Instigator / Pro
3
1500
rating
3
debates
66.67%
won
Topic
#4753
The US does not stand for freedom and democracy
Status
Finished
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
Winner & statistics
Winner
3
0
After 3 votes and with 3 points ahead, the winner is...
WillyB
Parameters
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 3
- Time for argument
- One day
- Max argument characters
- 10,000
- Voting period
- Two weeks
- Point system
- Winner selection
- Voting system
- Open
Contender / Con
0
1469
rating
341
debates
40.91%
won
Description
The US has long said that it’s the leader of the free world, this has been accepted without question by many who believe in US exceptionalism and is topic that needs to be discussed
Round 1
Pro
#1
The US doesn’t stand up for freedom or democracy in any of the relevant criteria. Firstly, democracy can be defined as ‘a system of governance in which the people directly decide or elect representatives to decide on issues’ and freedom can be described as ‘adherence to the agreed human rights in the UN’. The USA doesn’t lead, and many cases fails miserably, in providing freedom and democracy, both domestically and abroad.
- Domestically: the USA is both a democracy and a republic, these terms are not mutually exclusive and the US is best described as a representative democracy. The US electoral system is fundamentally undemocratic in its nature, as seen in recent years, like 2016 where Trump won despite gaining 3 million less votes nationally. The electoral college allowed the loser of the popular vote to win overall, this is clearly not democratic and against the will of the people. Furthermore, the amount of wasted votes is disgraceful, for a Republican living in California or a Democrat in Utah there’s literally zero point voting in a general election, as the result is not even decided, thus on a national stage a Californian republican has no say in the presidency as 100% of Californias electors will give the vote to the Democrats. This shows a further point of a lack of democracy, that all electoral college votes go to the winner of the states plurality, such as Arizona in 2020, Biden won just over 49% of the vote (0.3% more than Trump) yet 100% of the electoral college points, showing that the majority of the Arizona electorate were unrepresented in the general election in 2020. In addition to this faithless electors are a problem, there were 7 in 2016 who completely went against the people’s will and choice, which whilst not a huge problem, shows the lack of democracy in the electoral colleges nature. The Supreme Court is also a beacon of illegitimacy and undemocratic. 9 unelected judges are making decisions contrary to the elected representatives wishes and mandate. Whilst the constitution needs to be upheld, going against the Presidents mandate, like over debt relief to students, is clear breach of democracy, add to this the overall partisanship and lack of ethics the court shows, in its justices acceptance of gifts and favours from rich donors and overall agenda, shows its lack of independence and neutrality and that it has become an active political branch of government creating its own rules and decisions against the will of the American people.
- Foreign affairs: the USA is not the leader of the free world. It is instead the biggest nuisance and interferer. 73% of dictatorships received US weapons, funds or training (as of 2017) including those of Saudi Arabia (who are committing human rights violations in Yemen, considered genocide by Human rights Watch), Djibouti and Qatar. This clearly doesn’t back up the claims of supporting freedom and democracy that the US likes to portray globally, instead one of a nation that actively supports dictatorships that are committing genocide and grotesque human rights violations. The US bitterly supports the democratic state of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East according to them, which is committing acts of genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian population. The two-tier citizenship system in Israel, as well as numerous removal of Palestinian settlements and ignorance of religious beliefs and needs, has lead to the US congress overwhelming supporting Israel, claiming it’s not a racist state or an apartheid one. The USA showing how passionately it bows down to the Israel lobbyists, rather than listening to Amnesty or the UN human rights watch. Furthermore, the US has a history of meddling in other nations elections, usually through the CIA. The US funded anti-communist propaganda in Italy, making up lies and untruths about the party and its members in order to secure an electoral win for the right-wing party, in 1996 the CIA pushed pro-right wing propaganda in Mongolia and gave money to unite the centrist and right leaning parties against the communist party. This is again showing the USA opposing free and fair elections in foreign nations, as well as completely stopping them like in Vietnam in 1956 which then lead to a bloody and regretful imperialist war from the USA, in which they committed numerous war crimes. In addition, the US is fond of overthrowing elected leaders. This can be seen with the CIA sponsored coup against Allende in Chile ( who was democratically elected) and replacing him with a right-wing dictator, General Pinochet, who suppressed freedoms of people and murdered thousands of innocent people, the USA also overthrew the Hamas lead government of Palestine in 2006, by funding, arming and training opposition parties and fighters leading to hundreds of deaths and the democratically elected Hamas losing its governance and mandate. The list of US involvement in election interference, support of cruel dictators and overthrowing of governments that don’t always agree with the US, is almost neve ending and stretches nearly all the countries in the world, including ones with seemingly no importance like San Marino in 1964. The US has not been the leader of the free world and democratic principles on the world stage as long as it continues its support of dictatorships, apartheid regimes, interfering in other countries elections making them not free and fair and overthrowing democratically elected governments, not to mention the numerous direct military interventions like Iraq and Vietnam that killed millions of innocent people on false pretences in both cases, as well as the continued drone striking that kills innocent civilians. This clearly shows the US to not be the free world leader, but instead the largest superpower who bullies other countries and bends them to its own will for its selfish personal gain and interests.
