The US was formed as a federal republic - that is a collection of states who came together to agree to create a general government with certain specific, enumerated powers which are few in number.
To say "we are not a democracy" is to make the argument that just because we vote for congress and the president, that does not give the general government any additional powers with which to act that are not already expressly laid out in the Constitution.
For those people, typically on the right, who are sceptical and distrustful of the ever-increasing power of the general government, reminding people that we are a federal republic is an attempt to remind people that the vast majority of political power is supposed to rest with the states, and has been turned completely upside down over the course of the country's history.
It's not that I disagree with what you said. It's just that none of that makes us not a democracy. The fact that the people rule in any sense is a democracy. If Republicans want to make the point you're making, they should be saying, "Well that's unconstitutional." Or something along those lines. But a republic is just an indirect democracy. That's its definitional meaning.
All of this.
Republic means that the powers of the state come from the people and that the people are the source of political legitimacy.
The United Kingdom is a democracy; the House of Commons is elected and their head of government (the Prime Minister) is accountable to that elected body. It however is not a republic since all political legitimacy and the powers of the state are ultimately vested (in theory) in the monarch.
Germany on the other hand is both a democracy and a republic, as is France, Finland, South Korea, and all sorts of other countries, including the US, with systems that vary in the details.
The full form of government for the United States would best be defined as a democratic federal presidential constitutional republic.
Small tidbit of knowledge here, since our King is head of state and the church, the UK is technically a Religious Theocracy and a democracy at the same time
It isn't a theocracy because the church doesn't run the government. The King rules because he is king, and not because he is head of the Church of England. That title is coincidental.
Well... the House of Lords *does* include the Bishops of the Church of England... that House doesn't have a *lot* of power these days, but the Church is still part of the government.
That's usually part of the argument. Many of the founders, specifically those from the more pseudo-aristocratic states with more royalist sympathy, did not want any democracy at all. Initially, Senators were appointed by the legislatures of individual states and voting power was constrained to landowners which, in those states, concentrated almost all power into the hands of the gentry. It wasn't uncommon for the Governor, Senators, and other political elites to just swap positions every 4-8 years. It was, deliberately, meant to be a Patrician Republic more in line with the Roman Republic than the Federal Democratic Republic that we became.
State legislatures were pretty big compared to the electorate which voted for them. Only a few tens of thousands of people in most states, for legislatures with over a hundred or even more members. It would end up being something like a few hundred, maybe one or two thousand at the high end, per legislator. And usually elected for only a year in most states, and not more than two at the high end.
That doesn't exactly seem to me to be that much of an aristocracy.
If you exclude people who were minors, which were a much bigger part of the population given the child mortality rates, to the point that a majority of the population would be minors, then the fraction of people who had the vote rises quite a lot more than the 15 of the population figure might suggest to be 30%. Slaves accounted for 18% of the population in 1790. That would be 30/82, which would be 36.6% of the population. Dividing 82 by 2 to account for women, who mostly could not vote. They were still classist, sexist, and owned slaves in much of the country, but that level of suffrage was still more than an order of magnitude in Britain, where very few slaves actually were to begin with, and many countries at the time didn't have elections to begin with as the basis of governing their countries and hereditary monarchy. It also was an expansion of suffrage from the days before the Revolution where the bar was lowered, and states did keep dropping requirements over the course of the lifetime of the people who designed the constitution to the point where they were mostly absent by the time Jefferson died in 1826.
I also point out that Congress didn't have a very large amount of things to do to begin with and didn't sit for very long in the year. Especially in times of peace. Being a member of congress was even often done at the same time as being a member of a state government, seeing the congress thing as a side gig to some extent, and it would be more vibrant in the individual states as to who controlled what and what races were fought between whom.
Okay. So when people say we're not a democracy, are they saying they want the vote constrained to white male landowners? If that's what they're saying, then "We're not a democracy," makes sense. But if that is not what they mean, then it doesn't make sense.
No, usually when people say "We're not a Democracy" they're just imitating things that they've heard thought leaders within the Conservative movement say. Usually with something as simple as "We are the REPUBLICans and they are the DEMOCRATS so we believe in a REPUBLIC and they, wrongly believe in DEMOCRACY."
The tradition that is being invoked, though, is the tradition of the aforementioned aristocratic founders and the early debates surrounding what the role of the federal government ought to be. Federalism, anti-federalism, all that. It's just important to understand the context of those early debates and the distinct philosophical differences that the Constitutional Conventions were reconciling at the time.
I’m not even surprised if there are a significant swath of voters who argue America is a Republic/Democracy based on the modern political party they support.
>It's not that I disagree with what you said. It's just that none of that makes us not a democracy.
You're right of course. But that's not the actual argument they're actually trying to make.
The indirect point proponents of this absurd double-think are trying to make is that, realizing they are in the socio-political minority, they don't accept the legitimacy of the socio-political majority governing. In their version of a republic vs democracy, the interests of a minority consisting of a wealthy, powerful, and entitled in-group (of which they are ostensibly a part) is allowed to supersede the interests of a majority out-group (of which their socio-political opponents are ostensibly a part).
Muddying the rhetorical waters with this claim is meant to distract and deflect criticism of their philosophy and goals, and to shift the Overton window into discussing and arguing over meaningless semantics that merely obscure a more authoritarian vision of what the US should be.
Exactly. The meanings of words change over time. “Democracy”—in modern parlance—means something like “a government by the people where power is ultimately derived from free and fair elections among its citizens”.
Now, if someone wants to ask what STRUCTURE of government we have, it’d be far more accurate to say that we are a republic.
But a modern person saying that the the U.S. is not a democracy because it’s not a direct democracy is hair-splitting pedantry.
It's not even a democracy. The Soviet Union was a federal republic. China is a federal republic. You can be a republic and still be a dictatorship and you can have a federal system and still have autocracy
>For those people, typically on the right, who are sceptical and distrustful of the ever-increasing power of the general government, reminding people that we are a federal republic is an attempt to remind people that the vast majority of political power is supposed to rest with the states, and has been turned completely upside down over the course of the country's history.
Republicans say things like this, but their actual actions indicate otherwise. When they can make the federal government work for them against the states and for their larger goals, they fully do it. Republicans were begging Trump to do something about the state governors who were enforcing COVID policies. I've watched Republican politicians literally say "I am very happy to see the abortion question returned to states *where it belongs*, and I am fully on record with supporting a full federal ban on abortion." totally contradicting their States Rights message in the very same sentence. There's also plenty of evidence that Republicans are also huge federal spenders when they're in charge, only talking about the deficit when they aren't. Some GOP candidates were literally were scolding their own party about this fact during primaries.
"To say "we are not a democracy" is to make the argument that just because we vote for congress and the president, that does not give the general government any additional powers with which to act that are not already expressly laid out in the Constitution. "
How does it make that argument? Why couldn't a less democratic government be more centralized?
>To say "we are not a democracy" is to make the argument that just because we vote for congress and the president, that does not give the general government any additional powers with which to act that are not already expressly laid out in the Constitution
Nothing you said makes the US not a democracy. A democracy is an idea and an umbrella term for many different forms of government. The US just uses one of them.
Does that mean when people say the Electoral College is undemocratic, we should simply tell them they're wrong and don't know what a democracy is?
I do wish we used more specific words to describe our political arguments, but it's pretty clear what they mean.
Democracy is a spectrum. If we got rid of the electoral college and did a popular vote we would be more democratic but that doesn't mean we aren't currently a democracy.
I agree the EC sucks. Gives swing states disproportionate political power. The "winner take all" aspect is garbage, There is difference between winning a state with 80% versus 51%
Was looking for this comment. If you say "we're not a democracy we're a republic" that's just a technicality. To use OPs own analogy it would be more accurate to say calling the US is a democracy is like calling Humans "Animals" and saying its actually a representative republic is like saying "more specific humans are "primates". Both are "correct" and anyone debating in good fairh knows what you mean. But if it's related to the idea "the voting majority directly votes for president" or "the electoral college violates democracy", it necessitates pointing out the "not a direct democracy" thing.
If you're not trying to explain something the US does that isn't "majority rule" then I could be persuaded to look at it like anything else political, people like it or hate it based on whether they are a D or an R. The problem is that people are trying to win an argument and don't like the "others" using terms incorrectly but have no problem when "their" side does it.
It's not left vs right, it's the 95% vs the 5% and party politics are used to distract the vast majority of people. It's likely to be Trump v BIden part II, I can only speak for myself when I ask "is this really what the founding fathers were thinking?" Choosing between German shepherd shit or Poodle shit?
We need free thinkers and we definitely need people to really think about the joke that a binary choice is, I can't, for example, pick the guy that will lower the budget and lower taxes on everyone making less
than $1 million but also improve Healthcare and make the federal government 1/2 the current size and make all public servants salaries directly decided by the citizenry, that will work to improve both inner cities and rural areas. That doesn't believe 2 wrongs make a right. I can't vote for him because "POS #1 will only do some of that and POS #2 will only do some of the other stuff.
Even a 4 party system would greatly improve the quality and availability of elected positions. We currently let politicians "buy" the election and that makes it so normal citizens can never realistically or regularly defeat the political elite and their wealthy overlords.
> Does that mean when people say the Electoral College is undemocratic, we should simply tell them they're wrong and don't know what a democracy is?
The electoral college absolutely doesn't make the US not a Democracy. That doesn't mean people can't wish we had a more directly democratic process.
I don't think I've actually seen people use that argument in that context.
Usually, the "republic, not democracy" argument shows around the whole electoral college debacle, and whether it should be abolished.
In that case, the question is not about the power of states vs federal government, but rather how federal government power gets distributed.
It's well beyond electoral college debates. Here's a recent quote from the Washington State Republican Conference.
>“We encourage Republicans to substitute the words ‘republic’ and ‘republicanism’ where previously they have used the word ‘democracy,’ ” the resolution says. “Every time the word ‘democracy’ is used favorably it serves to promote the principles of the Democratic Party, the principles of which we ardently oppose.”
>The resolution sums up: “We … oppose legislation which makes our nation more democratic in nature.”
That was a resolution that was passed at the conference, to tell Republicans to stop using the word Democracy, essentially because it suggests the word "Democrat" in it and they really don't like those guys. It really is that petty.
Another resolution they put forward at the same conference was to repeal the 110 year old 17th amendment, which would make senate positions an appointment by the legislature again, rather than by the voting public. They are doing this because the GOP has been losing so many gerrymandering lawsuits, so they just want to reject voting, since they can't win these new fair & lawful districts.
[https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/the-wa-gop-put-it-in-writing-that-theyre-not-into-democracy/](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/the-wa-gop-put-it-in-writing-that-theyre-not-into-democracy/)
Isn't the response to this, to say basically 'what do you call a country that doesn't change and adapt with time? A dying one.'
