rsmurphy wrote: Sun Apr 27, 2025 3:01 pm

Dave N. wrote: Sun Apr 27, 2025 10:20 am I shouldn’t have eaten those old tamales.

A couple of weeks ago I was out and ran into, Claudio, The Tamale Guy, and bought a gang of cheese tamales. Totally forgot I purchased them and so they sat in the frigidaire (growing-up Big Mama, my great-grandmother, called the refrigerator "frigidaire." 'Hey, baby, go and get my garlic water from the frigidaire'), half-opened, for almost a week before I realized my error. Ate a couple. They were like rocks. Still ate 'em.

Now I'm thinking about my great-grandmother, Isabella "Big Mama" Bacchus. I grew-up with my mom, dad, siblings, grandmother (little mama), grandfather, great-grandmother (big mama), great aunt, great uncles, cousins. Big family. Pretty wild. Just the siblings are around now - brother and sister.

Don't forget your great-great-grandmother (ginoromous mama).

jimmy spako wrote: Sun Apr 27, 2025 3:25 pm Don't forget your great-great-grandmother (ginoromous mama).

My great-aunt was Marcella Cowart. She was Aunt Teeny!

How much strife could have been avoided if James Madison actually understood what the term "Republic" meant?

ErickC wrote: Sun Apr 27, 2025 9:16 pm How much strife could have been avoided if James Madison actually understood what the term "Republic" meant?

Keep going. I'm curious about the rest of this idea.

losthighway wrote: Sun Apr 27, 2025 10:05 pm

ErickC wrote: Sun Apr 27, 2025 9:16 pm How much strife could have been avoided if James Madison actually understood what the term "Republic" meant?

Keep going. I'm curious about the rest of this idea.

When James Madison wrote "A Republic, and not a Democracy," what he really meant was "A Constitutional Republic with Representative Democracy, and not Direct Democracy." Contrasting a republic and a democracy is a literal non-sequitur; the only alternative to a republic is a monarchy. Either a republic or a monarchy might be a democracy or it might not be (see: total monarchy, autocratic republic, et c.), but if your sovereignty is vested in the public and not a monarch passed on by inheritance, then you live in a republic. There are edge cases, some monarchies elect their monarchs (see: the Vatican), and some republics function more like monarchies (see: North Korea), but edge cases are edge cases.

This was generally understood even in Madison's time; the Commonwealth of England under the Cromwell government (no monarch, he be killded) was quite explicitly established as a republic and discourse throughout the centuries that followed used the same convention that political scientists use today, although it should be noted that direct democracy and republic were used pretty much interchangeably until the American revolution. Thus John Adams made the distinction between direct democracy and representative democracy in 1787. No problem, we had to make a distinction, so we made one, our republic is different, it uses a new kind of democracy. Then James Madison, whose ideas were otherwise good*, decided to fuck it all up, and people spout "tHe Us iS a RePUbLiC, NOt A DeMOcRaCY" to this day, and the losers at the Heritage Foundation use it as political drivel to drive the mosquito-brained masses into the neon light of voting away their own hard-earned representation.

Not all democracies are republics. Not all republics are democracies. Some are both. Some are neither.

*I mean, why would we protect minorities, amirite?

ErickC wrote: Sun Apr 27, 2025 11:05 pm and people spout "tHe Us iS a RePUbLiC, NOt A DeMOcRaCY" to this day, and the losers at the Heritage Foundation use it as political drivel to drive the mosquito-brained masses into the neon light of voting away their own hard-earned representation.

Shit yeah they do. Good stuff here, thanks for taking the time. I didn't realize Madison was at the root of this popular misunderstanding.