Sen. Mike Lee hates democracy

[NHI]

It seems like the GOP hates democracy....

[Badger]

Didn’t he seize his senate seat and send Bennett packing through a convention rather than a primary? That may affect his views.

You could have just said he's a Senator.  People who think democracy is completely and always good don't like the Senate.

That's.... such a bad take.

[Badger]

We are at the point at which a functioning democracy has ceased to be useful for the wealthy and influential, hence the millions upon millions invested over the past few years in disinformation campaigns and online hustlers stoking fears about 'campus sjws' and the useful idiots in the mainstream press bleating on about cancel culture. All to distract people while actual democratic norms are being chipped away at.

Trump, whether he wins or loses is just the first. Be fearful of a competent demagogue.

Post of the month. Cannot be repeated enough.

[Badger]

"We're a republic not a democracy" is a middle-school level understanding of how things work.

If so, why are people with college degrees talking like they've never heard it before and declaring it evidence of creeping fascism?

Because it was stupid the first time we heard it in middle school, and it is indeed such evidence. Next question?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

"We're a republic not a democracy" is a middle-school level understanding of how things work.

If so, why are people with college degrees talking like they've never heard it before and declaring it evidence of creeping fascism?

Because it was stupid the first time we heard it in middle school, and it is indeed such evidence. Next question?

What you were taught in middle school was fascist?

[Badger]

"We're a republic not a democracy" is a middle-school level understanding of how things work.

If so, why are people with college degrees talking like they've never heard it before and declaring it evidence of creeping fascism?

Because it was stupid the first time we heard it in middle school, and it is indeed such evidence. Next question?

What you were taught in middle school was fascist?

You posed two questions, and I answered them in separate Clauses within the same sentence. Learn to read.

[Santander]

"We're a republic not a democracy" is a middle-school level understanding of how things work.

If so, why are people with college degrees talking like they've never heard it before and declaring it evidence of creeping fascism?

Because it was stupid the first time we heard it in middle school, and it is indeed such evidence. Next question?

What you were taught in middle school was fascist?

You posed two questions, and I answered them in separate Clauses within the same sentence. Learn to read.

We have difficulty understanding you when you actually use a keyboard to type your messages.

[Hammy]

https://mobile.twitter.com/SenMikeLee/status/1314009246305079296

This is deeply ironic because this is the exact sort of thing the Republicans have allowed to take root.

[Badger]

https://mobile.twitter.com/SenMikeLee/status/1314009246305079296

This is deeply ironic because this is the exact sort of thing the Republicans have allowed to take root.

This. It's damn near unofficial party platform, and certainly defacto policy goal, net Republicans deserve to remain ensconced in power despite A continuing and increasing inability to secure majority support.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

This has always been a conservative talking point, but it's a dumb talking point. They're never really able to articulate why their preferred ideals are preferable to democracy, beyond pseudologic and appeals to the Founders.

https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1314023245855690753
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society

(I didn't realize, although I'm not really surprised, that sheer insanity and conspiracy-theory thinking has goes back so far in the roots of the right-wing.)

John Birch ?   Try John Adams:

I do not say that Democracy has been more pernicious, on the whole, and in the long run, than Monarchy or Aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as Aristocracy or Monarchy. But while it lasts it is more bloody than either.

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6371

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

"We're a republic not a democracy" is a middle-school level understanding of how things work.

If so, why are people with college degrees talking like they've never heard it before and declaring it evidence of creeping fascism?

Because it was stupid the first time we heard it in middle school, and it is indeed such evidence. Next question?

What you were taught in middle school was fascist?

You posed two questions, and I answered them in separate Clauses within the same sentence. Learn to read.

I can read.  I'm trying to get you to acknowledge that 2 + 2 = 4, i.e. that you can't have your cake and eat it too.

[The Righteous Tip of the Abundance Spear]

Lee is right for the wrong reasons.

[MarkD]

“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves ; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” -- Thomas Jefferson.

[Badger]

This has always been a conservative talking point, but it's a dumb talking point. They're never really able to articulate why their preferred ideals are preferable to democracy, beyond pseudologic and appeals to the Founders.

https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1314023245855690753
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society

(I didn't realize, although I'm not really surprised, that sheer insanity and conspiracy-theory thinking has goes back so far in the roots of the right-wing.)

John Birch ?   Try John Adams:

I do not say that Democracy has been more pernicious, on the whole, and in the long run, than Monarchy or Aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as Aristocracy or Monarchy. But while it lasts it is more bloody than either.

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6371

Fortunately, history has proven Adams wrong.

The fact is antipathy towards democracy invariably stems from individuals, weather High School fedora types or in transient Defenders of the entitled like Senator Lee, are somehow gifted with the precious notion that they are just bars far smarter than all those silly vast majority of Voters who want to see Universal Medical Care and Universal higher education as human rights oh, and would even raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy to pay for it. Gosh darn democracy sucks for us smarty pants who know better!

