“We have a constitution that lays down the laws for us. As a republic, the individual is protected. So the minority can be protected. It’s not just majority rules.”
"We don’t like that the majority that we don’t agree with rules. We want a christofascist theocratic dictatorship where the minority we agree with rules.
They don’t like democracy because they don’t win.
That’s the thing I’ve never understood about the “tyranny of the majority” folks, they’re just arguing that we should do what fewer people think is the right thing to do and that seems objectively worse. If a majority of people disagree with you then you either work to change their minds or be introspective and see if you need to change yours. Sometimes you’ll have to suck it up and deal with the fact that neither of those options will work but that’s just the way it is. There is no alternative that works in the long term.
The problem is the supremacy of the individual ideology. They don’t see themselves as members of a society who have to compromise to get along.
I believe in the rights of the individual, which is why I support free health care, education, and housing for all, so that every individual has a chance to succeed, no matter where they come from.
“No, not like that.”
Right, but the tyranny they’re taking about is other people having rights, and other people getting education, and other people getting healthcare, and other people having opportunities, and other people getting to vote. It isn’t that they are losing anything. They just don’t want people they think are inferior to be equal.
It doesn’t work like that, Personal opportunities are far more numerous in the states than Canada, if you’re willing to try,
There is such a thing as a tyranny of the majority but it’s just why we need ironclad rights
noooo…we’re busy aggressively misunderstanding the concept.
This is America it’s your right and national duty to do so sometimes. Gods know I do it myself. Carry on
They are also gonna hate when they move to Idaho and find it is one of the least pot friendly states in the country with dog shit schools.
The bad schools are by design. They want bad schools.
They love the poorly educated
“Tyranny of the majority” was an ur-fascist Republican mantra even when I was a kid. These people were always anti-democratic.
Yes. I love the, “The US isn’t a democracy, it’s a Republic!” crowd. A Republic is a form of representatives democracy. The majority elects representatives who then vote on behalf of their constituents. They speak with such confidence but are completely wrong.
EDIT: The definition of a republic is, “a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.” Ancient republics may have been different but we don’t live in the ancient world. Not every country that calls itself a Republic is a Republic. The DPRK and Republic of Iran, for example, are a dictatorship and a theocratic autocracy. They are not republics.
The People are the citizens of the state not the white people, or the Christian people, or the Republican people, or the people you agree with. The People are all of the people. It is only a Republic if every single citizen has the right to vote and equal access to the ballot box. If you are trying to disenfranchise people who don’t vote the way you want them to you’re not a Republican, you’re a RINO.
The People may only exercise supreme power if they freely and fairly elect their representatives. If you’re trying to limit the number of polling stations in areas where people don’t vote the way you want them to, or to stop counting of ballots before every ballot is counted, or to make it difficult to vote by mail, or early, or on Sunday you are not a Republican, you’re a RINO.
In a Republic, every citizen has the right to vote, their votes all carry the same weight, and they have equal access to the ballot box. If you don’t have those things not only are you not a democracy but you’re not a republic either.
I always wonder what type of Republic they are aiming for. The PRC? Or the Islamic Republic of Iran? The French or German Republic? I guess given their religious leanings they would prefer the Theocratic/Iranian style of Republic.
Just a technicality: Not all republics are democracies. A republic could be an oligarchy or a theocracy. The main division is between monarchy and republic.
The definition of a Republic is, “a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.”
If the people don’t elect their representatives and president then it’s not a Republic. The DPRK, for example, is not democratic and is therefore not a Republic. Autocracies are republics in name only.
I suppose it does depend on which definition one is using. The more academic definition puts them as contrasting with monarchies. With that, the DPRK and other autocracies world not be a republic, not due to a lack of democracy but due to a lack of representative-based government. “Representative” here meaning multiple individually who are ostensibly representing the public interest (frequently, this is someone that they fail to do).
What makes a republic democratic or not is HOW the representatives are appointed. In a theocratic republic, they could be appointed by the state church, for example.
The key factor is the supreme power the people exercise. No democracy, no supreme power of the people, no Republic.
No. That’s the defining factor of democracy which is derived from the Greek words “demos”, meaning “the people”, and “kratos”, meaning “rule”. That is “the people rule” or “rule of the people”.
Republic is derived from the Latin phrase “res publica”, meaning public affair. A republic does not, by definition, need to be democratic, just a form of government where representatives hold the political power to conduct affairs for the people, rather than being explicitly granted it by heredity or “divine mandate”.
