Barbarian observes:
They are called "elections."
Ask some politicians who lost the last couple of elections. "Run out of office" is a an apt description for many of them.
Barbarian on the idea that violence is appropriate political activity:
I guess we shouldn't be surprised that someone starts equating democracy with shooting people. If their leaders do it, why wouldn't their followers?
I think it might be good to start with cross-hairs, "reload" and "second amendment solutions" before you get politically correct about traditional election nomenclature.
But then, if you think in those terms, democracy probably isn't your thing.
Nicholsmom writes:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
That's the beauty of it; politicians can be as vicious as the want, within the boundaries of the law, but we can still vote them down for it. Do you see the difference?
PS: democracy is not what we have for our governing system...
You better tell the Supreme Court. Democracy is how it works. It's why all the representatives we send to Washington have to be approved by the voters in their districts. It's why just ordinary people can even change the Constitution if they decide to do so. The consent of the governed remains the ultimate power in American government, even if changing the Constitution is so difficult and lengthy that a short-term whim can't do it.
Democracy is built into the American form of government. It's just that the founders knew that a pure democracy was just a way-station on the way to anarchy and tryanny. So they diluted it with a form of republican constitutional government that would make temporary whims and the tyranny of the majority less potent.
As Washington said when he advocated a bicameral legislature for the nation, the Senate was there to cool the ardor for new laws and to reflect carefully on changes.