Chomsky: The U.S. behaves nothing like a democracy

Re:Chomsky: The U.S. behaves nothing like a democracy by joshuahedlund on Monday August 19, 2013 @09:36AM (#6237087)

Chomsky's dogmatism and oversimplification of complicated factors weakens his points (some selective polls I'm not linking to show overwhelming support for things the government doesn't do - but compared to how many things with overwhelming support that is done by the government?). There are certainly plenty of examples of ways the US is not a perfect democracy, or even a perfect democratic republic, but it is trivial to disprove that it behaves nothing like one.

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Re:Chomsky: The U.S. behaves nothing like a democracy by illumen on Monday August 19, 2013 @09:56AM (#6237214)

If it is trivial, can you disprove it? Quacks like a plutocracy...

We need better democracies.

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Re:Chomsky: The U.S. behaves nothing like a democracy by dragonwriter on Monday August 19, 2013 @11:04AM (#6237587)

> If it is trivial, can you disprove it? Quacks like a plutocracy...

Quacks like a democracy with a unitary executive and high level of electoral disproportionality, see Patterns of Democracy, Arend Lijphard (1999).

> We need better democracies.

We have better democracies (i.e., most modern democracies), and we can only understand how they are better and what the defects are in the US system when we understand the US as a democracy, and understand the features that make it a poor one in terms of effective representation.

Hyberpolic polemic like claiming the US behaves "nothing like a democracy" might sometimes have value in drawing attention to the problems (but probably not if it is coming from Chomsky), but it doesn't help understand or fix the problems, and if actually taken seriously it inhibits understanding and progress.

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Re:Chomsky: The U.S. behaves nothing like a democracy by joshuahedlund on Monday August 19, 2013 @11:53AM (#6237896)

Proof: We have regular, non-violent, non-coercive elections where the results are typically very close to aggregated pre-election polling. Now you can talk about the influence of money and corruption and people blinded by the media and disenfranchised demographics or whatever, but if we had nothing like a democracy, we wouldn't even have that. Also: see snowwrestler's sibling comment on the mere existence of progressive taxes and a public school system.

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Re:Chomsky: The U.S. behaves nothing like a democracy by illumen on Tuesday August 20, 2013 @05:50AM (#6242636)

What percentage of people vote? The majority don't even vote.

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Re:Chomsky: The U.S. behaves nothing like a democracy by raverbashing on Monday August 19, 2013 @10:26AM (#6237380)

> We need better democracies.

Yes. But for that we need better people

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Re:Chomsky: The U.S. behaves nothing like a democracy by contingencies on Monday August 19, 2013 @10:40AM (#6237460)

Or, perhaps less corrupt and more broad minded actions from government/business. Positive change can begin with enforcing transparency and social and environmental concerns that presently all but escape the first world's de-facto economic rationalist system, which is rapidly infecting all corners of the planet, crowding out any space for existing or proposed, often functional and noteworthy alternatives. Recommended read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years

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Re:Chomsky: The U.S. behaves nothing like a democracy by illumen on Monday August 19, 2013 @10:48AM (#6237503)

People working on a better democracy would do too :) Rather than early 90s web guest book, we need late 90s slashdot, or even better... 2013 HN/reddit.

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