That is not to say that non-democratic republics are a good, desirable, or have any sort of track record suggesting that they are good for their citizens. Just that the semantic meaning of words is important.
Could the US, and conservatives have been bleating for decades be a republic and not a democracy? No. The US Constitution clearly lays out that the system is intended to be a government of the people, for the people, making democracy a required component under the US Constitution.
I thought they were the “silent majority”
These fucksticks are anything but silent.
We don’t have a democracy, we are a constitutional republic
This is the new battle cry of American fascism.
The opening of the American Declaration of Independence literally states that the country is going to establish a government that derives “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
I asked him what he meant by that distinction.
“We have a constitution that lays down the laws for us. As a republic, the individual is protected. So the minority can be protected. It’s not just majority rules.”
Agreed, so we let homosexual couples get married, pregnant women make their own health care decisions, treat transgendered people with respect, and take measures to prevent at-risk individuals from getting a deadly virus.
The opening of the American Declaration of Independence literally states that the country is going to establish a government that derives “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
To play devil’s advocate, you could argue that’s why the Eastern Oregonian fascists should be allowed to join Idaho- because they don’t consent to be governed by the state legislature.
(Of course, the real problem is that these assholes are increasingly rejecting the concept of government altogether.)
I don’t understand this argument. The Declaration of Independence is not part of the constitution so it’s not part of a valid legal argument. as I understand it the Constitution does not give individual citizens the right to elect the State that governs them ( beyond by moving obviously).
You’re right, which is why the argument made is a moral one, not a legal one. If you want a more clear-cut example, think about the American South during the US Civil War. They no longer consented to being governed by Washington, so an argument could be made that the North was morally wrong to force the South to remain in the Union. However, as established in Texas v. White in 1869 there was no (and still isn’t) a legal mechanism for a state to leave the Union, therefore the South couldn’t legally secede.
The same legal precedent applies in this case as well. There isn’t any way (currently, anyhow) for states to redraw their boundaries, so even if allowing the eastern Oregon fascists to join Idaho is the morally-correct action (which is not a position I endorse, just presenting the reasoning) they don’t have a legal method of doing so.
The US is both a constitutional Republic and a democracy . In fact, the democratic part is included in the constitution.
These people support the electoral college because it benefits them almost exclusively. They don’t care about democracy.
The folks in Jackson and Josephine county, who want to join Idaho, are so anti-tax, they had to reduce police and fire services because they wouldn’t vote for local funding bonds.
These folks are going to be DRAMATICALLY surprised to learn, as Idahoans, they now have a 6% sales tax.
These are people who can’t follow simple health recommendations. Critical thinking isn’t going on upstairs.
I wouldn’t say Jackson or Josephine county “want” to join Idaho. There has not really been political talk or any votes for such a thing. The counties that want to join Idaho are east of Jackson county and have much smaller population. Anecdotally, everyone I know in both counties are proud Oregonians and would never vote for such a thing, even if they do hate Portland. The anti-tax sentiment is a separate issue all together.
Idaho residents will see an increase in taxes due to supporting all the new public schools, services and infrastructure. The newly acquired Oregon county residents will now have to pay income taxes. They will also bring a portion of the Oregon state debt that Idaho will now have to pay because Idaho’s constitution won’t allow state debt. Meanwhile the new smaller Oregon won’t have near as many welfare counties to support and will be able to lower the remaining residents taxes.
How many electoral college votes shift to Idaho along with the meth and Jesus counties? Because that’s always the reason these movements are really funded.
One. It’s basically all of the counties in Oregon’s second district.
Seems like a worthy trade, let’s do it.
They yearn for the “good 'ol days” of when Oregon Territory was a whites-only ethnostate.
This again? Hate to tell these rednecks but plenty of States have the urban/rural dichotomy. They ain’t special.
The greater Idaho movement is a meme and is just conservatives trying to cheat democracy further. There’s no real depth or nuance to it.
Idaho?
Prediction: Literally everything they are complaining about, will be an instance where they’re unhappy about the will of the majority of Oregonians
Brb
Edit: Yeah pretty much
Crook county voted for Donald Trump, a Republican governor, against decriminalising drugs and against restrictions on gun ownership. The state went the other way every time.
Fuckin’ democracy
They want to get rid of agriculture
you need to drive an electric car
Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that my government would say, ‘You can’t go to church.’”
