the scare quotes don't make it any less factual, my homie
the scare quotes don't make it any less factual, my homie
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America isn’t a democracy. It’s a Republic. Try again with Europe or other democratic nations.
:chefs-kiss: a bonafide classic, the yankee liberal's ultimate retreat-and-defend move
Intelligence is knowing the US is not a democracy. Being a complete fucking idiot is thinking that's because it's a republic.
"the great mass of people don't have any power"
"ah but we're not supposed to. we're just not a monarchy"
not the airtight case they think it is
The whole myth of the American Revolution was that the Americans were fighting for their individual freedoms from the European colonial powers. They wrote a masturbatory declaration of independence about how this will be the land of personal freedom and individual rights. It’s America’s big thing, its source of national pride.
The same people who believe that, the people who fetishize Benjamin Franklin and blabber endlessly about the Federalist Papers and watch the Hamilton musical weekly, will then turn around and say America was not even intended to be democratic from the beginning. They hold two wholly incompatible mythologies.
Quote from the American Declaration of Independence:
… to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
This is clearly a call for a democracy. Chuds can squabble about what kind of democracy it was intended to be (no need to bring up the practical absence of genuine democracy) but the intent has always been unambiguous.
The whole myth of the American Revolution was that the Americans were fighting for their individual freedoms from the European colonial powers.
It was a myth in the sense that it was what the revolutionaries told themselves. But I don’t think it was a myth in that it was false. The people writing those proclamations were bourgeois and it was a bourgeois revolution they were supporting. If you look at American mythos as only applying to land owning white men, as was intended, it’s a lot easier to see that the founders likely meant what they said, just not seeing anyone outside of their intended ruling class as people deserving of the same considerations.
Totally right. By mythology I meant not necessarily the history, but the collective view of that history which has turned the events and characters into a quasi-religion. Like all myths, there is a kernel of truth.
Always point out to them that China is republic too.
Better yet, point out that China is more democratic and watch them seethe
Europe
nation
someone buy the yank a map
EU is very democratic, look at Greece.
The motte-and-bailey fallacy (named after the motte-and-bailey castle) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy where an arguer conflates two positions that share similarities, one modest and easy to defend (the "motte") and one much more controversial and harder to defend (the "bailey"). The arguer advances the controversial position, but when challenged, insists that only the more modest position is being advanced. Upon retreating to the motte, the arguer can claim that the bailey has not been refuted (because the critic refused to attack the motte) or that the critic is unreasonable (by equating an attack on the bailey with an attack on the motte).