Re: an arteest

Daniel writes:
<< Of course it is [an instance of check or balance] when you realize that
popular vote doesn't (and never has) eleceted presidents, a preservationof
those unpopular state's soveriengty. Your vote counted as much as it should
have. >>

Maybe there should be fifty votes, one for each governor? I doubt very much
that you'd be singing this tune if your guy lost the way that he won.

I didn't mean to pass judgement, and then get into a debate, on the virtues
of our electoral system (though it slipped out that I do think it's an
absurd remnant of a once-necessary compromise). My point was only to
counter your assertion by saying that, strictly speaking, we do not have --
never did have, wouldn't even have were we to eliminate the electoral
college -- a democracy. Nor should we, in my opinion.

Rousseau writes that the people (which in Rousseau is a singular) of England
thinks that it is free, but that in truth it is only free on election day --
enslaved to Parliament the rest of the year. I'm not sure that I'm with
Rousseau all the way, and I'm not sure that I'd prefer a true democracy to a
republic, but it is clear that our system is not the former.

-robbie

PS And as for Bush, my estimation of him is not nearly so grim as that of a
lot of the others here, who seem to make him out to be quite sinister. I
tend to take him, in fact, as a sincere and genuinely good man. I am
inclined to think that he does truly believe what he says. I do not think
that he's especially bright, though, and I often disagree with what he says,
and it is for these reasons that I didn't vote for him.
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Received on Fri Apr 18 19:03:55 2003