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From: kort@hounx.UUCP (B.KORT)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Is America a Democracy
Message-ID: <489@hounx.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 12-Jan-86 13:43:17 EST
Article-I.D.: hounx.489
Posted: Sun Jan 12 13:43:17 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Jan-86 20:45:17 EST
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Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
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Brian Mahoney is correct.  The US Government is structered as
a Republic, meaning that a small number of representatives
make decisions on behalf of their electorate.  We call ourselves
a representative democracy because every adult citizen is entitled
to vote for his/her representative, although the voting strength
is not perfectly uniform across the populace.

In a society as large as the US, it would be impractical to have
a true democracy, because it would be infeasible for the citizenry
to adequately inform itself of all the issues at hand.  This is why
we trust our representatives to specialize in various kinds of legislation.
The price we pay is that from time to time, one of our specialists fails
to consider the concerns of a disadvantaged group.  Would that we had
the capacity to be fully informed at all times.  Alas, the human information
channel has finite capacity, which falls far short of the demands of a
true democracy.  --Barry Kort