Streaming Liberty: Professor Milton Friedman- 'United States Is Not a Democracy'

 

Source:Streaming Liberty- Professor Milton Friedman, talking about American democracy.

"Compare the Attributes of Liberty vs. 'Soft' Tyranny at:Streaming Liberty." 

From Streaming Liberty

What is America? This is a question thats been debated as long as we've been an independent nation but it's a good question, because a lot of Americans have their own answers to this important question. 

Conservative-Libertarians have always seen America as a constitutional republic that protects individual freedom and I believe Libertarians believe the same thing. 

Liberals see America as a democracy where we have constitutional rights to protect our individual freedom. 

Democratic Socialists (or Social Democrats) of course wished we should be a socialist democracy with a Constitution that protects our individual freedom, except for the economy, but with a welfare state in the form of Sweden thats a lot a lot larger then ours. 

Christian-Nationalists, I believe would like to see us become a Christian Theocracy or a Christian Republic where their interpretation of the bible becomes our Constitution. 

Actually, I see it were are none of those things but we have aspects of what Conservatives, Liberals and Libertarians see America as. We are not a majoritarian democracy, where everything is ruled by majority vote, just look at the Electoral College or the U.S. Senate as proof. I believe Democratic Socialists would like to see us move in that direction and they would see a lot more of their policies become law. Things like Congress or just the House deciding who the President (to use as example) and Congress essentially becomes a Parliament and we perhaps even eliminate the Senate. 

We're clearly not a theocracy (thank God! pun intended) in any form which is a great thing from my perspective and we do have Separation of Church in State, whether its written in the Constitution or not. We are clearly a constitutional republic where we have a working Constitution that works very well from my perspective, with civilians not military leaders, or religious leaders or monarchs running our government. And we clearly have check and balances in our government, which again from my perspective is a good thing. 

So what is America what type of country are we with what type of government? I see America as a liberal democracy and I'm not just saying that because I'm a Liberal Democrat but because its true. We are a country with a Constitution that governs how our government can operate, which is good and protects our individual freedom which is what we have protected by the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. 

Because of our constitutional individual rights, this means that we can essentially live our own lives (at least free adults) as long as we are not hurting any innocent person with our freedom. I actually believe we should have more individual liberty but thats a different posts. We are individualist not collectivist that Socialists prefer as a society and we can make our own decisions with our own lives. Everything from where we work to making our own health care decisions to where we shop and live, etc. Government doesn't make these decisions for us but we make them for ourselves. 

Thats what liberty in a liberal democracy looks like: that people can live their own lives, even if a majority of the people believe we shouldn't do certain things in our lives because they don't like them. 

America is republic in the form of a liberal democracy meaning we are not completely run by majority rule that you would see in a majoritarian republic. But where we can live our own lives because we have the constitutional rights to do so and where we can live our own lives. Without being harassed by government because of our constitutional protections.