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WillyT Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-01-11 08:52 PM
Original message
Hypothetical... If A President, ANY President, Found Once He Got Into Office...
that we are no longer a Democracy, or a Republic, or a Democratic Republic...

Wouldn't it be his/her duty, to tell the American people?

Or would that duty be, to keep the people calm and insurrectionless?

Just wondering.

:shrug:


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RandomThoughts Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-01-11 08:53 PM
Response to Original message
1. Depends if you believe that people should self rule, even at a cost of some loss of security.
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Gman Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-01-11 08:55 PM
Response to Original message
2. Not if he/she wants to see a ripe old age.
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WillyT Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-01-11 08:59 PM
Response to Reply #2
6. And Again... That Proves My Point...
I've now had, three different times, instances where people here have told me that any President who actually spoke the truth would be eliminated.

So... by what reasoning do we call ourselves a Democracy???

:shrug:
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Raine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-01-11 08:56 PM
Response to Original message
3. It should be their duty but
I would bet for decades they have known it's not and have said nothing. :-(
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The Velveteen Ocelot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-01-11 08:56 PM
Response to Original message
4. How would he know?
Seems to me that the orchestrators of the coup, or whatever, would want to keep the president in the dark, too.
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WillyT Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-01-11 09:13 PM
Response to Reply #4
8. Again... THAT, Makes Us Not A Democracy !!!
:shrug:
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JackRiddler Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 03:46 PM
Response to Reply #4
31. How do we know?
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Honeycombe8 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-01-11 08:58 PM
Response to Original message
5. Whether the country has slid out of being a true Democratic Republic would be an opinion....
depending on one's viewpoint.

No one person can stand up and say "We are now a Communistic country!" or "We are now a fascist state!" That's a matter of opinion.

And if it comes to the point where it's not opinion, then everyone will know, anyway. The President won't be the ONLY one to know that.
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WillyT Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-01-11 09:12 PM
Response to Reply #5
7. True... But The President Could Possibly Be One Of The First To Know...
The question would be... when does he let "We The People" know?

We're the first concern of the constitution after all.

I think...

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.


Yeah... that's it.

:shrug:


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Honeycombe8 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 11:44 AM
Response to Reply #7
26. No, I don't think that's correct. He's in a bubble and focused instensely on
certain issues.

He is not pondering the state of affairs about whether our form of government is straying to be a different kind of government. That is, as I said, a subjective thing.

I would think it would be college professors who notice and conclude this first. They are the ones who study such things and keep an eye on the big picture of things like that.

But rest assured, our form of government is a democratic republic. Has been, and still is.

Corporations run everything. Has always been that way (well, the rich in our country have always run the country), and still is. That's because we're a democratic republic, instead of a pure democracy.
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treestar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-01-11 09:24 PM
Response to Original message
9. How would that be?
Maybe you need to start writing movie scripts.

Reality is not full of such drama. It can be tedious. Rather than plowing through pages and pages of laws, you get to just imagine these exciting scenarios.
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WillyT Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-01-11 09:28 PM
Response to Reply #9
10. I'm Sure To The Dull And Obedient It Seems That Way...
You didn't happen to catch this did you ???

Link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x101886

Well worth reading!

:hi:
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treestar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 11:49 AM
Response to Reply #10
27. Yes, it is dull to plow through all those laws
Much more entertaining to imagine wild scenarios.

We are entertaining ourselves to death.

And in fact, the "obedient" are those who won't even try to look into all that dull and tedious stuff, and prefer to be entertained.
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lunatica Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-01-11 09:35 PM
Response to Original message
11. It might be smart to question why anyone wants to be President just for starters
Perhaps Nixon was the one who actually told us when he said he was the most powerful man in the most powerful country in the world. Most of us, certainly myself, would never think we are good enough, or crazy enough or ambitious or smart enough to actually contemplate being President of this country.
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dflprincess Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-01-11 10:49 PM
Response to Original message
12. Before any candidate can even get the nomination I'm sure TPB
have figured out which ones will go along with the program once they're elected.

Next time, we should all pay more attention to the candidates the media ignores or tries to smear, rather than the ones the MSM covers all the time.

Thom Hartmann has pointed out that Dean's campaign faltered when the media turned on him & they didn't turn on him until he said something about restrictions on media ownership should be reinstated. Howard Dean was not a man the ruling class could count on.

