Silverback wrote
Now if only the debate could be conducted in American english, the debate becomes more clear. The issue all along has been not whether Austrailia is a republic, but whether it is a democracy. In American english, no it is not a democracy, it has a constitutionally limited form a government, a republic. Therefore, since Austailia is not a democracy, when we translate back to Austrailian english, Austrailia is not a republic. The queen has been irrelevant to the whole issue, just as she is to nearly anything in Austrailia.
This strikes me as perfect evidence of how people who have done no research and yet who try to participate in discussions only waste other people's time. The phrase, "In American english, no it is note a democracy" manages to be both ignorant and irrelevant. Americans have many different ways of using "democracy," and most Americans would say Australia is a democracy. But so what? Why does it matter what Americans think?
Here is the problem, in a nutshell. Sometime conflicts at Wikipedia are over semantics, and sometimes they are substantive. Constructive editors are able to sort out which is what. Unconstructive, obstructionist editors systematically confuse one source of conflict for the other.
For example, the conflict between Adam and Skyring owes to the fact that Skyring does not understand proper English grammar and usage ("proper" regardless of which English speaking country you live in) -- he doesn't understand the meaning of "shall be" and "is," nor the meaning of "paraphrase." Skyring insists that this is a substantive problem, that Adam is making factually false claims -- and as long as Skyring insists that this is a conflict over meaning rather than proper grammar, he will continue to obstruct progress on the article.
Silverback is doing the reverse. He is suggesting that the conflict over "republic" is semantic, because Australians and Americans use words differently. He is as wrong as Skyring. Political Scientists as well as your average Yankee will call both Australia and the US "democracies," and both groups understand that neither is a pure democracy. For one thing, neither country makes decisions through the direct participation of all citizens -- they have what is called "representative democracy." Moreover, modern "liberal" political theory -- meaning, theory of modern liberal states -- also argue that democracy is and should be limited by rule of law. Since some notion of law (e.g. "inalienable rights" limits the powers of the majority, no country with rule of law can be a pure democracy. Silverback suggests that this is what "republic" means. I am not a political scientist, nor am I very knowledgeable about Australia (although as a kid I loved this TV show called "Skippy"), but I do not think this is what "republic" means. And we aren't going to resolve this by each of us coming up with our own definition. Let Adam, Silverback, and Skyring do research into Australian constitutional law and political theory, compare sources, and provide quotes OR paraphrases -- it really doesn't matter which, as long as they come from verifiable sources.
My point is, that this argument isn't going to be solved by speculations about what we think words mean -- it will be solved by people doing research on how political scientists and politicians have used words, and perhaps how usage has changed over time.
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein Associate Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology Bentley Annex Ohio University Athens, Ohio 45701