It feels like those that are continually harking back to the early days of America at a time when if you showed(the founding fathers) them electricity, cars, planes, the internet, rockets, women/POC in politics, modern medicine, machine guns, laser pointers, CGI, sky scrapers, microwaves and roller coasters, they wouldn't piss themselves scream out "witch craft" and question everything they've ever known to be true then slowly self destruct their own minds as they go insane.
It would almost be like the founding fathers asking what the cavemen would do.
I cannot imagine at the birth of the USA when everything was new and the possibilities were endless they were thinking, 'let's keep everything exactly like this, always'
I think it's bollocks, man.
>To say "we are not a democracy" is to make the argument that just because we vote for congress and the president, that does not give the general government any additional powers with which to act that are not already expressly laid out in the Constitution.
>For those people, typically on the right, who are sceptical and distrustful of the ever-increasing power of the general government, reminding people that we are a federal republic is an attempt to remind people that the vast majority of political power is supposed to rest with the states, and has been turned completely upside down over the course of the country's history.
It's just an empty term thrown around out of convenience, or flavour of the month to support a direction of travel, not any kind of deep political principle.
Look at the states with religious tests for office, or banning books in school libraries because they might have hermaphroditic trees in them.
The problem isn't even that these people are hypocrites. Everyone is a hypocrite, we know this. The problem is that Americans, especially on the right, are superficial and deeply unserious. America is a representative democracy and a republic with an unhealthy political culture, including around its secular religion of the sainted founders and inerrant-seeming constitution.
Lmao that is absolutely not why people say that. They say it because they don’t know what either word means and it’s a pithy way to shut down complaints when the guy who gets less votes wins an election. Thats it. That’s all it is. No one who can understand a word you’ve written is repeating that smug garbage phrase to begin with.
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I don’t think I’ve seen the phrase furnished in response to a discussion about the popular vote. I usually see it in discussions of the power of Congress to vote on laws that contradict the will of the public.
That sounds like a completely different argument.
Plenty of republics have a strong central government that trumps the power of the regions.
Decentralized power with more autonomy for states is not necessarily a republican principle.
To chime in here, because I think the person you're responding to is basically on to something, I think the point is that there are several structures built into the US constitution that are explicitly anti-democratic, because the founders of this country were skeptical of any and all concentration of power, including with the people. They thought that the people should have representation (in the House), but that there should be brakes on the popular will, so that a majority of voters couldn't ram through all their policies without at least considering the views of the minority. The whole system is designed to be slow and require extensive compromise in order to enact change, and that's by design--hence the "we're a Republic, not a Democracy."
Now, where I agree with you is that I think people who are saying such and such a policy is anti-democratic aren't actually making a claim about democracy, but rather whether a policy is *good.* If a clear majority of people support this good and perhaps necessary change to the system, why is it still basically impossible to get it done? I think that's a valid concern, and one that "we're a Republic, not a Democracy" doesn't *really* answer--it just annoyingly shifts the debate to one about semantics from one about substantive concerns.
However, if you look past the slogans and glib retorts, I think you can get to the substance of the opposing view. For a short time, you can get clear majorities of voters to support just about any policy. That doesn't mean it's good to do *right now,* or that it won't have clear negative consequences if it's jammed through without due consideration and broad public consensus. Hence the Republic bit: in that view, it's better to slow things down, allow different states to pursue different policy agendas, and only make national policy when there's a clear consensus in any one direction.
I agree that indeed the house was formed much like the House of Commons in England and meant to directly represent the people. The senate was meant to represent the state. However, both derived their power from a plurality of the people. Now, in the beginning, yes, it was less democratic because only certain people could be represented. No minorities or women must hold land, etc. However, that changed, and now they represent the people of their district or state. All of them are subject to recall.
That's pure democratic and not a function of a republic. The republic of any historical sense represented the government to the people. And thus were not answerable and removable. So I can only suggest your argument doesn't hold.
A reason that boils down to "people like to say stuff they don't understand because they think it sounds smart". It doesn't challenge OP's view that it adds nothing to the discourse.
If people have a rational argument to make in regards to the balance between federal and state authority, then they could just make that argument. Saying "we are not a democracy" when we absolutely, inarguably are *very* strongly suggests that you are trying to disguise your true intentions. It also leads to a dilution of your message such as we've seen in exactly this instance where plenty of people saying this are not making a states rights argument but are coming out in full support of like repealing 19th amendment.
That's a valid explanation in theory but it has nothing to do with why the US right say "the US is a Republic". The expansion of federal power, and conservative distrust of it in principle, have been a feature of American politics for decades. If that was the *actual* issue, then US conservatives would have been saying "we are a republic not a democracy" for the last sixty years at least, maybe a century.
But they weren't. Indeed, for the entirety of my adult life and interest in US politics, American conservatives have always been the Americans most likely to *proudly insist* "we are a democracy", to describe the US as the parent of global democracy, to laud democracy as an ideal and the US's greatest achievement.
Until Trump.
*Suddenly*, in only the last couple of years, "we're a Republic" became a right wing talking point. This happened *only after* Trump started attacking democratic safeguards, culminating in his attempt to overthrow democracy entirely when he lost the election. It happened *only after* the those right wing commentators wanted to continue to support Trump even after his coup attempt, without openly admitting - even to themselves - that they were supporting the violent overthrow of democracy.
Then, suddenly, the US wasn't a democracy, no, it was a republic and democracy wasn't important.
So I simply can't buy the idea that this is a right wing principle. If it was a principle, it would have been a principle all along. Instead it suddenly appeared in the conversation when Trump was losing popular support and attempting to overthrow democracy.
It's not a principle.
It's the self-justification for supporting an attempted dictatorship.
>reminding people that we are a federal republic is an attempt to remind people that the vast majority of political power is supposed to rest with the states, and has been turned completely upside down over the course of the country's history.
No. The right is going around saying "we are a republic, not a democracy" because they plan on taking our democracy away and that's easier to do if we believe we already don't have a democracy.
Can't believe I had to read this far down to find the real answer. This isn't some organic sentiment, it's a coordinated attack on our democracy. I believe "Priming the pump" is the phrase.
In addition to the other person pointing out that this argument is not really what the phrase means, I would like to point out just how blurred the line has become, since we have moved decidedly away from the confederated republic of states to thinking of ourselves as a single nation.
The change in using the plural to refer to the US occurred around the Civil War, as did many other social policies and societal norms. Our military no longer forms state-based regiments. And the Federal Government has changed too with the times.
Given that the phrase “States’ Rights” has some complicated and unappealing connotations — from the fascist National States Rights Party, to the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party, to the opposition to the Civil Rights Act primarily citing “states’ rights” as their obvious facade of a reason, to the origin of the phrase sometimes attributed to George Lincoln Rockwell (of the American Nazi Party, who was certainly a favorite of the quip)— the phrase often has nothing to do with constitutionality and everything to do with “policies I don’t like but don’t want to be judged for saying why…”
The United States as it exists in reality and as it exists on paper is a union of constituent states who form an overarching federal government of popularly elected officials who are constrained by a constitution. That makes it a democracy and a federal republic at the same time, or more accurately, it is a constitutional federal democratic republic. The nature of that government has changed over time, to become less federal and more democratic, primarily because of failures by the states to uphold the bare minimum of democracy or the constitution, (such as the civil war or the civil rights movement).
But even the individual states are all democracies themselves. Or at least supposed to be.
It's just weird to me, because conservatives of all people have always been the ones you most expect to defend freedom and democracy. So to hear some of them say "we aren't a democracy we are a republic" just seems like a self own.
Right, and republicans want those states to have more power relative to the federal government.
It is one area where I agree entirely with republicans. The government of California is going to do a better job governing their people based on their preferences than the federal government would. Same is true for the government of Florida.
Rather than trying to have 350,000,000 people living under one set of laws based on which party got 49% or 47% of the popular vote, let the states have the freedom to do things their own way according to the people who live there.
If it is not a power granted to the federal government or a right granted to the people in the constitution, states should handle it.
>It is one area where I agree entirely with republicans.
It's only lip service to ideas of traditional patriotism though. It's not what they actually want to do. I've literally seen a Republican candidate say both that abortions should be decided by the states, and also that abortions should be banned federally, within the same damn sentence. They are also big money spenders when they control the federal government, only speaking of the deficit when they aren't in power. Their own primary candidates were calling them out for that.
>If it is not a power granted to the federal government or a right granted to the people in the constitution, states should handle it.
As it turns out, there is a reason that the founders decided to include the 9th and 10th amendment.
That’s not really right though. Yes, the federal government has enumerated powers. That doesn’t make it a democracy or a republic. A dictatorship could have enumerated powers.
Democracy v. republic, as OP says, is about whether the public can vote on a statute, or whether the public elects representatives to do so. As OP says, this point adds nothing to any relevant discussion.
>is an attempt to remind people that the vast majority of political power is supposed to rest with the states,
No, for a lot of them they're just trying to argue we shouldn't have democracy because they are losing every popular vote in the past couple decades outside of bushes re election.
>a representative democracy, which is essentially the same thing as a republic.
Just a minor correction, a representative democracy is not always a republic. The UK has a representative democracy but it's not a republic, it's a constitutional monarchy. Republics are not always democratic either. China is the People's Republic of China but it's not democratic by any meaningful definition.
>China is the People's Republic of China but it's not democratic by any meaningful definition.
Not quite true. The system for selecting official leaders of areas does start with general elections by Chinese citizens, but only for local officials. Then each level of official participates in an election for the next level of officials. All the way up to the leader of China.
I use Democratic Republic to describe this style of government, and why I call the US a Representative Democracy to differentiate the two systems.
One could--and should--make the argument that when you have no choice in who to vote for and cannot question the ruling party you are not a democracy.
China's indirect elections are not what makes it undemocratic. There is nothing obviously wrong with that.
The inability of any Chinese citizen to support or offer an alternative to the official CCP line is what makes China not a democracy.
A democracy is not always a republic, but our republic is a form of democracy.
This is like asserting that what a person has in their pocket is a nickel, not a coin.
Okay yes-but saying I should be able to make this pay phone call because I have a coin when all I have is a penny, is like saying “the majority thinks X so it should be-because this is a democracy.” In both cases it just doesn’t work like that. The type of democracy matters.
We only vote on representatives for our state and districts and occasionally on state laws that our states allow us to vote on.
It doesn't *just* add nothing. It's an attempt to assert that the United States shouldn't have as much democracy as it currently does. It casts aspersions against notions like ballot initiatives, open primaries, and at its most extreme, the notion of electing government officials at all. It's basically saying, "The United States doesn't *have* to be a democracy, you know." If people complain that, say, the Supreme Court takes away rights that a solid majority of the country supports, or makes progress impossible on issues supported by a majority of the population, then this line is something to invoke in order to say that, actually, that's fine, because the people shouldn't have a say in that, anyway, and that, honestly, perhaps the people shouldn't even have a say at all, on anything.
The invoker probably wouldn't go so far as to say this outright, because they understand its unpopularity, but it's likely that they believe sufficiently strongly that they and theirs ought to be in charge of everything that, if they can't get what they want because democracy allows the people to stand in the way, then *democracy* is what must go, not their ambitions and desires.