The USA does not stand for democracy, it’s only ranked as the 30th most democratic nation and described as a flawed democracy by The Economist, or freedom, for example ranking 45th in freedom of the press ratings behind countries like Seychelles, East Timor and Latvia. The US doesn’t disperse democracy or freedom to the globe instead stripping countries, like Guatemala, of its democratically elected leader and replacing him with Pro-United Fruit Company leaders, putting the wants of a multi-national corporation over the needs of Guatemalans. This is clearly showing how the USA does not stand for democracy or freedom.
Round 2
Con
#4
The US does stand for freedom and democracy. The US as in the United States stands and represents people voting, electing folks, called democracy. In turn giving laws such as abortion giving women freedom to tamper with the population. Another law in effect to allow same sex marriage to tamper with the same.
Then the freedom with all sorts of recreation with drugs, alcohol, buying sex, cars, houses, clothes, walking here amd there , taking a trip , cohabitating, investing, there's all sorts of things. Walking down the block, going to the park , feeding the ducks, etc.
I can make a broad list just based on the broad topic.
"Firstly, democracy can be defined as ‘a system of governance in which the people directly decide or elect representatives to decide on issues’ "
"the USA is both a democracy"
I don't have to say anything further. You agree with my stance . You said what the USA is which conflicts the topic.
Debate over.
Round 3
Pro
#5
Reading your response you clearly didn’t bother, or you’re not able to read what I said. I said that the US is a massively flawed in its democratic system, e.g the popular vote not being relevant in electing the president, thus making the US inherently undemocratic.
And to the ‘freedoms’ you states, again clearly you didn’t bother to read the outline I gave for freedom, and that’s fine. But the right to abortion isn’t protected anymore and has been restricted in many Red states, so that right you stated is irrelevant. You mentioned the freedom to take recreational drugs, again this freedom isn’t allowed in many states where drug consumption is prohibited. Furthermore, the US drinking age is higher than most of the other western nations like the UK or France, therefore in that sense the US has less freedom, in your definition, than it’s European friends. You also mentioned the freedom to walk here and there, again does a woman have this freedom alone late night? Or an African American have the safety from an unwarranted and unfounded arrest from a police officer? The answer is, in lots of cases, no. You also mentioned buying sex, which is illegal in every state, except Nevada, so this seems to not be a freedom many Americans have, Unlike the Dutch or Greeks who do have this full freedom, showing that even by your standards the US doesn’t stand for freedom.
You also didn’t refute any of the US foreign policy claims, so I assume you concede that on a world stage, that the US doesn’t stand for freedom and democracy, thus you agree in this sense with my point, therefore meaning that you think the US doesn’t stand for freedom and democracy.
Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:
Not much of a debate. I'm afraid I have to disagree with the claim of the topic and the Pro personally. But the fact is that They at least made an argument. Con forfeited the first round, only provided half of a dispute, and refused to participate further. Pro gets my vote by default since Con did not do much to counter their points.
Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:
Con mentions that the US is a democracy, which Pro concedes. However, Con's case doesn't talk much about freedom or show how the US stands for either—being a democracy and standing for democracy are technically different things, unless Con makes an argument for how one should necessarily constitute the other. Pro's framework is more developed, and they argue that while the US is meant to be a democracy, it acts undemocratically and against the interests of freedom in a number of ways. Even if the democracy point is largely a semantic dispute, the resolution is affirmed if the US does not stand for freedom, because then it would not be standing for both freedom and democracy. Pro goes into a lot of detail on foreign policy here, which Con fails to negate. Even if the US does stand for freedom and democracy in some ways, I'm interpreting this resolution as referring to how the US acts most of the time (I think that's the most reasonable reading), unless Con makes an argument for why the resolution should be interpreted differently.
Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:
Con chose the route of cherry picking out of context, while wholly dropping the related contentions. This leaves the USA as not the leader of the free world (apparently 30th place or something).
As for there being some democratic ability within the USA, pro was able to show why it ended up being anti-democratic via going with the opposite result in elections. Again, this was not challenged (and trust me, there’s some easy counters to this).
👍, thanks for voting too man, much appreciated
Sounds good. Just DM me when you want to, and I will set up the debate. The topic will remain the same.
I’m on holiday rn in bali for 10 more days, so I probably won’t do any debates until I’m back home, but after that I’d be up for one because this one wasn’t particularly interesting in its substance lol. If you want you can set out the rules and voting for it because I’m new to this and I’m not sure what’s the best rules and stuff for this. Thanks tho
If you're willing, I would be more than happy to debate with you on this topic since the Con did not do much. I would be a con on this debate.
Thanks for that one mate👍
Yes, because the "US" stands for United States (of America), not "Freedom and Democracy". That would be FD, or maybe even FDR, but that's debatable.