> Assuming we do have a democracy today (I'd argue that's questionable for many reasons), a majority of voters and electoral college representatives voted for Trump.
It's not a winner take all system. If a bunch of racists get elected to office, they can't just claim a "mandate" and declare the Civil Right Act null and void by refusing to enforce it. The President enforces all the laws, even the ones his voters don't support. If he wants to change them, he can sign a bill into law, he can veto a bill, but he can't pick and choose to enforce just Republican passed laws.
If a bunch of racists run on such ideas and say that's what they will do, and they win an election what are we supposed to do?
We either believe in democracy and accept that means majority rules, or we don't and we might as well pick a different system as we don't really believe in the principles of democracy.
If that's true why have a constitution and laws limiting the power of the government? Using your logic, every decision made by the government is fine.
If the majority runs on cancelling democracy itself (e.g. that if they're elected there will be no more elections and they will stay in power), and they gain a small majority, is it fine for them to now cancel all elections in the future?
If a party runs on (say) taking the homes of those that voted for the opposition, do you think that it's fine if they do it if they get in power? Maybe put them in jails or camps?
Democracy is not just about majority rule. It's about protection of minorities, different rights like free speech or property rights, free trial and other things. There's a reason why there's are constitutions, courts, legislative branches etc.
> If that's true why have a constitution and laws limiting the power of the government? Using your logic, every decision made by the government is fine.
For sure, laws limiting power are extremely important. My point is simply that if a person or members of a party get elected in numbers to change that, and were clear of their intentions with voters, its totally within Democratic principles for the laws to be changed.
Abe Lincoln changed the laws with regards to slavery. He was elected by popular vote but that meant he went against a sizeable minority of voters and fundamentally changed laws limiting powers and rights. I don't see any problem with that. To be clear, I'm not drawing any comparison directly between Lincoln and any other politician today.
> Democracy is not just about majority rule. It's about protection of minorities, different rights like free speech or property rights, free trial and other things. There's a reason why there's are constitutions, courts, legislative branches etc.
Democracy is a political model for how to elect those in charge. The ideals built into the US bill of rights are in addition to democracy, not part of it directly. You can democratically elect a bigot for example, but the election was still democratically held.
> My point is simply that if a person or members of a party get elected in numbers to change that, and were clear of their intentions with voters, its totally within Democratic principles for the laws to be changed.
Not, it's not. If members of a party get elected to remove the ability of their opposition or some of their opposition to vote or cancel the next democratic elections that's in fact undemocratic. Especially in a system like in the US where even without an actual majority of votes you can get the presidency or a majority in the legislative branch.
If a party runs on the platform of ending democracy, and they win a fair election, I don't know of any safety mechanisms in democracy itself that prevent that.
There are existing laws that limit powers, but with enough support and legislative seats that can all be changed.
Ignoring whether we should choose to defend democracy in that scenario (I would), what do you see as the mechanism built into democracy that stops it?
> If a party runs on the platform of ending democracy, and they win a fair election, I don't know of any safety mechanisms in democracy itself that prevent that.
Yes there are, laws requiring super majority, for example, to change, or counter. You even state so yourself:
> There are existing laws that limit powers, but with enough support and legislative seats that can all be changed.
These changes need "enough support", because there is protection built in the system - so a majority is not enough. Other examples of protection are the Judicial branch having the power to cancel illegal legislation, EOs and other government decisions, the President having the power to veto bills. All of these supposedly provide a checks and balances system, although it is of course imperfect, especially with gerrymandering or the way that the Supreme Court is built (in my opinion life tenure is a bad idea, the court itself needs more members, and the way the members are selected is too politically oriented).
> We either believe in democracy and accept that means majority rules, or we don't and we might as well pick a different system as we don't really believe in the principles of democracy.
If you have a super-majority that supports extremes that's a whole different ball game. You originally talked about "majority", and how that's the be all end all of democracy. For example, in the US, to change the constitution you'd super majority on the Federal level, as well as (IIRC) majority in 75% of the states.