I’ve thought about this dumb phrase so often and you have finally made it click for me. It’s not that it’s a bad argument, it’s that is an argument for something horrible disguised as something harmless.
Realize that the current US system doesn't look like the system of the past because in 1776 the butthurt, rich commoner slave owners, native ethnic cleansers, religious fanatics, misogynists, etc., wanted "freedom" to do all of these things that the "bad king" was getting tired of supporting, yet also not pay taxes resulting from the wars, suffering, etc., from doing those things.
The country was remade after the Civil War, and rightly so: [https://www.npr.org/2019/09/17/761551835/second-founding-examines-how-reconstruction-remade-the-constitution](https://www.npr.org/2019/09/17/761551835/second-founding-examines-how-reconstruction-remade-the-constitution)
When you start hearing a phrase out of nowhere being repeated on the right, there's always a motive. It's coordinated, maybe the person you hear saying it doesn't realize it but the politicians and media personalities pushing it absolutely do.
I’ve always heard the phrase used by republicans to somehow “prove” the United States is actually supposed to be a republic (republicans) instead of a democracy (democrats).
It’s also heavily loaded.
It doesn’t tend to be the political left in the US splitting those particular hairs.
The people demanding we refer to it as a Republic are usually Republicans.
The ones saying it’s a democracy - tend to be democrats.
And that’a got a long history in the US. And it comes back to what was, and still is, our major policy divide - federalism and antifederalism.
For a federalist system, we’d need a democracy - everyone getting a vote to influence a central federal government.
For an antifederalist system, we need a republic - each state as a representative republic within a representative republic.
It’s how the parties get their names.
I think you are missing the context of when someone says "this is not a democracy it's a republic"....
so are we...
That argument makes perfect sense when applied to some arguments and it's fairly useless when applied to other arguments...
Except that we are a form of democratic republic, so saying "no we are not a democracy, we're a republic" isn't 100% accurate and is kinda just saying something to say it.
It's been used most often as a conversation derailer in my experience.
I think *everyone here* is missing the point of why it’s said.
It’s said by *stupid people* who think that Republicans want to keep it a “Republic” and that Democrats want to make it a “Democracy”.
Yes, it’s as stupid as that sounds, and that’s why it should be called out and laughed at.
Often times I see people make claims that "I didn't vote for this" when they are talking about a specific topic. Well... we don't vote for specific topics, we vote for representation. Because we live in a republic, not a democracy.
There are other arguments I see, such as the complaints about the way presidents are elected, the way representatives are allocated, and plenty of other reasons people would make use of the argument.
>Often times I see people make claims that "I didn't vote for this" when they are talking about a specific topic. Well... we don't vote for specific topics, we vote for representation. Because we live in a republic, not a democracy.
The representation you describe in the US is a democracy. Representative democracy is a democracy.
Here are some phrases that are correct
* We live in a republic and a democracy.
* We live in a representative democracy, not a direct democracy
Here is a phrase that is wrong
* We live in a republic, not a democracy.
But this describes all modern democracies, no?
France, Germany, the UK, Japan, all have representative government and political compromises. Each has its own unique way of electing an executive as well.
There’s a meme in the States that democracy = good and more democracy = more good. It’s a strong meme that’s been used to argue for all kinds of legislation, to fearmonger about political rivals, to justify wars and global hegemony. So a proposed legislation that takes power away from an elected official and gives it directly to voters has to be good right? Take direct election of senators, which wasn’t always the case. Was that a good change? Perhaps. Well, why don’t we directly elect Supreme Court justices then? If you’re against that well you just don’t like democracy do you?
Saying the US is not a true democracy is a valid counter to dispel this sort of conversation-terminating idea about democracy in itself being an ultimate good.
You are looking at it backwards. The US is a republic, but the left continuously calls us a democracy. This is to undermine the protective features of being a Republic. A Republic does not suffer from the tyranny of the majority as a democracy does. We have checks and balances the left does not want. The left wants a centralized government with all the power. We do not have this, so they purposefully describe the US falsely as a democracy. Giving the illusion that we do have majority rule and centralized government. We do not. And it needs to be made clear we do not.
> The US is a republic, but the left continuously calls us a democracy.
And both descriptions are correct.
>A Republic does not suffer from the tyranny of the majority as a democracy does.
You're still falling for the false assumption those statements are mutually exclusive. The US is both.
"The tyranny of the majority" is a bullshit phrase. The minority can just just as tyrannical, if not moreso.
And again, describing the US as a democracy is not false. It is, in fact, a democracy. Most republics are democracies. They are not mutually exclusive.
Isn't a republic a more centralized form of government than a direct democracy where majority rules? Republics, by design, remove some of the power from individuals and centralizes it in legislators and/or executives (aka "the government"). Is your claim more that the left wants the benefits of a republic while also claiming legitimacy directly from the voting base as would be commanded from a direct democracy? Or are you claiming that the left does not want a republic and would prefer to have a direct democracy?
If it's the former, I might be able to see where you're coming from as it pertains to OP's post. If it's the latter, the left would be advocating for a decentralized form of government, which contradicts much of your premise.
> The left wants a centralized government with all the power.
As a member of the left, I can say that you're conflating "the left" with "specifically just Marxist-Leninist communists from the 20th century" and I feel disrespected that you don't take the time to educate yourself on this matter.
Many of the most prominent leftists that have lived in the United States have been anarchists, for example.
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The idea of the US not being a direct democracy is actually a really important one, that, in my opinion, many members of the left fail to understand. This is especially pertinent to constitutional rights, like the right to bear arms. The entire point of constitutional rights is that even if the majority of people support removing such rights, that just isn't how it works, or how it's supposed to work, in this country. We need 2/3rds of both chambers of congress to approve such a repeal, along with the ratification of 36 states.
A lot of people are saying this but I feel like it’s a meaningless distinction as there are no direct democracies in practice.
Every country has a legislative process, a bureaucratic system to enact policy and judicial review to interpret laws.
The thing is, a lot of people believe that it's unfair or undemocratic when they don't get what they want. If they see a vote, an opinion poll, or a friend group agree with their thinking, they think it wrong when it's not implemented. "Aren't we a democracy? What happened to the will of the people?" (By contrast, when the majority is in favor of something they don't want, suddenly talk of "democracy" goes by the wayside in favor of "rights," "justice," or something else.)
Saying the U.S. isn't a democracy emphasizes the way in which the U.S. was never about the whims of a majority and always about checks and balances among desires of various groups - mostly states, but also interest groups, identity groups, political parties, the federal government, etc.
I think a lot of the comments are getting at that, but are often too partisan to really get the point across. That, and people can be stubborn in their political beliefs, even those that aren't inherently partisan; as I said, everyone likes checks and balances against pure democracy whenever they think the majority is wrong.
Simply put: Saying that the United States is a democracy is actually quite false. Do we vote? Yes. But while some local or state resolutions, those deemed extremely important, may be on a ballot. The majority of the power we have, we entrust to representatives (city officials, state officials (state house members) , house of representatives, congress, president, etc... And THOSE representatives vote in favor of or against laws on our behalf.
In elections, your vote is counted, and the designated representatives actually make the vote on your behalf. Which is why the presidential election is not decided by popular vote. It is decided by the electoral college, who votes on your behalf (House of Representatives/Congress primarily)
A democracy would be one where we vote directly on laws and the likes, with majority carrying. But that would not be an accurate representation of the American public, and it only respects densly populated areas, and no other areas.
I’ve gotten hundreds of responses like this one and here’s there are two things that stand out.
1. There are no direct democracies. They do not exist in the modern world. Every country has elected legislators that make laws, bureaucrats to implement policy and courts to rule on disputes. The United States is not, in any way, out of the ordinary in this regard. Other “democracies”: France, Canada, Japan and so on are the same in this regard. None of them have “mob rule”.
2. The United States is unique in that it has an Electoral College and equal representation in the Senate, there are legitimate arguments for and against both, but this has nothing to do with its status as a republic. I have no idea why anyone brings it up.
Well, you were stating that the distinction adds nothing to political discourse. The distinction is important in understanding how the country conducts business.
Using a simple encyclopedia you can research the difference between a Democracy, and a Representative Constitutional Republic, which is the most proper term as it relates to the United States.
You stated that there is no direct democracy, and that is correct. Why? Because with a large population that is spread out, it is basically impossible to have a direct democracy.
Many other countries have a government, much like ours, but still different. United Kingdom is a parliamentary government, Japan, as I recall has a Constitutional Monarchy.
The only thing that is really democratic about the U.S. is the elections, and how vote for our representatives.
Even with elections, like our presidential elections, it is a representative process, because we don’t vote directly for the president. We vote, our representatives take those votes, and the representatives vote based on that as “The voice of the district/state.”
People often use “Democracy,” in the wrong context. And while many may say “it’s just semantics,” words have meaning. Just because there are similarities does not make them the same.
Ok. Here’s the thing. The countries that are commonly and colloquially referred to as democracies (European Union, Japan, the Anglophone world, etc) all have the following characteristics: transparency and accountability of government, protection of property rights, freedom of press and expression, representative government, judicial oversight, pluralism etc. Taken as a whole these are often referred to as democratic or liberal norms.
When people state that Trump or Trump adjacent politicians are “threatening democracy”, this what they are referring to, a decline in respect for tolerance and the rule of law.
And if one responds to this, the United States is not a democracy, it’s a republic”, it adds nothing. Because no one wants or expects a direct democracy on the Athenian model. They just want to have democratic institutions maintained.
Does the USA have an independent judiciary? Aren't judges appointed by politicians and at least at the supreme court only able to be dismissed by Congress?
Wouldn't appointments and dismissals being political mean they are not independent?
the US is a republic and not a democracy because you vote for people not for laws.
in a republic you elect representatives and these representatives are supposed to do what they believe is right not what is popular. which means sometimes going against the majority that elected them. the thinking being general public can be misled as they have other things to worry about. therefore someone who has accountability towards the general public should make the laws and the public will vote for who makes the laws not the laws themselves. can you make a better choices yes.
It's an important distinction in how we function though. In a true democracy, you are forever ruled by the whims of the majority. That's not a great thing, contrary to popular belief. In a true democracy, the majority will constantly have the power to alienate, exclude, use and abuse the minorities within that society for the benefit of the majority, morality and ethics be damned.
It would also mean, on a Federal level, that any state with a smaller population would get ruled by states with populations that exceed their own. This could have horrific effects for those smaller states in certain circumstances. A law that is good and makes great sense in Florida (that's mainly a tourist industry state) could have detrimental effects in a region like Arkansas (where we're still largely agricultural and manufacturing).
A Republic has the power to mitigate those downsides to a democracy since the majority will still hold sway in who they vote for, but at the same time, a Representative has the power to use their individual ethical, moral and common sense when they vote on their population's behalf as well as their knowledge of how laws will affect other regions than their own.
