Split Personality?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

You do so with the authority of the state behind you and the threat of prison looming over the head of the draftee. That is about as undemocratic as you can get. In none of those cases did the people participate in any type of referendum to approve of that tactic.

There I would disagree. Since when is a referendum required to qualify as 'democratic?' The draft bills were passed by the people's elected representatives in Congress, as are all other laws of the United States. When FDR's draft act was passed by a single vote in 1940 everybody knew exactly what lay over the horizon.

I'm very much opposed to military conscription, but to call the American instances thereof 'undemocratic' when instituted in Constitutional manner is simply incorrect.

By contrast, what Chavez is talking about is, of course, rule by decree and other dictatorial methods should the majority of his people get tired of him. The old "one man, one vote, one time" story.

[Sauron the White]

The form of government in which Congress passes bills for the people is not a democratic one. It is the republic form of government. In a democracy, it is the people who are the government in a direct manner. Think of the 17th century New England town hall meeting. In the republican form of government, the people are represented by elected officials who then are suppose to act on their behalf. Perhaps they sometimes do. Perhaps they sometimes don't.

In the late 19th century and in the early 20th century, efforts were made to take the US from the standard republican form of government more towards a democratic model. The Progressives and Populists led the way in this cause. The expansion of the franchise from adult white, male property holders to a wider demographic base was a step towards that. Because of such 20th century innovations as the referendum, initiative and recall, the US has taken on elements of both the republican from of government tinged with democracy. This is one reason why many political scientists now refer to the US system as a democratic republic.

Any military organization is by definition the opposite of a democratic unit. There is no democracy in the armed forces. To conscript someone into such a unit, is by its very nature, very undemocratic.

I cannot speak for Hugo Chavez or his brand of government. But using non-democratic methods to preserve freedom is nothing new. Chavez did not invent it. Lincoln in fact suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War even though there was no foundatin in the law for that measure. But he did so in the pursuit of a higher and longer term good.

On April 27, 1861, habeas corpus was suspended by President Lincoln in Maryland and parts of midwestern states, including southern Indiana during the American Civil War. Lincoln did so in response to riots, local militia actions, and the threat that the border slave state of Maryland would secede from the Union, leaving the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., surrounded by hostile territory. Lincoln was also motivated by requests by generals to set up military courts to rein in "Copperheads" or Peace Democrats, and those in the Union who supported the Confederate cause. His action was challenged in court and overturned by the U.S. Circuit Court in Maryland (led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney) in Ex Parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (C.C.D. Md. 1861). Lincoln ignored Taney's order. In the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis also suspended habeas corpus and imposed martial law. This was in part to maintain order and spur industrial growth in the South to compensate for the economic loss inflicted by its secession.

I will not defend Hugo Chavez. But to act as if he alone invented the concept of the ends justifying the means is simply to ignore history.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Lincoln unquestionably transgressed the Constitution by unilaterally suspending habeas- a right the Constitution reserves to Congress in time of war, rebellion, or national emergency. *Had* Congress done so at Lincoln's request then it would have been both constitutional and, in the looser sense, democratic.

Technically you are correct as to the republic/democracy distinction- but if you're going to insist on that point than there is no 'democratic' government in the world, unless you can find one which operates entirely by plebiscite without an elected representative body. For practical purposes 'democracy' has come to be in everyday usage a synonym for 'elective republic.' By that standard the Selective Service Act was democratic. If you're going to insist that 'democracy' applies only to plebiscite, well, then, there is not a single democratic act or law in all of the United States government.

I think what you're trying to say is that coercion is inherently undemocratic- but if that were true, than the proudest achievment of the Progressives, the Income Tax, would be undemocratic. There the power of the State, under threat of prison, forces me to cough up a third of my income every year. No plebiscite was ever taken on that one, either- initiative and referendum do not exist at the Federal level. And I assure you the IRS is no more a democracy than the military. Nor is prison- which is where people go who transgress laws passed by Congress.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I should add that there is nothing inherently democratic about habeas corpus. Indeed, the Bill of Rights is profoundly anti-democratic, in that it places constraints on the will of the majority. In a 'pure' democracy, the faction with the largest number of votes would be perfectly free to ban whatever speech or religious practice or minority group is didn't like.

[The Barrow-Wight]

Let's get the thread back onto Tolkien, please.

Thanks.

[Sauron the White]

Absolutely... lets get back on Tolkien topics. I defense of WCH and myself, JRRT did fight in the Great War to Save Democracy.....

but the point is taken and accepted.