Quote:
Originally Posted by randolph
In the last election, a majority of the voters voted for universal health care, we are a "democracy" right?
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Wrong. We are a republic, not a democracy. Totally big difference there.
Main Entry: de?moc?ra?cy
Pronunciation: \di-ˈm?-krə-sē\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural de?moc?ra?cies
Etymology: Middle French democratie, from Late Latin democratia, from Greek dēmokratia, from dēmos + -kratia -cracy
Date: 1576
1 a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
2 : a political unit that has a democratic government
3 capitalized : the principles and policies of the Democratic party in the United States <from emancipation Republicanism to New Deal Democracy — C. M. Roberts>
4 : the common people especially when constituting the source of political authority
5 : the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges
Democracy=majority rule
Main Entry: re?pub?lic
Pronunciation: \ri-ˈpə-blik\
Function: noun
Etymology: French r?publique, from Middle French republique, from Latin respublica, from res thing, wealth + publica, feminine of publicus public — more at real, public
Date: 1604
1 a (1) : a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president (2) : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government b (1) : a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law (2) : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government c : a usually specified republican government of a political unit <the French Fourth Republic>
2 : a body of persons freely engaged in a specified activity <the republic of letters>
3 : a constituent political and territorial unit of the former nations of Czechoslovakia, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or Yugoslavia
Read the part in italics. "Governing according to law". Democracy is a system based on the wants of the collective. If enough people get pissed off or want something for some reason, it becomes law no matter how irrational it may be. This is why there is no mention of the word "democracy" anywhere in the US Constitution.
The word "republic" is mentioned because it denotes a system governed by a predetermined set of laws, in our case, The US Constitution. The Constitution is a construct and all the laws and powers of the government that is beholden to it must fit within the construct.
A government mandate of "universal healthcare" is inherently unconstitutional because it does not fall within what the powers of the government are entitled to do according to the United States Constitution.
Some will try to use this quote from the Preamble to justify "UH":
Quote:
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Originally Posted by The United States Constitution"
promote the general Welfare,
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and they will be wrong. Why you ask? Let's ask what some of the guys who WROTE the Constitution had to say about the "General Welfare" clause:
"They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare.... [G]iving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one...."
-- James Madison, letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792
James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, elaborated upon this limitation in a letter to James Robertson:
"With respect to the two words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the "Articles of Confederation," and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted."
"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."
--Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1817
Healthcare is an individual need and thus must be looked after by the individual himself, not by a government entity.