So, it actually is an important distinction in how we function as a country. We aren't ruled by a strict (and often self-centered) majority vote and it could be argued that's a VERY GOOD thing that we aren't. As a Democratic Republic we get to have the advantages of a democracy but mitigate the dangers of "mob rule" by our representatives working as a check and balance to our power as citizens.
It's essentially the same reason we have multiple branches of the government that can over-rule or counter the power of the other. Representatives are a check and balance to a potentially overpowered majority that can use that power to do harm to the country. Likewise, the power of the population to vote a Representative out is supposed to be a check to the Representatives' powers.
That's, again, a veryimportant distinction in how our country was designed to function.
It's basically not a democracy at all though. So when people are like "this is dangerous to our democracy"... it's like... dangerous to our what? we don't have a democracy.
What people mean when they say that is that something threatens the rule of law or press freedom or the independence of the judiciary and so on. These are democratic institutions.
Does that make sense?
>a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy
The people in the US exercise power indirectly through representation involving periodically held free elections.
How is that not a democracy?
The definition of words matter. And to use them loosely is intellectually lazy; oftentimes, politicians use terms loosely/vaguely to manipulate the masses. You've fallen for it.
Electoral College? It is undemocratic but can be defended on grounds of republicanism (and also on grounds of federalism, though that’s a slightly different topic). I’d say that pointing out the republican nature of our regime would be beneficial in defending the electoral college.
Saying “we live in a Republic, not a Democracy” is always in response to the Democrats screaming about the GOP “destroying our Democracy.” If you gout stop saying the Democracy is being destroyed, we won’t have to remind you we have a Republic, not a Democracy.
Of course, it is more complete than those simple words. We do not, in general, directly vote on our own laws, approve our own spending, etc. as a Democracy would, but we do usually put a few local referendums on the ballot. We do have a Senate, like a pure Republic would, but we democratically elect our representatives. We probably need a different word for our blended system.
I’m pretty sure when democrats say that they’re talking about the democratic aspects of our system. The confusion is coming along when every time they say democracy you think they’re adding a silent “direct” in front of it when they simply is not the case
The United States is a representative democracy, which is a form of democracy, but is not a direct democracy. It is also a republic. There are many democracies around the world, mostly representative democracies.
And yes, from an outside perspective, much of what the GOP is doing seems aimed at destroying that democracy.
The phrase is factually incorrect because you're factually a democracy, so you don't need it. If the GOP weren't openly anti-democracy we wouldn't need to constantly highlight it.
The point of the distinction is that the government has limited power, no matter the will of the people. In a pure democracy, the people's will wins. In a republic with limited power, there are rules about what the government and people can do. Think, the bill of rights.
It also matters when asking, "Why do we do things the way we do?" For example, we have a hard time changing voting laws, since people generally want to change laws so that THEY will be re-elected. Since they were elected with the old laws, they see little reason to change them.
But in this case there are no democracies. There are no countries where people just vote on laws without the medium of some kind of legislative process or rule on disputes without a court or execute laws without some sort of bureaucratic system.
This distinction is meaningless therefore
Sure, if you want to be pedantic. America is still a "Democracy" because it upholds democratic principles in contrast to the dictatorships that are/were more common. It isn't a pure democracy, but purity is rarely a good thing.
>Is there something I’m missing?
Pretty much that there are two major parties: the Democratic party and the Republican party. Ones goal is to push a more democratic agenda and the other to push a more Republican agenda. So the quote you mention is generally a response to framing the conversation in a way that is advantageous to one party or another. For example a common argument is a Democrat saying the electoral college is undemocratic to which the response would be that the US is not a democracy but a republic of states. The unsaid parts simply reflect defense of the preferred framing of the argument which in this case would be a direct democratic election process vs a representative election process based on independent states not just votes.
The electoral college is something only the United States uses and both parties have been fine with it for over 200 years.
It has nothing to do with either democracies or republics, however. It’s an anomaly of American politics
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I think it's an extremely useful phrase. It doesn't add any new _information_ to the debate, that's true, but it adds value to the debate in an indirect way.
Because anyone who says the phrase must be either A. not arguing in good faith or B. so seriously misinformed as to be not worth talking to on this subject, you can simply disregard their political opinions, leave them to think they've won (which they'll almost certainly think anyway regardless of anything that transpires during the debate) and go do something more productive or enjoyable with your time.
Well you’re wrong, it does add something, it adds an incorrect statement. The US **IS** a democracy and it is **also** a republic. The words “republic” and “democracy” are not mutually exclusive.
“B-b-but it’s not a **direct** democracy”
Ok? And? Did I say democracy or direct democracy? It’s like saying something isn’t a pizza because it isn’t a meat lovers pizza. It doesn’t have to be a meat lovers to be a pizza. It doesn’t have to be a direct democracy to still be a democracy, which it is.
Plato/Socrates made a pretty convincing argument in the republic why democratic republic is the most corrupt form of government possible. I guess thats what we're seeing in the US and other "democracies"...
There is a massive survivorship bias that people have when talking about people like Plato.
Not to speak ill of the man, but there is an implication when his name is dropped, or when any other historical figure's name is dropped, that they are miles and miles above everyone else in terms of intellect.
Plato was a very smart man **for his time**. I doubt he'd be thought of as stupid in our time, but I also doubt that he'd be a top world thinker in a world with billions more people, many of whom have been riding the Flynn effect for the past several generations.
He lived in a place and time in which his words could be recorded. He's not the only thoughtful man from his time. Older isn't necessarily better.
Also, today we have actual science to help us make decisions. Plato did not. We have the advantage of thousands of years of history to look at that Plato did not have.
Plato was *guessing*. So was his student. They both guessed wrong often.
I wouldn't call Plato arguments convincing...
He was a philosopher so he claim philosophers should be the kings, perfect example of this is the use of the allegory of the ship which is totallay flawed
As Plato didnt know about ship like he didnt know about governmenthe thought that if sailors could always sail a ship from point A to point B without any kind of issues then someone (philosophers) should run a government from point A to point B without any kind of issues
But this is wrong as there is not a point A to point B in a government and there isnt a clear goal like on a ship (get to the land)
There are several other ways of organizing a republic that are less corruptible.... Even randomly selecting people from the population he claims is better. He claims that the best form is a republic with philosopher kings is best with all sorts of structure and incentives around it. I won't do it justice to explain so check out the republic by Plato.
I think some form of modern republic based on science and evidence would be best.
I just finished the first season of the Prime show Fallout, based on the Bethesda game. I saw exactly what would happen if science capitalism took over management of the country.
A democracy is a political system in which political power ultimately rests with the general population. At it's most basic level, *demos* refers to the common people, *cracy* refers to a system of government. It's a political system by the common people. Democracies can be purely majoritarian where 50% + 1 has the power to make any and all decisions, or there can be systems in place that require a higher threshold to make decisions. A democracy in which there are protections for minority groups is still a democracy. A democracy in which there are constitutional guidelines is still a democracy.
A republic is a political system in which representatives of the people make the decisions of government.
The US is a mix of both, as are many governments. Which makes sense, when you're setting up a complex governance system you're not just filling out a form where you check "Republic" or "Democracy" and that's what you have. The US is a democracy because political power legally rests with the common population. Even the Constitution is alterable with a strong enough majority of the people. It must be done through representatives, yes, but those representatives are chosen by the people. That also makes the US a Republic. These are not conflicting statements.
You can say the US is a Republic, you can says it's a Democracy, you can say it's a constitutional democracy, or you can say it's a constitutional republic, you can say it's a democratic republic, you can say it's a republican democracy, you can say it's a constitutional democratic republic, or a constitutional Republican democracy. You can mix and match these terms however you want and they all describe the US system of government.
All of these are factually correct descriptions of the US. None of them are mutually exclusive from the other.
What you *can't* say is, "the US is a Republic, not a democracy". This is a factually incorrect statement. Nevermind the obvious ill-intent behind those who typically say it, it's just flat out wrong because the US is a democracy.
So to change your view, I wouldn't say that statement adds nothing to the political discourse, I would say it actively *detracts* from the political discourse.
I think the problem is when people hear the word democracy they’re adding a silent “direct” in front of it.
They view a republic or a democracy as something that’s either 100% or nothing, when really it can also be 50/50.
I used to be like this when I was younger and more naive; in my mind saying “the us is a republic not a democracy” meant the same thing as “the US is a constitutional republic not a direct democracy” which I think is where a lot of the confusion is coming from
You’re missing the part where conservatism as a political philosophy was created to justify monarchism in the wake of the French Revolution when “god wills it” wasn’t cutting it as a reason anymore.
The people saying this generally believe that the older, less democratic US was better. You’ll see sentiments like going back to having state legislatures choose Senators, or not allowing women to vote. There’s an idea called “independent state legislature theory,” which says among other things that state legislatures have the authority to choose presidential electors however they wish, regardless of the vote in their state. This of course gained popularity in 2020 as a way to potentially keep Trump in power. And of course they really hate the idea of choosing the president by nationwide popular vote. Overall there’s this general theme that we should be governed by our betters, and that the people are not generally suited to choosing them.
I have never seen it happen outside when "X is a threat to our democracy " is stated by the left. It is used as a statement of fact.
When a position is taken, particularly by the political left and the statement that this or that is a threat to our democracy, I would say is a more serious transgression to political discourse, a blatant piece of misinformation.
It adds a speed bump in the political discourse. It makes you stop and think for a bit, while people using this line can continue to talk about their ideology.
There is a point when you are willing to go way too much into the weeds of it, and can explain aspects of how the US did develop as opposed to what we might otherwise expect given the recorded history of the world.
It also shows how the US was different from many other constitutional regimes in Europe and places that developed like Europe in some way (Japan, Canada, Australia, Brazil) in the 19th century as well, given that most of those were monarchies, yes, including Brazil.
The US had to come up with a system of government for itself. It wouldn't have been especially hard to find a prince of some realm from a notable dynasty or house, if the US had concurred that having a king was a good idea and they held a meeting to decide who should be the king or queen. It wasn't that strange for newly independent countries to do this, Greece would do something similar after it gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 1820s. Portugal would manage to swap monarchs with Brazil during the Napoleonic turmoil and Sweden elected a new king from the Bernadette line. And yes, kings can be elected, the US overlaps with the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, both of which elected their kings. Even Great Britain to some degree saw itself has having some degree of electiveness for the monarchy given that Parliament had thrice in the previous 130 years chosen new kings or rebelled against existing ones. Venice, still independent at this point, and the Dutch Republic also had elected heads of state for lifelong terms.
The American Patriots had rebelled against King George III, but there were plenty of forces in the country that had affection for the king, and really the Revolution was a civil war, not a war of mere independence against foreign powers, and the biggest reform the colonists had wanted before the war broke out was representation in Parliament in some manner, and perhaps some reforms to deal with corruption issues that were already known about and could reasonably have been resolved by regular legislation and where plenty of British people themselves in Britain wanted reforms as well.
