (read Madison's Federalist No. 10) did not trust the general public to make good choices (democracy).

You can conflate the ideas all you want. Does not change the fact the US is a republic. Your example proved it.

Re:Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amend... by cat199 on Friday May 24, 2019 @12:52PM (#20003346)
if this was such a partisan issue, why did most of the backlash against wikileaks come long before the change of administration, and why didn't the previous administration hillary, etc, speak out loudly for assange, and terminate the programs, rather than continuing them or extending them?

this is not a partisan issue, it is a public awareness / power-elitism issue

Re:Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amend... by magduf on Friday May 24, 2019 @03:08PM (#20004427)
Actually, I was just responding to the comment "Swathes of the US public seem to be cheering as their own country is going down" and its response about a religious ethnostate, I wasn't talking about the leakers specifically.
Re:Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amend... by kittiepryde on Friday May 24, 2019 @12:57PM (#20003390)
As an American, I disagree with the statements.