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[sprinkled chariot]

Are there any republicans among bayerz?

[Descan]

I don't know about card-carrying but there are a few conservative Bay12 members.

I think I recall one or two people confessing to be a Republican ;P

[penguinofhonor]

.

[mainiac]

Why do you presume that I want said change to be outside of the normal, legal, channels?

I dont.

[Orange Wizard]

But it's not exactly democratic to agree to a set of rules (implicitly or explicitly) and then make major revisions. 

Um... yes, it is? If the population wants to change the rules, that's the whole point of democracy.

Democracy isn't the same as majoritarian, even when the majority is justified.

Well, representative democracy basically is. People vote for the person whose policies they like (ideally). Direct democracy, or running referendums, is exactly that. The majority wins a referendum. If that's not "majoritarian" I don't know what the hell majoritarian even means.

[mainiac]

When the majority favors making sodomy illegal but the constitution doesn't allow that discrimination, democracy is the supreme court overturning that ban.  The people agree to a constitution which allows for protections of the minority.  They agree to democracy, not majority rule.

[Orange Wizard]

What? That's not what democracy means.

Democracy is further defined as (a:) "government by the people; especially : rule of the majority

That seems pretty straightforward, no?

Having an immutable constitution is therefore undemocratic because it disallows majority rule (in some cases). Whether or not this is a good thing is up for debate, but telling me that majority rule and democracy are completely different things is rather silly when the entire point of democracy is majority rule.

[mainiac]

Who said anything about an immutable constitution?

Democracy is more then voting.  Power derives from from the consent of the governed but there's always the issue of where you are drawing the line.  You are saying that one geographic areas majority counts as a democracy.  Well other geographic areas would disagree.  It's a natural distinction what with Puerto Rico being an natural one but it's still an arbitrary distinction.  If one included the whole country, there isn't a mandate. These issues are important.  What do you do when the post-Soviet block wants one thing, Georgia wants another, Ossetia wants something different from Georgia and South Ossetia wants something different from Ossetia?

I happen to think that Puerto Rico should have statehood by the way.  But we should see both sides of the argument.  At the end of the day you need to balance the concerns and it's hard to balance concerns that you refuse to acknowledge.

[Orange Wizard]

Who said anything about an immutable constitution?

I was under the impression that the US constitution was immutable.

You are saying that one geographic areas majority counts as a democracy.  Well other geographic areas would disagree. ... At the end of the day you need to balance the concerns and it's hard to balance concerns that you refuse to acknowledge.

Uh... foreign relations? That's not democracy either. What? I swear your argument changes every time I address it.

If the decision in question is between two countries (or one country and an unintegrated territory, in this case), the democratic way is to have both countries run a referendum and go through with whatever they agree upon.
Obviously this is really inefficient so we just use an elected foreign minister or whatever to negotiate and then ratify it later, which is less democratic but 90% of the time the effects are small enough that it doesn't really matter that much.

In the Puerto Rico case, we know that they want to be integrated as a state. We don't really have a good handle on what the average American thinks, because apparently referendums are too hard to organise there. Which means the responsibility falls to the elected officials - Congress - who are refusing to address the issue. In other words, they're refusing to address the concerns of people they are called to represent.
Now you might argue that no, Congress doesn't represent Puerto Rico because Puerto Ricans don't get to vote. That makes the whole thing even more undemocratic. They're not getting representation because representation is denied to them, and representation is pretty darn important when it comes to a representative democracy.

[mainiac]

Georgia was a part of the soviet union.  Georgia did not want to be part of the Soviet Union.  Ossetia was part of Georgia.  Ossetia wants to be part of Russia (possibly, it's complicated).  South Ossetia is part of Ossetia.  South Ossetia wants to be part of Georgia (possibly, it's complicated).

One could no doubt go down further and further, at some point, a boundary has to be drawn and some majority is not going to get what they want.

My stance is that we should appreciate that democracy is a complicated, multi-faceted issue.  It's not changing the argument to show different aspects of that.

[redwallzyl]

a glimpse of the future.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/10/473709316/boston-globe-runs-fake-front-page-detailing-a-donald-trump-world

[mainiac]

It repeats that old fallacy about a Chinese sell off of treasuries inevitably tanking the Dow.

Apparently the entire world missed the memo that China has started selling those bonds: http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/16/investing/us-debt-dumped-foreign-governments-china/
Meanwhile the stock markets have held steady.  So whoops :/

Although the dow probably would tank for other reasons.

[Morrigi]

Who said anything about an immutable constitution?

I was under the impression that the US constitution was immutable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution

[Descan]

I happen to think that Puerto Rico should have statehood by the way.  But we should see both sides of the argument.  At the end of the day you need to balance the concerns and it's hard to balance concerns that you refuse to acknowledge.

Trusting Wikipedia, I think PR should have another referendum, one that actually includes all options. The option to develop their current relationship as a commonwealth rather than stay a territory, become independent, become an associated sovereign state with 'Murrica, or become an American state... The developed commonwealth idea was one that many people seemed to desire but was not included in the ballot, and a lot of people seemed to have augmented their ballot to reflect that.

[mainiac]

It does have the problem though that if there are 4 options, it's less likely any of them will be a majority.