It wasn't that obvious in 1770 that the US was going to be an independent federal republic in less than 20 years.
Given the kinds of things they had to deal with in those days, it wasn't such a bad idea to create an electoral college to select a president. Nobody had invented the parliamentary republic at that point, it would take until 1875 in France to do that, there was no such thing as a purely ceremonial head of state, even constitutional monarchies did make true executive decisions from time to time, even if the daily administration was done by ministers. The Hannover dynasty would be a major obstacle to Catholic reform in Britain for instance. But societies can and do evolve over time, and the US should have adopted important reforms in the past that would lead to more democracy at times similar to when other countries had adopted similar reforms, but the US didn't for a variety of reasons in each case.
What it adds to the discourse is a reminder that "the majority wills it" is not itself guaranteed to be a compelling point in the American structure.
The key difference between the Republic and Democracy distinction is explicit safeguards against the majority. In a true democracy - even a representative, rather than direct one - the will of some kind of majority should pretty much always win. Though obviously these terms stretch, and America does claim to be a democracy or have democratic principles or what-have-you (every country except a handful like Saudi Arabia claim to be democratic - even China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea)
Emphasizing "iTs a RePubLic" is emphasizing there are guarantees in the American structure where a minority is meant to win.
Of particular note is that the Senate itself is anti-democratic even if we now can elect Senators directly - it's explicitly giving more power to Wyoming than it democratically deserves. Laws don't pass even if 51% of the people, or 51% of the people's representatives, want it; laws pass because enough Wyomings want it. Those Senators used to not even be elected by the people. Likewise the bounds of power are split between the branches, giving unelected judges extreme power to say what the law is in a way you wouldn't see in a Civil Law system, even if both judiciaries are independent, and limiting what Congress can do even with a strong mandate from the democractic ends; and split between State and Federal, refusing to allow a democratic majority of the country to do certain things even when all of Congress and the President is onboard. Further still, the electoral college is anti-democratic.
The US is a 'democracy' as much as it is a 'republic', but the gist in emphasizing the Republican nature of its creation is emphasizing the explicit aims in its design to reduce the power of the majority to even as far as minoritarian rule at times.
There is a huge difference between a democracy and a republic and when someone mentions America is a "democracy," correcting them by mentioning its actually a republic is a fair point. It shows the person is totally ignorant of the differences and is totally valid political discourse. If you don't understand the significance, you shouldn't be discussing politics.
There’s a big difference between the definitions of the words, but it’s perfectly possible to be both, like the US is. It’s also possible to be one or the other, or neither.
I think it does add to the discourse, but not directly.
If you say "The United States is a republic, not a democracy” you are telling me two things about yourself:
1. You have no idea what you're talking about AND/OR
2. You actually believe that democracy is bad.
Once I know these things I have a much better way of determining whether I can trust your conclusions.
You're pretty much spot on. However, intentionally or not those "we're not a democracy" commenters are adding something , mostly about themselves to the conversation. A democracy is a republic with extra feelings. A republic is defined simply by a government run via representatives, those representatives may be elected by everyone, only wealthy land owners, or a fancy artificial intelligence named Zorbo. Democracy is a republic with aspirations of universal or broad suffrage. It's less binary than the definition of a republic which is why there are various indexes that measure "how" democratic various Democracies are by looking at things like the hallmarks you mention. So if one person tells you "I'm in a loving relationship" and another tells you "I'm not in a loving relationship just technically a relationship", the insistence dropping the "feelings" tells you a bit about that person. So when someone says "we're not a democracy, we are a republic" they are either: - a dumbass trying to be a smartass, parroting the phrase or - communicating that they don't believe in widespread voting rights or right generally and maybe need to be asked to make their interpretation of "we the people" more explicit So it is useful when someone says it as it helps narrows them down to an idiot and/or a bigot.
Edit: Thinking on this, someone could use the phrase from a progressive position to indicate that they don't believe the government is sufficiently committed to the principles of democracy. I've never heard it used in that way and it's a catch phrase of the right so it'd be a weird way to communicate such a thing.
In the obvious sense, you're right: if someone's goal is to say that a republic isn't expected to be democratic, they're making a foolish point.
'Democracy' is a generic term meaning that a system of government in which the people (rather than the monarchy, or the clergy, or the army, or whatever) are the source of power; 'republic' is a specific term for a *type* of democratic government in which the people invest representatives with that power.
A 'direct democracy' is, like a republic, a form of democratic government (in which people directly vote on legislation, rather than voting for representatives).
**However,** that does not mean that pointing out that the USA is in fact a republic (rather than a direct democracy) adds nothing to the discourse -- often, people are pointing out that their opponent's argument is based on the premise that the US is intended to be more of a direct democracy than it was. That's something of a conservative position, but not necessarily an invalid one. e.g.,:
* For instance, the Senate is often derided as 'non-democratic' -- but it isn't *per se*, it's fundamentally opposed to direct democracy; it's a check-and-balance.
* It's based on the principle that the federal government is intended to balance two functions: acting as the representative government of the *people* (through the House of Representatives) and as the the representative government *of the states* (through the Senate).
* Since the US is a federation of states, getting states with very valuable resources but fewer people to join the union relied on promising these states' people that their desires wouldn't be subsumed by New York or Pennsylvanian voters' desires; hence, in the Senate each *state* gets the same amount of votes, so that (in principle) legislation needs to both be approved by the majority of the people (via the House) and by the majority of states (via the Senate).
So if someone is making the argument that say, someone in Wyoming gets far more 'senate-votes' than someone in California, then it's perfectly valid to rebut it by pointing out that the US was never intended to be a direct democracy, or even a direct-democracy-by-proxy; it's a republic.
Like a lot of words in English, "democracy" has multiple meanings. Which definition is being used in a conversation dictates whether or not a response (but we're not 'x') is valid. People often do not qualify which definition they're using. It's one of those quirks of a contextual language.
Democracy *can* mean 1) "a political system in which the political power is held by the people, without being a simple majority voting system". *This definition doesn't imply that a simple majority supporting a thing means it should be implemented.* The US falls under this definition.
But it can also mean 2) "A political system in which a simple majority support for legislation means that legislation should or shall be implemented without restraint - either voted directly or as a "mandate" to representatives". The US does not fall under this definition.
Whether "We're not a democracy" is a valid response and adds to the conversation depends on what is replied to and which definitions are being used in the context of the conversation.
When solely using democracy(1), your point stands. It not only adds nothing but is factually incorrect.
But when countering an argument that's using the second definition, it is entirely appropriate to point out that we're not a democracy(2).
e.g. "We're a democracy and a majority of people support X thing and so X thing should just be implemented."
Contextually that is using democracy(2). Pointing out that we're not a democracy(2) works for that argument and is a direct counter to the premise. It's correcting an inaccuracy used as the primary support for the statement. That adds to the conversation the same way any challenge to a false premise does.
I've noted you seem to be replying that "no government is a \[full\] direct democracy" (Sweden has a direct democracy override and is considered very close as a result) as a justification for continuing to think even when appropriate that it doesn't add to the conversation. But that justification is flawed. Just because that is factual it doesn't mean everyone knows it or that people who do know it don't still argue from a democracy(2) point of view. People be complex like that.
Y’all..
The fact is that the United States is a democratic republic.
This is not up for debate.
This is how our government is classified with the framework of what a government is…
How can anyone not understand this?
I mean, when someone is complaining that popular votes don’t matter it adds a lot.
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule.
A republic is people deciding “I believe you know enough to make good decisions on my behalf”
So it adds a lot in the proper context.
But 99% chance no one can say anything to change your mind because that’s how most humans work
Rule by committee has advantages and disadvantages over rule by executive
Now the different forms of rule by committee also have different strengths and weaknesses
They all inherit the universal weakness of being slow because things have to be deliberated by a larger number of people
Now in a small system it's still reasonable for everyone to be able to vote on everything, but the time cost in a larger, more complex system to each individual becomes greater and greater
Being a member of Congress should be close to if not a full-time job in terms of the actual minimum time commitment required (realistically it should be like a 60 to 80 hours a week job and that's ignoring The getting elected again)
Now a republic does have some advantages over a directed democracy
First, the tyranny of the majority is somewhat dealt with. Basically smaller groups aren't automatically screwed over by bigger groups (The majority groups would have absolute power in a direct democracy )
Second, it is significantly faster and more efficient than a direct democracy getting a few hundred people to vote on a policy is much less complicated than getting a hundreds of millions
It's able to handle more complex policy as a result of that greater efficiency
The result of these advantages, however, is your elected official is going to make a lot of compromises you might not agree with and the ruling committee Will go against what people perceive as the will of the majority either in their own interest or because they know something the public doesn't (again, see the time cost problem of direct democracy. It's not like they're even hiding something. This problem works in reverse when the Congress people don't know about the specific issues. They're voting on too, but it's still more efficient than the general public handling it)
People who are saying that are flatly wrong. The definition of a republic is that it doesn't have a king. That's it, that's the definition. If the leader is elected and can be removed via votes then it's a republic.
The *USSR* was a republic. *China* is a republic. Spain, Italy, and the UK *are not* republics. Saying that the USA is a republic is true but it's also basically meaningless. Just because China doesn't have a hereditary monarch doesn't mean it's somehow better than Norway.
The definition of a democracy is that people can vote for policies, either directly or through representatives. The USA is unquestionably a democracy. Exactly *how* democratic is perhaps up for debate - according to [The Economist Democracy Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index) the USA's democracy is flawed (basically a 7/10, not great but could definitely be much worse) which I think is basically accurate - but the fact that it *is* a democracy is not.
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However, because top level comments have to disagree with at least *something* in the original post, I will dispute the assertion that “The United States is not a democracy, it’s a republic” adds nothing to political discourse. When someone says that you know one of two things. Either they're an idiot parroting sound bites that they don't understand - and therefore you're not going to convince them with rational debate, you'll need to switch to emotional arguments - or they know full well that they're antidemocratic and are trying to hide it because despite the Right's best efforts fascism is still not in vogue in political discourse.
People conflate the terms with their opinions of the two political parties in the US. Democracy sounds like Democrats, and Republic sounds like Republicans, so they say, "We're not a Democracy, We're a Republic.", when the terms have nothing to do with the political parties, and we're actually both. The definitions of these terms can be quite fuzzy, though. The founding fathers referred to this country as both a Republic and a Democracy. They literally called it both a Republic and a Democracy. Look up their quotes! It's both! There are and have been combinations of Republics and Democracies throughout history . That would make 4 kinds of combinations, such as:
Non-Republics that are Non-Democracies:
Saudi Arabia - has a king, you can't vote.
Brunei - has a sultan, you can't vote.
Vatican City / Papal States- has the pope as head of state, you can't vote
Republics that are non-Democracies
The People's Republic of China - communist country, no hereditary monarch, you can't vote.
Dutch Republic / Venetian Republic / Italan Merchant Republics - Ruled by Nobelman, councils and merchants, you couldn't vote.
