WTF? "Persecution complex"? I said you were attacking a strawman and then explained how it was a strawman. No "persecution complex" there.
You just won't let up on that strawman. No, I was not "making it about the two-party system" by saying both parties are attempting to suppress him. It was not the two-party system that was at issue in my post, but the united front they present against Paul. Naturally, I presume you understand that I am not talking about every person in those parties, but the people in charge of the party specifically. Average Americans, Democrat and Republican, are a lot less hostile towards Paul. It is not "Democrats and Republicans vs. Paul" but "Political elites vs. Paul" that I am talking about.
Are you taking pointers from CC now? It was not "equivocation" by any measure and I sure as hell didn't "confess" to it. On the other hand, when I say "the argument that those without the support of at least some of the elites are probably not electable" makes the cries about democracy misplaced and you respond that the "two-party system" doesn't make the cries about democracy misplaced, you are pretty obviously using a strawman argument as those two quotes are not interchangeable.
Whatever you want to believe. If it makes you feel happy to think of it as a strawman, have at it.
That is some piss-poor spin on your part. No, you were not supporting my position in any sense. You were attacking it from a different angle by going after strawmen.
Spin? Why would I need to spin anything?
The presidential election is not
meant to be decided democratically, nor was it
ever meant to be decided that way. I thought that it would be clear that I was not attacking Paul getting his delegates in the manner he did based on that point. Seriously, look at my quote from Federalist 68. Look at the words I wrote:
That being said, the cries about democracy are misplaced because the people were never truly intended to be the people voting for the president. The whole point of the electoral college was because the elites at the time didn't really trust the ignorant rubes to make those decisions. Federalist No 68 is pretty clear on that.
I added the bold, but the words are the same. I'm
supporting your assessment that the cries about democracy
are misplaced. I'm
supporting Paul's right to snatch away delegates form Romney if he can. If he can do it, more power to him. I'd be interested in seeing what actually
would happen if he got the Republican nod somehow.
There is more than one additional factor and that one was not even what I was thinking about. Making the vote proportional does not inherently make the system more democratic.
Well, in order to
truly make things more
democratic, we'd have to get rid of the republic altogether and become a direct democracy. I was focusing more on the "free and fair nature" definition you provided for "democratic nature". A proportional system would certainly be fairer than our current system, thus by the standard you had created, it
would inherently make the system more democratic.
Unless, of course, you have changed the meaning of "democratic nature" away from "free and fair" since that post.
Groups that evaluate the democratic nature of a system typically look at the role of the media. It is because ultimately the media can determine elections just by how they report on them. Journalistic integrity is thus a legitimate basis for determining the democratic nature of an election.
The media is
not what determines how free and fair a democracy is. It only affects
public opinion (which in turn affects the
results of an election in a democracy, but the only result that matters in the design of the system is that the people dictate what the results are).
But if the majority of a nation is ill-informed, they will vote
democratically in an ill-informed manner, even if their political system is a
direct democracy.
That's the problem with democracy: It's ultimately determined by the majority of the people and the majority of the people are easily led idiots. Madison et al
realized this, and attempted to mitigate it by having the "elite" be the ones who decide who becomes the president, rather than allowing the ignorant masses to decide democratically.
Don't get me wrong, I
agree that our media ****. I just place the burden of responsibility on the people who actually
buy the load of ****. The consumers of the media are the ones who create the
demand for the **** that the media is "selling" and that demand that keeps the **** flowing. If they weren't idiots, then the media wouldn't be designed to
appeal to idiots.