[Gustaf]

It's telling and embarrassing that a key "intellectual" Republican talking point relies on not having access to a dictionary and being confused about what the word "republic" means.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

This has always been a conservative talking point, but it's a dumb talking point. They're never really able to articulate why their preferred ideals are preferable to democracy, beyond pseudologic and appeals to the Founders.

https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1314023245855690753
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society

(I didn't realize, although I'm not really surprised, that sheer insanity and conspiracy-theory thinking has goes back so far in the roots of the right-wing.)

John Birch ?   Try John Adams:

I do not say that Democracy has been more pernicious, on the whole, and in the long run, than Monarchy or Aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as Aristocracy or Monarchy. But while it lasts it is more bloody than either.

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6371

Anybody who's taken, and remembers, a halfway competently taught high school American history class knows that the Federalists were generally hostile to mass political participation, yes. At least in my history class, it was taught that they were wrong about that, just as the Democratic-Republicans were wrong about the long-term viability of a pre-capitalist yeoman republic.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I'm not sure it's true that history has proven Adams was more wrong than not.  Since his time it's been strewn with the graveyards of regimes with democratic forms and weak constitutions that left them falling to totalitarianism and civil war.  Jefferson believed that real consent of the governed required ripping up the constitution every twenty years and starting over.  I have doubts that would have turned out well.

[Hnv1]

I don’t see why it is wrong, democracy is good as it benefits the wellbeing (philosophical context) and promotes the values we establish democracy in the first place. There is nothing intrinsically valuable about a procedure, at most you can say that it’s the best at promoting all the underlying values with no conceivable alternative.


Edit: I don’t know who Mike Lee is or what is record is as a politician nor does it matter

[Pulaski]

Wait. Lee "worries about the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of the few", therefore he thinks America should be less democratic? How the hell does he think non-democratic systems of government work that they give less power to "the few" than democracy does?

Majorities have often in history voted for those who promise to concentrate power in their own hands in order to act on behalf of the majority's interests.

Yes, but the alternative is minorities arrogating and wielding power themselves. A polity is either ruled by the majority, in which case what you're suggesting is a perennial risk, or ruled by some minority or another, in which case it's a definitionally present reality.

The idea of the US Constitution was to allow for representing majorities and minorities alike through various mechanisms so they could balance against each other and no faction big or small could dominate completely.  People can argue whether it works, but that's the idea.

Balderdash. The US Constitution was by and large designed to entrench power among the right sort of wealthy white landholders. The fact that it's developed into a continuous struggle between minority rule and the will of the majority (with the majority winning victories here and there) is down to persistent political action against the system, not its design.

[Figueira]

When Republicans say they're against democracy, they claim it's because of some high-minded 18th century philosophy, but it's really because they hate the idea of the current demographic makeup of the US being properly represented in government.

[GP270watch]

When Republicans say they're against democracy, they claim it's because of some high-minded 18th century philosophy, but it's really because they hate the idea of the current demographic makeup of the US being properly represented in government.

 Yes it's just poorly veiled white supremacy. It's no different than alt-right trollz screaming "muh constitution".

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

When Republicans say they're against democracy, they claim it's because of some high-minded 18th century philosophy, but it's really because they hate the idea of the current demographic makeup of the US being properly represented in government.

 Yes it's just poorly veiled white supremacy. It's no different than alt-right trollz screaming "muh constitution".

Constitutionalism is mainstream right, not alt-right.
This is the alt-right attitude toward it:

I think the old conservatives would do well to call themselves Constitutionalists, because it is obvious that the current batch don't give a damn about it. And neither do we of the #AltRight, because it is obvious that the Constitution has not only failed, completely, by its own stated purpose, but is today being used as a means of hand-cuffing the Right. The #AltRight believes in three things:

    Nationalism.
    Western civilization.
    Winning.

Everything else is negotiable or a means to one of those three ends. We aren't conservatives. We aren't philosophers. And we don't care about the Constitution, the Rights of Man, the Enlightenment, the Holocaust, or anything else with capital letters that is likely to get in the way.

https://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/06/who-killed-conservatism.html

[R.P. McM]

When Republicans say they're against democracy, they claim it's because of some high-minded 18th century philosophy, but it's really because they hate the idea of the current demographic makeup of the US being properly represented in government.

 Yes it's just poorly veiled white supremacy. It's no different than alt-right trollz screaming "muh constitution".

Constitutionalism is mainstream right, not alt-right.
This is the alt-right attitude toward it:

I think the old conservatives would do well to call themselves Constitutionalists, because it is obvious that the current batch don't give a damn about it. And neither do we of the #AltRight, because it is obvious that the Constitution has not only failed, completely, by its own stated purpose, but is today being used as a means of hand-cuffing the Right. The #AltRight believes in three things:

    Nationalism.
    Western civilization.
    Winning.

Everything else is negotiable or a means to one of those three ends. We aren't conservatives. We aren't philosophers. And we don't care about the Constitution, the Rights of Man, the Enlightenment, the Holocaust, or anything else with capital letters that is likely to get in the way.

https://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/06/who-killed-conservatism.html

'Mainstream right' is the contemporary GOP, and they obviously don't give a s*** about the Constitution, the separation of powers, or the rule of law. No, it's WHITE POWER! all the way down. They threw a tantrum over Obama's supposed abuses, and now they're blinkered members of Trump's authoritarian hivemind — obviously, they didn't mean a word of it.