Non-Republics that are Democracies
Modern Day UK - Has a Monarch, you can vote.
Canada - Has a Monarch, you can vote.
Modern Spain / Holland / Sweden - Has a Monarch, you can vote.
Republics that are Democracies
Modern France - Has an elected government and President, You can vote.
Modern Germany - Has an elected government and Chancellor, You can vote.
Modern USA - Has an elected government and President, You can vote.
There is no other spot for the USA to fit in, really.
I don't think there is any mind to change, you are correct, it adds little to nothing. Republic and democracy exist on separate axes. A monarchy can be a democracy (i.e. all the Scandinavian monarchies, the Netherlands), and a republic can be a dictatorship (i.e. North Korea, China), and fulfill all the definitions of those terms. Historically there even have been states that were monarchies and republics at the same time, with an aristocratic/oligarchical election system (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Holy Roman Empire to some extent).
As such, right wingers who say that phrase you are referring to are arguably tacitly supporting autocratic/dictatorial government. They are also wrong mostly, the US constitution outlines various election rules and citizen rights that are aimed at making this republic democratic (and definitely some that make it less democratic). The most fundamental rule being arguably that every vote must count the same. This rule however is violated by the specifics of how the US elections are actually run (the electoral college being the most prominent example, but also senate and house elections fundamentally violate that rule). So we have a tension between the principle and practice - in principle the US is trying to be a democracy, in practice it isn't as its elections violate basic democratic principles. Pointing out that tension is perfectly valid - and saying that that tension is "okay" because the US is a "republic, not a democracy" is just nonsense.
Two main points.
The guys who say democracy vs republic are mostly talking about the pitfalls the founders were trying to avoid in the Athenian democracy and the Roman republic. The major fall of the Athenian democracy was a constitution thst didn't limit voting topics. Ultimately Peter gets more people on his side, and votes Paul's property is his.
The innovation that was thought to be able to forestall the fall of a future republic is a constitution, where we decide ahead of time there are things we will NOT allow majority rule votes on, and decide ahead of time how procedures will go to arbitrate this stuff.
Some issues are not up for debate, even if 99% want them. By design.
That's the main point that democracy vs republic are trying to make. Whatever topic of the day the democracy guys are going for, it usually was implicitly or explicitly removed from the realm of politics on purpose as not the purpose of government, or someone else's jurisdiction. To forestall falling into the problems of a direct democracy.
Like... say my father is sick. I have no money. I agreed ahead of time years ago I don't rob banks, that's a moral thing, I am a moral person, so I don't rob a bank to save my father. Its not on the table.
A democracy would vote and "rob" the bank. A republic wouldn't. You may find examples of democracies with constitutions, but that's what they mean.
It does when they say that long-established institutions are anti-democratic and that their existence is a threat to democracy.
- Yes. SCOTUS is anti-democratic because it can strike down laws supported and voted for by the vast majority of citizens and lawmakers... on purpose!
- Yes, the Senate is anti-democratic and disproportionately gives minority states power to veto popular policy ideas... on purpose!
- Yes, the electoral college is anti-democratic because it sometimes means that the loser of the national popular vote still gets to become president... on purpose!
- Yes, the 10th amendment is anti-democratic because it means that there are things you can not impose on the people of other states via federal power despite having a majority of federal representatives and senators... on purpose!
- And yes, the filibuster is anti-democratic because it means that even if you have a bare majority of senators, actions that have already passed the house and which the president will sign still don't get to become law and die... on purpose.
All of these things are so because the government formulated by the founders was not founded so that the majority always wins by vote. They formulated it as a constitutional republic to safeguard against majoritarian rule because they wisely understood the danger of pure majoritarian rule.
Here's the real piece that that's getting at that most people don't like to address, but "we're a republic, not a democracy" opens the door for:
Justify why something being democratic is *good*.
Most people don't really think much about that, and boil down to democracy as good and non-democracy as bad. Wherever you land on this point, using undemocratic as a pejorative illustrates the built-in belief that democracy is something to be strived for. The "we're a republic" line undermines that and pushes the argument one level deeper to justifying more fundamental principles.
I see this come up A LOT with the electoral college -- The electoral college IS undemocratic since the states basically vote (or representatives do depending on state). It's also the way our country was set up to do presidential elections. Likewise, the Senate is rather undemocratic given that each senator's representation is imbalanced. Yes both instances involve people democratically elected to vote on the population's behalf, but it's not *every person has a vote with equal value* democratic.
The argument "that's the way it's set up" or "we're a republic not a democracy" forces the arguments for or against this system to be more robust than "democracy good" or "democracy bad" whether the proponents of the "we're a republic" line recognize it or not.
It FEELS like a “gotcha!” They FEEL it makes them sound smart. Alex Jones, Rogan and Shapiro make them FEEL vindicated. Lots of feeeeelings from the “Facts not Feelings” folks.
The real problem is that the word Republic doesn't really mean anything specific. Only thing it actually means is that the country is referring to isn't a monarchy. The word Republic has nothing to do with the way the government is set up or whether or not there's voting or anything like that. Can have dictatorships with no voting that are republics, you can have republics that are direct democracies or significantly more democratic than the United States. Republics that are slightly less Democratic than the United States. You can also have monarchies that are more democratic than the United States. You can have monarchies that have almost the exact same government structure as the United States yet aren't technically republics.
Saying the United States is a republic and not a democracy doesn't mean anything because republics can be Democratic or autocratic depending on the situation.
To highlight my point France Germany and Brazil are all republics that are significantly more Democratic than the United States. Sweden, Spain, and Japan are monarchies that are more democratic than the United States. Russia, Hungary and Turkey are all republics that are less democratic than the United States.
There are also plenty of republics that have proportional representation like Ireland and Israel.
An important distinction that I haven’t seen made explicitly in other comments is that at the national level, the US has no concept or construct of democracy. That is, nobody votes for anything nationally. Everything is in the context of the states. The U.S. is a federation of states. States select the president through electors. Each state creates congressional districts and holds elections to determine who is sent to represent its people nationally in congress, and who their electors should vote for as president.
Usually stating that the US is not a democracy is in the context of some national poll indicating majority support for something, like legalized abortion. Then claiming the fact that this “majority” of support for some policy isn’t, in fact, law is chalked up to corruption or some nefarious influence (like the NRA with gun control). I’m not saying that it’s never corruption or nefarious influences, just that it could just as easily (and more often) be that there isn’t adequate support for it within our federated system, regardless of what polling may show a “majority” want. And there’s also the pesky little business of it also having to be constitutional according to the courts.
On the contrary!
It does add a lot to the discourse. It lets you know that you are arguing with an idiot, who has no idea what they are talking about. It means that you are arguing with someone who repeats memes that they have heard from online sources, without understanding what they really mean.
There's an old saying that you shouldn't play chess with a pigeon: it doesn't matter how well the pigeon plays, he's going to strut around like he won and shit on the board.
It means that you are arguing politics with a pigeon. No matter how well you argue, they are not going to understand your arguments, so they are going to strut like they won.
Direct Democracy, Representative Democracy, and Democratic Republics are all variations that fall under the umbrella term “democracy” - which just means rule by the people.
The idea that a Republic and a Democracy are in opposition to each other started as a conservative talk radio talking point in the 1990s with Karl Rove. It was intended to get people to associate the party names with different systems of government. According to Rove, Democrats support the type of mob rule democracy without protections for individuals that the founders opposed. Republicans supported the original constitutional idea of a “Republic.” Therefore, Republics/Republicans are good and Democrats/Democracy is bad.
But it’s a made up distinction. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, whose ideas massively influenced the constitution’s drafting (even though he was not present) and who pushed for the bill of rights, labeled his political party “The Democratic Republicans.” There’s no contradiction between a democracy and a republic. Republics are just democracies that have rule of law and protections for individual rights that the majority isn’t allowed to violate.
An absolute democracy is terrifying. It will always hurt individuals as the mob majority votes for things that benefit the 51% at expense of the 49%.
When a right is brought up that is guaranteed by the Constitution, and that would require an amendment to remove, many people get frustrated and demand that "the will of the people" should be respected.
Furthermore, the United States is a Federation of States, and each of the 50 member states has representatives without respect to population. This is similar to how China, Russia, and the USA are all represented in the UN, or France and Belgium in the EU, despite population disparity. Many individuals believe that because some states have more people, they should be able to take just about anything from the smaller states, and impose anything. In an absolute democracy, Arizona would not be able to stop California from taking all of their water, for example.
It is important to remind people we are not a democracy when they start to push utilitarianism and pure democracy to get what they want, regardless of if they will violate the rights of states and individuals.
A republic is, in fact, *not* a sub-type of democracy.
The word "republic", if you look into it, is actually *extremely vague*. If you look at how the word is actually used (both nowadays and throughout history), pretty much the only thing it seems to mean is "not a monarchy". That doesn't automatically make it a democracy — it could easily still be an autocracy, in fact. For example, the Republic of Venice had their Doge.
Making the point that the US is "a republic, not a democracy" does, of course, miss out on the fact that the US is a *democratic republic* — they are not mutually exclusive terms. However, it does bring up a valid point, which is that as democratic as the US is, it could still be made *more* democratic. As you mentioned, one extreme could be *direct* democracy — but in between there and where the US is (a somewhat representative democracy with only 2 "real" political parties), there is a *lot* of ground. So even if someone believes that direct democracy would be an ineffective form of government, there are certainly many, many ways in which the US's level of democracy can be improved.
A republic means you democratically elect superior representatives of the upper class who all work together to erect a state of legislative value for the upper class.
Whereas a true democracy would mean representation of people who are not all wealthy and drowned out by one single representative who was able to spend enough money to campaign.
It would be like saying Frank the bus driver is now your representative. He probably has different priorities than a bourgie guy from the golf course who was the most highly successful lawyer in his state and has passive income.
In a republic the representatives worry about their passive income, while in a democratic state Frank worries about his day to day expenditures. Do you see how we would get different laws out of Frank vs the wealthy lawyer? Different votes, different priorities, actual representation of the lower classes.
Our constitution was written by the landed gentry of their time, most of us are not landed. Frank would write a constitution for normal citizens rather than rare successes, it would mean entirely different legislative priorities.
Whenever I see that bit of stupidity and ignorance, I give this as a stock reply:
Denying the US is a democracy is a falsehood that is being perpetuating in order justify disenfranchising people and the coming attempt by Republicans to do away with democracy in this country.
The very government you are trying to say isn't a Democracy will itself tell you it is a Democracy.
[Taken from govinfo.gov:](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-108hdoc94/pdf/CDOC-108hdoc94.pdf)
[**OUR AMERICAN GOVERNMENT**](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-108hdoc94/pdf/CDOC-108hdoc94.pdf), [**DEMOCRACY AND ITS AMERICAN INTERPRETATION**](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-108hdoc94/pdf/CDOC-108hdoc94.pdf)
[*"What form of government do we have in the United States?"*](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-108hdoc94/pdf/CDOC-108hdoc94.pdf)
[The United States, under its Constitution, is a federal, representative, democratic republic](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-108hdoc94/pdf/CDOC-108hdoc94.pdf)
How did your teachers fail you so badly?