Nonetheless, everything I've stated is of course based on police/army that will listen to the law and act accordingly. If the people with guns/tanks/advanced weapons act in an illegal way and against the system, of course the law is worthless.
Sure, I was a bit loose in my use of the term "majority" earlier though we hadn't come to this level of detail.
My point remains, though. There is a point at which democracy has no guardrails to prevent a democratic overthrow of the system. Call it a majority, super majority, 60% vote, or whatever the system in place decides. With enough support a democratic system can be thrown out in an entirely democratic election.
Democracy does not mean majority does whatever they want. The Constitution says the majority has to follow the law, even if the law was passed by the people currently in the minority. If they want to change the law they have that power, but they can't just break the law.
Of course, existing laws do limit what that group would do. If they won in sufficient numbers though, laws on the books would allow them to change the laws restricting them.
I'm not saying its a good thing, just how it works. True democracy is a leap of faith, you need to trust that most people are generally good and are generally well intended.
> We either believe in democracy and accept that means majority rules, or we don't and we might as well pick a different system
We did not, in fact, pick unlimited democracy, largely because never in the history of the country has there been a trust that giving unlimited power to an unchecked, potentially transitory, majority was a good idea. It's why we have Constitutional limits on government. Its why we have dual sovereignty. It's why we have separation of powers in the federal government. It's why we have staggered elections to the Senate. It's why we tend to add additional Constitutional limits on government over time, not fewer.
The history of American involves a fairly intense, often quite violent, debate about these issues. There is no simple settled comprehensive position on what should be within the scope of majoritarian control and what needs to be kept outside of it (and which method should be used to do that.)
Pretending that there is a simple consensus around unchecked majoritarianism, or that the choice is between unchecked majoritarianism and something radically different from the Constitutionally-limited representative democracy the US has had, misguided if not actually dishonest.
Constitutional limits and our system of checks and balances have nothing directly to do with democracy.
Democracy is a process of how leaders are elected, that's it. How our government is structured, our three branches, etc is not part of democracy - those are details of how we implemented a government of democratically elected officials (well, as democratically as it can be considered in a democratic republic with our electoral college system).
> Constitutional limits and our system of checks and balances have nothing directly to do with democracy.
They have to do with the actual system of government we've chosen in the United States, which is not naive majoritarianism; either that system is a form of democracy (which it would be by the definitions usually used in modern discussions of real political systems), in which case it disproves the premise "We either believe in democracy and accept that means majority rules", or it is not, and it makes the full argument, "We either believe in democracy and accept that means majority rules, or we don't and we might as well pick a different system" irrelevant because, in that case, we have already chosen a different system, and wouldn't need to go back to the drawing board simply because we had a problem with naive majoritarianism -- since rejection of that was baked in from the start.
It sounds like we're making the same argument at this point. We aren't really a democracy and we don't want one, in part because from the beginning those in charge have worried about "the mob" and didn't want to actually allow us to vote and have the majority opinion win unchecked.
I would printout that they spent a lot of effort to deny they are racists. Even now as they are enacting long term plans their supporters claim it is something else.
Trump did not run on "I will anex canada, make inflation higher, order damm release and slash department of education".
Some parts he run at - he promised to harm trans and he is delivering.
I could have sworn he, or those very closely circled around him, talked specifically about education and the need to reform DoE. I don't remember for sure now, honestly the campaigns feels like years ago already.
He didn't run on annexing Canada, he almost certainly doesn't want to though. Trump is a bully and just likes to play cheap games when negotiating. He raised the idea of making Canada a state while also pushing hard on border issues and tariffs. He was just fainting there to try to gain the upper hand.
Inflation is a joke with him. He's completely contradictory there, though that is pretty common. I don't think Trump understands or cares about inflation, it just polls well. He did run on tariffs though, and any voter didn't understand that leads to inflation can only blame themselves.
It's not a winner take all system. If a bunch of racists get elected to office, they can't just claim a "mandate" and declare the Civil Right Act null and void by refusing to enforce it. The President enforces all the laws, even the ones his voters don't support. If he wants to change them, he can sign a bill into law, he can veto a bill, but he can't pick and choose to enforce just Republican passed laws.