IDK, man. I do kind of get it; I think the underlying complaint is probably more just that no one likes feeling like everyone in their community looks at it one way, and there’s a force from outside preventing them from doing it that way when they mostly want to (like drug legalization, or having to wear masks or closing churches during Covid). That part honestly does make some sense to me.
I’d be curious how much is some real agriculture or legislative issue where they actually were being overridden, and how much is culture-war bullshit that doesn’t impact their daily lives in any way except when they see it on the propaganda-news that’s trying to get them all riled up. But I had more sympathy reading about it than I thought I would.
Crook County
Nominative determinism strikes again.
All of these come down to, “we want the right to keep fucking everyone else with externalities while enjoying the benefits of outsourcing those costs,” which, no sympathy. Grow up, people.
Boy would they be shocked with the tollroad that would be built on the Cascades charging a toll on all their farm trucks to get to port.
LET THEM JOIN IDAHO!!!
CASCADIA NOW!!!
The United States has he right to travel. There is nothing stopping them from moving to Idaho.
Yeah, but, y’see, actual Idaho kinda sucks. They want the benefits of being in a blue state while complaining about it.
Correct.
Honestly, yah.
See how much they want it when they have to start paying tariffs to ship their potatoes into the US.
Or trying to find a doctor.
? That’s not how tariffs work. the purchaser pays it.
Democracy works well when people have similar general goals and just disagree about how to accomplish them. It doesn’t work well when people have opposing goals. Thus I have a lot of sympathy for these people even though I disagree with their politics. Why should they have to follow the rules set by culturally dissimilar coastal cities far away rather than the rules set by much more similar and much closer Idaho?
If I could remake the US government from scratch, I think I might create something like the self-governing cities of medieval Europe. The Democratic/Republican divide is largely an urban/rural one, and this way both the urban and the rural areas would have the local governments and the representatives that the majority wanted. Real-world state lines do a poor job of demarcating regions where most of the people have similar values. A better system is possible, but in practice there’s too much inertia to make such large changes.
What happens to queer people who happen to be born in rural areas, in your model?
They die, of course.
So do the poor and anyone who has the misfortune of not being born a rich landowner.
There are already solid-red states with no blue urban areas. I suppose it’s technically true that people die in these states (all humans are mortal) but the implication that everyone there except rich landowners is likely to die prematurely is ridiculous.
Do you not know that life expectancy is lower in the crappy states? They’re at the level of third world countries.
The same thing that already happens to most of them now, I suppose: their basic rights are protected by the Constitution but if they want to live in a community that welcomes them then they might need to move. In the specific situation this article is about, the queer people in eastern Oregon would have to deal with the same issues that the queer people in Idaho already deal with.
In general, I sympathize with the desire to rescue people from the customs of their community, but I don’t think that doing so by imposing our customs on their community is a good idea except in the most extreme cases. It violates the golden rule: I wouldn’t want outsiders imposing their customs on me, even if someone in my community was being mistreated according to the customs of those outsiders. It also doesn’t seem to work very well in practice. It has failed in extreme cases like the US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and I fear that it is currently failing in the USA.
Do you realize that you are comparing the crappier parts of the US to Afghanistan? It’s like you’re shitting on yourself. You can move to Afghanistan if you like that culture. We’re not going to give away human rights to protect your feefees.
“Don’t kill queer people,” is outsiders imposing their opinion. A constitution that applies to everyone doesn’t necessarily follow what locals are going to want to do.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Under a large tent at the Crook county fairgrounds in Prineville, Oregon, six people stand in a neat line, each clutching the gun in their holster.
The presidency of Donald Trump and the Covid pandemic have heightened divisions – with different groups starkly diverging on how they think the state should move forward.
Moving the state lines is a tall order, given that both Oregon and Idaho legislatures would have to agree, along with the respective governors, and then for Congress to approve the matter.
He and his wife lived in Portland, Oregon’s largest city, for 20 years before moving east because on “almost every issue”, abortion, LGBTQ+, guns, drugs, McCaw was opposed to the progressive measures enacted by state legislators.
Outside the courthouse one Sunday, I chatted with Priscilla Smith, chair of the county’s Democrats, who was leading a small rally against the Greater Idaho movement.
Mike McCarter, the president of the Greater Idaho movement, was leading a prayer at the start of a question-and-answer session hosted by McCaw at the Crook county library in Prineville.
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