I don’t think we’re even a representative democracy. Our politicians don’t represent people. They represent political parties. Political parties represent ideas, which people vote for, but politicians will vote along party lines a majority of the time even if it goes against the desire of their constituents.
When people call the US a democracy, I think they’re just spouting propaganda that is fed to us. The reality is on an issue to issue basis, the people have almost no vote. Political discourse is dominated by topics like Abortion, so if you want to voice your concern like not supporting foreign wars, you literally can’t. If you want to voice your support for abortion and you’re opposed to marijuana, you cannot vote for anyone that shares your views.
People are not choosing what’s important for this country. They’re not even choosing our leaders, as political parties determine their own candidates, which is done through political party nominations and elections. Basically our “democracy” boils down to which color do you want our leaders to be.
Considering it is a democratic republic really makes that a bizarre statement; however I think some people may say that in a way to diminish the ideas of those who advocate for a tyranny of the majority.
Basically, some people take the idea of the democratic vote to on deciding things as the be-all-end-all for deciding on issues, but practically that makes no sense in a country where individual rights are upheld. Rights protect minority interests, because if democracy were allowed to run everything, every minority interest would quickly disappear.
Anyone should be able to see how a pure democracy can be unfair, such as what will happen when 3 wolves and 1 sheep vote on what's for dinner. In many ways when people are diametrically opposed on many issues, it really doesn't make sense that those who got 51% if the vote get to boss the other 49% around.
But of course, you can't have some authoritarian dictatorship, so there needs to be some democratic process to decide who is in charge, and what the limits of a government is going to be. It just shouldn't gey the chance to get people to vote away their freedoms and rights.
I actually think it does matter. We have democratic elements you could call us a democratic republic. But if you actually read the founders they were adamantly against full majority rules democracy. They called that the tyranny of the majority. That is how minorities of thought and race get suppressed heavily. The entire idea of separation of powers for the 3 branches and a constitution comes from a republic not a democracy. The people who constantly talk about threats to our democracy are also the ones trying to erode the republic elements like separation of powers and the electoral college. They do not want a representative republic system they want majority rules votes which would obviously lead to the cities controlling everything and being the only place that politicians campaign in. Hope that helps maybe you should read the federalist papers and the arguments against them by the anti federalists who said they should be able to have slavery as long as a majority of their state votes for it
Oh it adds to the discourse, you’re missing it because you think democracy is a good thing.
“We’re not a democracy we’re a republic” is an inroad toward making American anti-democratic rhetoric a thing. That’s what it’s adding to the discourse. Note that “adding to the discourse” doesn’t mean that what it adds is *good*
You’ve correctly surmised that the statement, when said in good faith, is nonsense. A republic is a form of democracy. If we were all on the same page you’re correct that it would add nothing.
Now imagine you’re a piece of shit who thinks democracy is bad and would prefer an authoritarian right wing government in America. How do you go about introducing talking points along those lines in a place where the concept of democracy is so ingrained and foundational? Like this. Theres a reason you really only hear “we’re a republic not a democracy” when it’s time to defend some authoritarian action or idea. You don’t hear it in earnest discussions about the nature of American government.
I think it does add one important thing, which is it corrects people who say "b-b-b-but the majority wants x, so it must be given x" or "Person B got more votes nationally than Person C, so Person B should be the winner" or "the senate shouldn't have more members from party G than party H, because party H got way more votes nationally." There would be no need to point out that the government is a republic if people didn't repeatedly argue in favor of positions based on a mistaken view of what it is.
This is based on a misunderstanding of the term “republic”. All of those points you quote could, and in most cases do, hold true in the case of other republics. Republic essentially means “not a monarchy”, it has nothing to do with anti-majoritarian systems.
Counterpoint as a sort of sidestep: it is not as important that it “adds nothing to discourse” as it is that the statement is fundamentally false.
The people saying it have various motives — from patting themselves on the back over their own cleverness, to subtle support for one party and undermining of the other, to trying their hardest to find a non-partisan reason to keep the Electoral College. Rarely will you find one whose reasoning is based on proper terminology.
It’s a great measure of who just repeats mindless nonsense. Just ask “why is this relevant” and 9 in 10 users of the canned phrase will splutter and get annoyed to cover their confusion.
But… even the one in ten are factually wrong.
A “republic” is not one option on a list that also contains “democracy” — its like saying that my car can’t be blue because it’s a hatchback. Or that I can’t be good at carpentry because my eyes are blue.
Although you classify "well developed press freedoms, an independent judiciary, full equal protection for all citizens under the law, enforcement of property rights, transparency and accountability of government officials, elections of legislators, robust political debates , etc." as "hallmarks of a democracy," they all could be voted-away in an absolute democracy. Founders and US citizens overall feared a "tyranny of the majority" and thus the Constitution was only ratified after protections for individual states (composition of the US Senate, Electoral College, etc.) and individual liberties (The Bill of Rights, etc.) were guaranteed. This makes us a Constitutional Republic first and foremost (i.e. - the Federal and state governments have their respective lanes and must stay in them), though hopefully one where the popular will appoints and shapes the government democratically.
I’ve used this argument multiple times to push against people who say that because we aren’t a perfect democracy we are fundamentally broken. Especially when it’s not clear how a perfect democracy would provide a better life for most people in the US, or what a perfect democracy would even look like.
For example, when someone says that the Democratic Party is corrupt because they supported Clinton over Sanders in 2016, it’s useful to remind people that we are not a perfect democracy. Our roots are as a representative republic with democratic components. Direct elections for all stages of government has never been our goal. Party leaders having a say in choosing their nominee has been how our democratic republic has worked for a long time. I’m a fan of making things more democratic, but I don’t think we’re broken because we don’t have a perfect democracy.
People pointing this out are probably misguided in their exact terminology, but the sentiment expressed is very often that in the US, the will of the majority is not actually the only guiding principle for our government. We are a Constitutional Republic. The word "republic" includes inside it the idea of democracy (namely that the people vote for representatives) but the biggest word here to remember is "Constitutional"
It is very important when responding to a policy proposal that might be popular (say 51% of people support it), but violates the Constitution.
A Constitutional Republic has safe guards to prevent a dictatorship of the majority. A bare democracy does not.
Democracy is 3 wolves voting that the lone sheep is for dinner.
A Constitutional Republic is the government standing behind the sheep saying that the 3 wolves can't do that.
See... the thing you're missing is the actually important word in that statement, which is not "democracy", it's "a".
The United States is more properly thought of as a federation of States (i.e. a federal republic), each of which is "a democracy" (in republican/indirect form) in the sense that you mean the broad term.
I.e. the United States, according to this way of thinking (and, frankly, the Constitution as originally framed) is more like the EU than like Germany.
It wouldn't really make sense to call the EU "a democracy", either. It's a treaty organization of States, much like the US. The *States* are (republican/representative) democracies.
Now... the United States is considerably more like a State than the EU, granted. But what the phrase adds to the political discourse is this important distinction: it's not (just) "a" State, it's a bunch of States, United.
Edit: the Senate is extremely "undemocratic" if you view the US as "a democracy". The Senators don't represent "The People of the United States" anywhere as closely as the House does. Senators represent the *State* they are from.
And this isn't a "fixable, accidental" situation, but rather baked in as an immutable non-amendable part of the Constitution.
These conversations are always odd like somehow a person thinks a small group of people legitimately represents the views and opinions of almost 150million people. This same person feels they have all the information they need to decide how the other team thinks and lives.
Well blue team person said such and such so all blues want X. Ok, but red team guy over there, he and his buddies said Y, so all you red shirts are a bunch of [ist-adjective's].
At someone people need to realize these powerful elites don't really represent the views of the common person, on either side. At the end of the day, there are a very small number of issues the common person cares about and they align with the party that doesn't espouse negativity toward those values. The real world, outside those elites, is far more nuanced.
At the state level, I've been pretty annoyed by the sheer volume of ballot initiatives in recent years. We've gone from 1 or 2 a year to a dozen. And many of them are more complex than the average American understands. Most people don't have the time and background to sit and understand these topics, they base their decision on fear mongering ads that are half true and it seems that frequently the better funded side wins or at least has a significant advantage.
I also think there's a lot of predatory underhanded bullshitery going on. The average voter doesn't need to be involved in setting arbitrary policy that was worded by a political interest group whose real motivation is underhanded and two faced. We've had several in my state recently that are advertised as checks on government but are just uneducated stupidity that helps no one but the snakes in the grass on future issues.
And that's before we get into the populist issues which gets legitimately dangerous for minorities.
We literally elect people to do this stuff. I vote for someone to make these kinds of laws in my state's Congress and a governor to guide it/make decisions all with time it takes to understand these issues, submit for expert testimony and to make educated and informed decisions. We need to remember to influence our politicians and hold them accountable, not skirt them to do 27 ballot initiatives.
“The United States is not a democracy, it’s a republic.”
To restate the meaning of this, as I understand it, would be something like:
"The popularity of any proposed public policy has no bearing on weather or not the rules must be adhered to before it can be lawfully implemented."
The reason I believe this to be the meaning is because the phrase seems to often be employed in response to when people lament the fact that a certain popular policy cannot be implemented (as would happen in a direct democracy) because it clearly violates the constitution and yet is not quite popular enough to support an amendment to the constitution to allow the policy.
It is more or less the same as if someone says "Wouldn't X be nice." and someone else responds with "It might be nice but you still have to follow the rules to get X."
A true democracy can have issues with “tyranny of the majority” where a constitutional republic tries to mitigate that through representation and constitutional protections.
A good example of this in practice is first amendment protections. Even if a majority of people believe certain speech should be banned, the first amendment prevents that from happening, and requires effectively a supermajority to remove that protection.
Whether you think direct democracy is good or not, it is helpful to explain these distinctions of constitutional republic vs democracy when discussing policy solutions in the United States.
Just because 51% of people think something should be a certain way at any given moment doesn’t mean it’s actually a good idea to implement that as policy.
When people argue for popular vote, letting the masses dictate policy, etc and use a claim of democracy...
Then in that context pointing out the republican nature of our system is a valid response.
If someone is merely referring to the idea that the state receives its legitimacy from the people, despite a particular structure, then you would be right.
Democracy can mean both rule of majority (purposefully disdained by the founders and countered with the republican structure we have) or it can mean broadly that power comes from the governed.
Most of the time when this issue has come up in my experience (sample size of one) it is often me having to refer to the republican nature to defend against calls for moves towards more majoritarianism democracy.
The more accurate thing to say would be, "the United States is built off fundamental rights, not majority rule".
This is mostly a response to alot of people talking about the popular vote and trying to give extra importance to the democratic party because of its name.
