Q and A about Democracy

[antagon]

The United States is not a democracy, it is a Republic. We elect representatives who vote on behalf of the people from their state or district. If our elected officials don't represent us as we wish, we can vote them out and replace them with someone who will. In a dictatorship, a tyrant rules over all.

a rep democracy is still a democracy.

We dont live in a democracy antagon. We live in a constitutional republic. Our founders knew that a democracy can stifle liberty hence them not making it one.

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on whats for dinner, liberty is a well armed lamb contesting that outcome -benjamin franklin

your 'constitutional republic' definition fails to account for what democracy is at play in the republic by virtue of the constitution. thereby, it mutually a constitutional representative democracy, implicit of being a republic because it has a constitution. a republic chartered inferior to our own could stifle liberty as well. liberty isn't protected by virtue of the form of government, but by the bases of it's charter, i'd argue.

 

[Oddball]

From the 1928 Army Training Manual:

Republic: A form of government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law.



Democracy: A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meetings or any other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude towards property is communistic-negative property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. It results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.

 

[antagon]

the army training manual writes too much america into the definition of republic.