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Dokkie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 09:47 AM
Response to Reply #12
20. so true
same with people like Kucinich, Nader and Paul. Anti war, antt corporation politicians are not welcomed to the big dance.
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MindPilot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 11:36 AM
Response to Reply #12
25. That was my tipping point.
I worked hard on the Dean campaign. Then when I watched the media destroy his candidacy literally in a matter of hours, I realized that the average citizen no longer has a place in the process. That's when I opted out. Now for me politics is just a spectator sport.
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patrice Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 12:14 AM
Response to Original message
13. If there were a situation that could result in the deaths of vulnerable Americans if revealed, but
Edited on Sun Jan-02-11 12:20 AM by patrice
about which there was a decent chance of mitigating some of the circumstances, I would not tell the people. I would do what I could to repair the damage, and encourage Americans to accept their responsibilities to know about and be involved in their own government, like Howard Dean does. I would trust them, or at least some of them, to figure out what is actually going on and to do something, hopefully something effective, about it.
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Time for change Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 12:31 AM
Response to Original message
14. A president's first duty is the the American people and their Constitution
If he finds people who are acting against our Constitution or other laws of our nation, it is his responsibility to enforce the law.
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Kablooie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 02:53 AM
Response to Original message
15. No. He must preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.
Nothing in there about informing the populace.

He may use whatever means he deems proper to uphold the oath.
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Time for change Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 09:41 AM
Response to Reply #15
18. His constitutional duties are to enforce the law
It seems to me that if our democracy was being subverted that would entail the breaking of laws, as well as some constitutional principles. Powerful figures would probably need to be arrested.

It seems to me that in that case it would behoove the president to make an announcement to the American people regarding what was going on.
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Warren DeMontague Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 03:02 AM
Response to Original message
16. Hey! What if he found out that we don't exist at all?
Edited on Sun Jan-02-11 03:02 AM by Warren DeMontague
That you are just a brain in a jar, dreaming everything, including this thread?

Or how about if he found out that everything in the universe was shrinking- at the same speed... how would we know?

They say the universe is expanding.. but expanding into what? Wouldn't it make just as much sense to say that it's staying the same size, and everything inside it is getting smaller?

And how can something that doesn't exist in something else have a "size", to begin with?

Hmmmmm. Hmmmmmm.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
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SidDithers Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 10:36 AM
Response to Reply #16
21. Perfect reply to nonsense like the OP...
:thumbsup:

Sid
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JoePhilly Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 11:19 AM
Response to Reply #16
23. You only made this reponse because I thought you did.
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eomer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 09:18 AM
Response to Original message
17. What if he knew he had become President by way of the same corruption
Edited on Sun Jan-02-11 09:20 AM by eomer
that makes us not a democracy?

What if his campaign had been bankrolled by Wall Street, insurance companies, and other large corporations and he had then time after time ignored the needs and wishes of the people in favor of whatever those sponsors wanted?

Wouldn't it then be his duty to tell us, look guys, we have a problem: your President doesn't work for you, he works for your corporate overlords?

:shrug:

Edit to add: hypothetically, of course.
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Azathoth Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 09:43 AM
Response to Original message
19. If we weren't a Democracy, it would be kind of hard for someone who wasn't "in" on the secret
to become President in the first place.
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alarimer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 11:12 AM
Response to Original message
22. If he did that, the corporations would kill him.
They need a toady in office. And they will do everything in their power to ensure they get one, including assassination or blackmail.

The corporations let Obama be elected because they knew all that populist rhetoric was a lie.

Every president has a cold wake-up call once he is in office as to who really runs the show. This is most assuredly not a democracy. It has NEVER been about the people. All that high-minded nonsense is to keep the peons from killing their betters. Throw us just enoug scraps to fool us into thinking we actually have some say in the matter. We do not; we never have.
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Tuesday Afternoon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 11:19 AM
Response to Original message
24. They are paid handsomely. It would behoove them to do so.
;)
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Nye Bevan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 12:22 PM
Response to Original message
28. What if the Minister of Magic visited him in the Oval Office Fireplace
to inform him that he was merely the *Muggle* President?
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Courtesy Flush Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 12:30 PM
Response to Original message
29. As an employee of the major corporations, he has to do what he is told. nt
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Motown_Johnny Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 12:36 PM
Response to Original message
30. then how did he or her get to be President?
I would think you would need that information in order to obtain the office.
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JackRiddler Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Jan-02-11 03:47 PM
Response to Original message
32. Wouldn't he have to be kind of slow not to have figured this out long before he got into office?
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