We actually don't live in a democracy...

A friend posted a link to this site on Facebook yesterday, Oligarchy USA "And you thought you lived in a Democracy" was the title/sub title.

My first instinct was of course to point out we don't live in a Democracy so anyone who thought they were, demonstrated how little they knew about our government in the first place. I did state the first part but not the second part.

It is however harder to argue that there is not some validity to no longer calling us a Republic but calling ourselves an Oligarchy. In theory we are supposed to elect representation, but in most cases we really have no choices. Political power games or money determines the winner more often than having elections based on who is really the best candidate.

Historically our founding fathers feared a true Democracy, which is why our government was set up as a Republic. That was supposed to save us, yet our founding fathers also did not support political parties or the concept of career politicians. We pride ourselves on "one person - one vote" but we don't elect presidents by a one person one vote system. It's the electoral college that has that power, which is contradictory to how we elect every other office.

We have a primary system but in most cases, there are no primary opponents. In 2008 it was reported that over 250 million adults over the age of 18 live in the United States; 131,257,328 voted in the 2008 presidential election, 208,323,000 have been reported as eligible to vote. This has been stated was the highest voter turnout in our nation's history with a little over 63% turnout.