Letters to the Editor

By:

Posted: 6/4/08

Response to editorial

U.S. is not a democracy

This is a response to the editorial in the June 3 Barometer titled "No longer a democracy?"

The United States isn't a democracy, hasn't been for a long time if ever, and never will as long as I have breath in my body and bullets for my AK-47. Our country was modeled after the republic of the Roman empire. Their form of government served them well for a long time. It is in the pledge of allegiance too. Does "and to the republic for which it stands" ring a bell? If you consider what a republic is and how it works, there shouldn't be any confusion. Now to the way things ought or not be, since you're probably thinking, "Well, it should be a democracy." It ought not be "majority rules." "Majority rules" and "democracy" are just euphemisms for "mob rule."

Those are cool if you don't care about liberty and freedom and want to screw over minorities. Benjamin Franklin said that democracy is like two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for lunch and that liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. I hope that clears up your confusion. If not, I could be persuaded to write a series of columns about interesting history and politics in our country, their impact on the present, and the true problems behind the mere symptoms that people believe are problems. For example, take your broken political party confusion. Political parties ought not exist in the first place. When George Washington left office he cautioned against political parties and foreign entanglements. If people listened to him, we wouldn't have screwed the pooch in Vietnam, Korea or Iraq among other things.

Bill Brooks

graduate student, chemical engineering

Response to editorial

Easy to criticize, harder to construct

Your editorial was unfair to the Democratic National Committee's ruling on the Michigan/Florida debacle. Your editorial made it clear how important this process is, how vital the right to vote. Clearly such a process needs rules, and the DNC had instituted such rules as they saw fit; it was both their prerogative and obligation.

I will wholeheartedly agree that the punishment was unfair; just as an unjust law is not "good law," as such is an unjust punishment, and while I will stand by the DNC's decisions to create rules for those who try to play the process for their own gains, the punishment they attributed to the rule's breaking was extreme and foolishly harsh.

But those rules were in place and the rules broken; that has happened and cannot be changed. What your editorial failed to do was provide a valid solution to the problem that has arisen. It is easy to criticize, it is much harder to construct.

To count all of those votes would be foolish; as you mentioned, the frontrunner was not even on the Michigan ballot! And what about the untold thousands that did not vote, told that their vote was not going to count?

The solution is a revote. But then that brings with it its own problems: who pays for it? The taxpayers? That is not fair nor wise. The party? They were merely enforcing the rules they created to protect the system. And if a revote is held, you ultimately reward the states that broke the rules by making them kingmakers in the end. The results without a revote is unfair, the results of a revote unfair. The DNC is doing the best they can with a messy situation and will surely work hard to ensure such situations don't arise in the future.

Tucker Rossetto

junior, political science