Utah To Teach USA is a Republic, Not a Democracy

0ryan0 writes "Utah lawmakers passed a bill today to force public school teachers to teach that the USA is a republic, not a democracy, because a 'Democracy' would have 'Democrat' in it." The good news must be that all issues of unemployment, finance and social service must be resolved in Utah for their legislature to spend time on this. It must be a utopia!

Re:Democracy is...

[RogueyWon]

Indeed, if you want to look at the history of actual full-fledged democracies, you can find the kind of brutalities that would make even the average despot blush. [wikipedia.org]

Re:Representative Republic

[Anonymous Coward]

no... if you read the comments by the primary sponsor in the article, you'll see that he's "protecting" the children from "socialism".... it's 100% about politics, not about truly educating children.

Re:Technically...

[nharmon]

No, we are not a representative democracy. In a representative democracy majority rules all at all times. We do not have that by virtue of our constitution, making us a constitutional republic.

Re:Technically...

[ynp7]

Wrong again, Bob. From the fucking dictionary [reference.com]: 1. a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them. 2. any body of persons viewed as a commonwealth. 3. a state in which the head of government is not a monarch or other hereditary head of state. 4. ( initial capital letter ) any of the five periods of republican government in France. Compare First Republic, Second Republic, Third Republic, Fourth Republic, Fifth Republic. 5. ( initial capital letter, italics ) a philosophical dialogue (4th century b.c.) by plato dealing with the composition and structure of the ideal state.

Re:Sumary just a *teeny* bit biassed

[Pumpkin Tuna]

The problem is that a state legislature is politicallh micro-managing individual curriculum decisions because they are worried that teachers are too "red." The different forms of government are already taught. In the real world outside of Utah, state boards of education get together a group of experts, teachers and sometimes even parents to come up with a comprehensive curriculum that is then revised every few years as needed. If this trend continues, I suppose we can look forward to the next few bills: HB221 - Mandates the teaching of teaching of 2 + 2 = "Ronald Reagan" HB222 - Dinosaurs to be referred to as "Jesus Horses" HB223 - Students must chant,"USA, USA, USA" at the beginning of all U.S. Government classes. HB224 - Kindergarteners taught that sharing is Socialist.

Really?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the socialist minister who wrote the pledge would call us a republic. The "pledge" wasn't even official until 1942, so why would you ever consider it as a worthy source of what kind of government our founders created?

I have to wonder why people are so eager to remove remove references of democracy from our government. Oh that's right, these are republicans, whose goal has long been for money to decide our representatives in the republic and they have largely succeeded. Yet we still have elections, in which we democratically elect our representatives in the republic. If we remove the democracy, we will still be a republic, and yet all will be lost.

Re:editorialize much?

[LWATCDR]

You left out the bigoted addition from Cmdr Taco. Man what is next From the harder than getting money out of Jew department?
Really Cmdr Taco that is really just not cool.

I pledge allegiance ...

[daveywest]

... and to the republic for which it stands ...

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Re:Plato

[KarrdeSW]

Plato, in Athens, Greece [Where] in about 340 b.c. was the one who came up with the idea. And had some original thoughts on the issue. One may argue that "Democracy" means something different now [becaue words do change] but you should realize that the distinction is very old.

Well, Plato did write what we commonly call in English The Republic, but that is considered an inaccurate translation of the original title Politeia. The republic/democracy distinction being established by Plato is also silly, because his distinction is democracy (by people)/monarchy (by one)/oligarchy (by the elite)/timocracy (by property owners).

And even Plato doesn't lump constrict democracy into "direct referendum on practically everything". It's a looser term in his work as well. No part of ancient athens even fits that definition, except possibly their secondary political body, which only included men over 20 anyway (this amounted to about 1/8th the population). The primary bodies of government were the public officials who were chosen by lottery.