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Kasz216 on 12 October 2011
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sapphi_snake said:
Kasz216 said:

No, he was in general talking about republics which were supposed to protect the minority from the majority.

Afterall you just said a direct democracy couldn't work(back then) and therefore wouldn't be an option.

Also, why wouldn't a "direct democracy" work on a large scale in the modern day?

You'd just need to referendeum everything, which would make sures only laws that were important passed and would make it harder to get through special interest deals.

The only real issue would be well, majority tyranny.

 

Think about it this way... if the US was a democracy.  The US Citizens could elect their representatives with the goal to remove freedom of speech, and could succeed in that goal soley by having having a majority.

I still don't understand why you keep saying that republics are supposed to protect minorities from the majority. If that's the case, you should really tell that to Iran. Protecting minorites from the majority is an attribute of the liberal democracy. Being a republic in no way guarantees that minorities will be protected. Republics that are not also liberal democracies (i.e. Iran, the Soviet Union), won't really be caring much about human rights, protecting minorities etc.

And the reason why direct democracies wouldn't work today is that it would be too complicated. Nowdays you'd have to allow pretty much everybody, man or woman, all ages abouve 18, to be able to vote. Add the fact that countries nowadays have populations of millions (300 million in the case of your country), and the result would be pure chaos. Direct democracies worked in Antiquity only because even then only a small number of people fulfilled the requirement to participate (only men who had a certain age and a certain status). Women and slaves weren't even considered to be human beings. The group ended up being not much larger than the one in current representative democracies.

As for the 'tyranny of the majority' thing, that can be prevented in any state which has a constitution, bill of rights etc. Just as the Parliament can't vote away the right to fre speech, the group of citizens wouldn't be able to do that due to the Constitution.

Well for one... Iran isn't a Republic or a Democracy.

It's government is completely controlled by the Rahstakhiz.  It's a single party system in the vein of Nazi Germany, Communist Russia and Iraq.  I mean.... Iraq had elections, doesn't make Iraq an actual Republic or Democracy.

In general actually you find a lot of single party states like that actually call themselves "Democratic Republics".

I mean, looking at the countries called that in history....

People's Democratic Republic of Algeria

Democratic Republic of Congo

Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste

 Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia   

 German Democratic Republic

 Lao People's Democratic Republic

  Democratic People's Republic of Korea

 Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal

Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe

Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka

 People's Democratic Republic of Yemen