Quote:
Originally posted by cool_chick
And this.....my Pelican friends....is why we're not a democracy, but rather a republic.
Our founding fathers were wise....
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Unfortunately, the US government has slowly (most of the time) drifted from being a real republic to what is essentially a democratic unitary executive, with the legislative branch bickering over domestic spending spoils while the executive is given billions in military spending and foreign aid to spend with nearly no oversight of any kind.
The key events or Constitutional changes were Lincoln's two terms, which created the unitary executive upon demand, and the 16th and 17th Amendments, and of course the Supreme Courts rulings for the last 100 years granting huge increases in executive and legislative power to the government, with no method for the states to check that power.