As you just saw, widely-diverse American political groups acknowledge that self-government is the core of our way of government.
In fact, the earliest form of American democracy, the town meeting is precisely that. Eventually, the state got large enough to require representative government. But the representatives were dependent on the consent of the governed. The idea predates the Constitution. Would you like to see that?
Recall, referendum, and initiative are exactly that. And yes, various officials have tried to undo self-government. It's always a tension between the people and representatives, who are tempted to defy them.
The problem is, the things you are posting do not go against what I was saying. Let us go back to the claim you made that started this.
I said:
"While in some cases such referendums are good, I think there is actually reason to be wary of the citizens making decisions directly on such things because they generally have far less understanding of what things entail than the legislators--various referendums are carefully written to seem less extreme in the wording than they actually are. It's much easier to fool voters with that sort of thing than legislators."
Note that I was talking specifically about referendums here. In response,
you said:
"The founders assumed that people are better at governing themselves than rulers are."
I am not sure why the founders' views on this are particularly important, but you brought them up. But remember this was in response to my comments on referendums, where I was talking about the difference of a law via referendum and a law via representatives.
In response, I pointed out how this was not the case, as there are no referendums at all in the federal government; people have no direct say in bills, and their role is indirect in that they elect the people who choose the bills. Even the election of the people who choose the bills was only direct in the House of Representatives, and was indirect in the Senate, as they were elected by state legislatures, and was supposed to be indirect for the President (this failed rather quickly because the electoral college became robots and the election became direct, as I said, but it was the
intent that it would be indirect). This was deliberate: The founders thought the people should have a serious say in government, but believed that you needed elected rulers to try to curb the worst aspects of populism, and that a lot of those elected rulers should only be indirectly elected by the people to further curb it.
Now, one thing I didn't address, and perhaps I should, is that perhaps what you meant was that "ruler" specifically meant to a leader like a king, which the people had no say in, not even indirect, and that "better at governing themselves" included the system of voting for people to rule over you. The problem with that is that if that was the intent, it simply doesn't address my point at all, because I was talking about referendums, which again do not exist in the system the founders set up. In other words, if you were saying they thought the people themselves should have the final say even over their own representatives, the answer is no (as shown by the various indirect elections), and if you were talking about them thinking that people should have elected representatives rather than kings, that would be true but irrelevant to my point.
You then replied
here to refer to some sources talking about the US having self government. The problem, however, is that you were specifically talking about the ideas of the founders, not modern ideas. Modern ideas do not reflect their beliefs necessarily. The first does say some things about them, but the reference to self-government in it was not by any quote of any of them (the actual quotes only were on the general idea that the government requires consent by the people in contrast to an unelected king). Granted, one can find the phrase self-government among the founders' writings. However, once again, the idea of self-government they had in mind is
not the form of self-government of referendum, but rather self-government in the sense that they get to choose their leaders from among themselves.
I attempted to clarify my thoughts on that
here, mentioning again how the people in the federal government do not pass their own laws, but instead elect people who then pass the laws. You then responded with the post I quoted at the start of this message.
With all of the context re-established, let's look at your newest reply.
As you just saw, widely-diverse American political groups acknowledge that self-government is the core of our way of government.
But we were talking about the opinions of the founders. "Widely diverse American political groups" in the present do not reflect the opinions of the founders (which is perfectly fine, as some of their opinions were incorrect--their lack of foresight on the effects of political parties is the root of most of the issues with the Constitution).
Now, both they and those "widely diverse American political groups" acknowledge self-government in the sense of the people having an actual say in the government and the government being run by people taken from it--but again,
that's not what I was talking about. I was talking about the people straight up bypassing any representatives system and just electing their own laws.
In fact, the earliest form of American democracy, the town meeting is precisely that. Eventually, the state got large enough to require representative government. But the representatives were dependent on the consent of the governed. The idea predates the Constitution. Would you like to see that?
But we were not talking about "town meetings". We were talking about the US government and what the founders wanted to do with it. They clearly were not looking for town meetings. If they wanted to approximate that, they would've at least had the Senate be properly elected rather than by state governments.
Recall, referendum, and initiative are exactly that. And yes, various officials have tried to undo self-government. It's always a tension between the people and representatives, who are tempted to defy them.
It is true that recall, referendum, and initiative are something that one sometimes sees in self government. But that form was not what the founders intended. That is why they deliberately set up a system that not only had no referendums, but did not even give the people direct choice of their representatives outside of the House. They recognized people should have a say in the government, but feared the effects of populism and tried to mitigate against it. The fact some individual states
later on set up systems of referendums does not go back in time and change their opinions or goals.
