US form of government not working anymore
A recent letter said that our republican form of government was purposely created by our Founding Fathers, who “took pains to distinguish republics from other forms of government, including democracy.”
What it fails to note is that our republican form of government is in fact a democracy, a representative democracy, but a democracy nonetheless, and as such is not a purely republican form of government, as the writer suggests and seems to prefer.
That said, the Founding Fathers were compelled to form a representative democracy because, in their time, the ability of voters to communicate directly with their government was severely limited in time and space, and as such elected representatives were necessary to communicate their constituents’ wants and needs to their government indirectly in the form of an elected legislature.
Today, the republican democratic form of representative government is somewhat antiquated, as California voters have repeatedly demonstrated via the initiative process that their preferences can and will be heard directly, and not filtered through elected representatives who generally have only their own and lobbyists’ interests in mind when they cast their votes.
Bottom line, the representative form of democratic government that the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us Americans is not working well in the modern age, and we now need a new form of government, aided by modern information technology, that more directly reflects the wants and needs of all Americans.
Roger Elmore
Beaufort
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This story was originally published December 22, 2017 at 6:00 AM with the headline "US form of government not working anymore."