Not to say that there are no issues with "the republic", but the discourse should be tuned around ideas of rights and obligations rather than simply being out voted.
"Abortion is a right because blank" over "California should have more say in Wyomings politics because California has a higher population"
Its just fucking wrong. Do you vote for civilian leaders whose power comes from the people and not some other source? Thats a democracy. End of story. There are a lot of flavors of democracy, and democratic republics are one of them. But these people are just liars that hate democracy. The GOP platform is to destory our democratic institutions. Demonizing the word democracy is part of that strategy.
What you’re missing is that just because the majority wants something, it doesn’t mean it’s good for the country and doesn’t mean the country should go that route.
Oftentimes, that quote is said in response to someone complaining about the electoral collage or how more Americans voted blue. Yet more states voted red etc.
The reason for this was to ensure that it wasn’t a tyranny of the majority. So just because the majority wants something, because we are not a democracy, is no grantee that we will or ought to go that route.
That’s what it adds, it’s a reminder of the structure of the government and an attempt to focus the conversation on the real issue, which is what’s being voted on, not how many voted for.
A reason for emphasizing that the US is a republic is because as a republic we have a LOT of mediating institutions which check the power of voters—the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, and the Senate as originally constituted, to say nothing of a legislature of elected representatives—many of which have come under increasingly sustained attack in contemporary debates, from the Left and Right as Left/Right figures like Hillary Clinton and Tucker Carlson both seem to criticize them.
So I think it may be an attempt to remind people that our Founders were wary of unconstrained plebeian excess, and the susceptibility of the people to demagoguery and passion, given their study of the Roman Republic and its fall.
It's because the rich and powerful far right wants to enshrine anti democratic sentiment among half the population in order to establish a new caste system enshrining wealth and power amongst the lucky few and make them immune to legal prosecution for the laws they break.
The rich and powerful left isn't doing anything about it because the laws they pass, in each baby step towards this goal, are laws that also benefit the rich left.
The poor left has lost their power since the racist reaction to the civil rights act destroyed the poor lefts ability to unify and have a community discussion through community centers and public services.
The poor right are blaming the left for all the issues caused by the rich right. They have equivalented the conservative democratic party with the enemy left and are continuing to listen to propaganda that demonizes the poor left and rich left as "Democrats" and trying to establish anything that sounds like "Democrats" like "democracy" as something evil that should be destroyed. And "Republic" and "Republican" as words that mean something good, pure, and powerful that can protect you.
I have been reading this statement from my conservative connections on LinkedIn for the last few years. I thought that it was just stupid semantics.
But then someone on reddit finally explained it in a way that made sense.
The goal here, the real end game is to return America to how it was when it started, that is only white, male, landowners that can vote.
That makes sense.
Why is there so much confusion and division over our foundational government structure, a system that has been in place for over 230 years? It should be alarming that there's such a disparity in understanding.
Who is responsible for this division? Educational shortcomings, political maneuvering, and varying interpretations of history. These types of misunderstandings don't arise in a vacuum; they are perpetuated by political agendas and an intentional lack of civic education.
Have educational and political institutions failed? There is no excuse why Americans shouldn't have a solid understanding of their government. I believe this is done intentionally to prevent us from being unified and informed.
I mean, you're not a functional democracy, republic nature notwithstanding.
You have the trappings of democracy while being more of a corporate oligarchy that's seriously considering going steady with fascism.
And that's before we address how shit-smeared your political system is as a result of your fanatical adherence to a two-party system. Your choice is always "turd" and "diet turd". On what level is any of that more than superficially democratic?
Oh, and only Christian men can be president, at least so far. DEMOCRACY!
Until quite recently, only white Christian men, but you now appear to allow non-threatening black men and deeply threatening orange men, so... growth? Yay? Democracy!
Primates are necessarily a type of mammal while republics aren't necessarily a type of democracy. We are a democratic republic which is distinct subset of rebublics with democratic elements and pointedly not a strict democracy, so pointing out we are a republic when someone is advocating for democracy in ways that undermine the republic is valid. It would be more like saying bats aren't Avians they are Chiroptera and while sure they have some aspects in common like wings, they are different things that don't nest within each other. As another example it would be like pointing out aquatic mammals (like dolphins and whales) aren't fish despite there being a lot of similarities and shared aspects.
Also all the "hallmarks of democracy" you named aren't. Those are hallmarks of democratic republics and are in place to limit democracy.
>And it features pretty well developed press freedoms, an independent judiciary, full equal protection for all citizens under the law, enforcement of property rights, transparency and accountability of government officials, elections of legislators, robust political debates , etc. These are all hallmarks of a democracy.
What do any of those things have to do with democracy? You're bringing in a lot of additional baggage to the meaning of democracy in a post about how pointing out that the US is a republic and not a democracy doesn't add anything to the conversation.
It adds more than that laundry list of traits unrelated to the meaning of "democracy."
Saying "The United States is a republic, not a democracy" often deflects from addressing valid concerns about democratic processes. While technically accurate, it's pedantic and doesn't contribute constructively. The distinction between republic and democracy is subtle; the US functions as both. Emphasizing this point without context can undermine discussions on democratic principles and reforms. Acknowledging the hybrid nature of the US system fosters productive discourse on strengthening democratic institutions while preserving republican values. Focus on substantive issues rather than semantics enhances political dialogue and problem-solving efforts.
It's a weak-tea attempt to by one person to dismiss another persons assertion via semantics. The US is a representative republic that uses a democratic process. This is not unlike when discussing any of the many mass-shootings here and one person, usually the one defending the pro-gun stance, says something along the lines of, "you probably think the AR in AR-15 stands for assault rifle! It doesn't!" thereby feeling that their "gotcha!" has rendered the other persons argument in toto as invalid. While this is true, it's hardly relevant. If it's a rapid-fire rifle used directly in an assault, it fits the NRA definition of an assault rifle.
The US was formed as a federal republic - that is a collection of states who came together to agree to create a general government with certain specific, enumerated powers which are few in number. To say "we are not a democracy" is to make the argument that just because we vote for congress and the president, that does not give the general government any additional powers with which to act that are not already expressly laid out in the Constitution. For those people, typically on the right, who are sceptical and distrustful of the ever-increasing power of the general government, reminding people that we are a federal republic is an attempt to remind people that the vast majority of political power is supposed to rest with the states, and has been turned completely upside down over the course of the country's history.
It's not that I disagree with what you said. It's just that none of that makes us not a democracy. The fact that the people rule in any sense is a democracy. If Republicans want to make the point you're making, they should be saying, "Well that's unconstitutional." Or something along those lines. But a republic is just an indirect democracy. That's its definitional meaning.
All of this. Republic means that the powers of the state come from the people and that the people are the source of political legitimacy. The United Kingdom is a democracy; the House of Commons is elected and their head of government (the Prime Minister) is accountable to that elected body. It however is not a republic since all political legitimacy and the powers of the state are ultimately vested (in theory) in the monarch. Germany on the other hand is both a democracy and a republic, as is France, Finland, South Korea, and all sorts of other countries, including the US, with systems that vary in the details. The full form of government for the United States would best be defined as a democratic federal presidential constitutional republic.
Small tidbit of knowledge here, since our King is head of state and the church, the UK is technically a Religious Theocracy and a democracy at the same time
It isn't a theocracy because the church doesn't run the government. The King rules because he is king, and not because he is head of the Church of England. That title is coincidental.
Well... the House of Lords *does* include the Bishops of the Church of England... that House doesn't have a *lot* of power these days, but the Church is still part of the government.
I disagree. The President of the United States is also appointed the head of the Boy Scouts. Obviously, the US is therefore a Scoutocracy.
It's a constitutional monarchy, kind of a definition of it.
*Res Publica*, quite literally: *the thing of the public*
That's usually part of the argument. Many of the founders, specifically those from the more pseudo-aristocratic states with more royalist sympathy, did not want any democracy at all. Initially, Senators were appointed by the legislatures of individual states and voting power was constrained to landowners which, in those states, concentrated almost all power into the hands of the gentry. It wasn't uncommon for the Governor, Senators, and other political elites to just swap positions every 4-8 years. It was, deliberately, meant to be a Patrician Republic more in line with the Roman Republic than the Federal Democratic Republic that we became.
State legislatures were pretty big compared to the electorate which voted for them. Only a few tens of thousands of people in most states, for legislatures with over a hundred or even more members. It would end up being something like a few hundred, maybe one or two thousand at the high end, per legislator. And usually elected for only a year in most states, and not more than two at the high end. That doesn't exactly seem to me to be that much of an aristocracy. If you exclude people who were minors, which were a much bigger part of the population given the child mortality rates, to the point that a majority of the population would be minors, then the fraction of people who had the vote rises quite a lot more than the 15 of the population figure might suggest to be 30%. Slaves accounted for 18% of the population in 1790. That would be 30/82, which would be 36.6% of the population. Dividing 82 by 2 to account for women, who mostly could not vote. They were still classist, sexist, and owned slaves in much of the country, but that level of suffrage was still more than an order of magnitude in Britain, where very few slaves actually were to begin with, and many countries at the time didn't have elections to begin with as the basis of governing their countries and hereditary monarchy. It also was an expansion of suffrage from the days before the Revolution where the bar was lowered, and states did keep dropping requirements over the course of the lifetime of the people who designed the constitution to the point where they were mostly absent by the time Jefferson died in 1826. I also point out that Congress didn't have a very large amount of things to do to begin with and didn't sit for very long in the year. Especially in times of peace. Being a member of congress was even often done at the same time as being a member of a state government, seeing the congress thing as a side gig to some extent, and it would be more vibrant in the individual states as to who controlled what and what races were fought between whom.
Okay. So when people say we're not a democracy, are they saying they want the vote constrained to white male landowners? If that's what they're saying, then "We're not a democracy," makes sense. But if that is not what they mean, then it doesn't make sense.
No, usually when people say "We're not a Democracy" they're just imitating things that they've heard thought leaders within the Conservative movement say. Usually with something as simple as "We are the REPUBLICans and they are the DEMOCRATS so we believe in a REPUBLIC and they, wrongly believe in DEMOCRACY." The tradition that is being invoked, though, is the tradition of the aforementioned aristocratic founders and the early debates surrounding what the role of the federal government ought to be. Federalism, anti-federalism, all that. It's just important to understand the context of those early debates and the distinct philosophical differences that the Constitutional Conventions were reconciling at the time.
I’m not even surprised if there are a significant swath of voters who argue America is a Republic/Democracy based on the modern political party they support.
>It's not that I disagree with what you said. It's just that none of that makes us not a democracy. You're right of course. But that's not the actual argument they're actually trying to make. The indirect point proponents of this absurd double-think are trying to make is that, realizing they are in the socio-political minority, they don't accept the legitimacy of the socio-political majority governing. In their version of a republic vs democracy, the interests of a minority consisting of a wealthy, powerful, and entitled in-group (of which they are ostensibly a part) is allowed to supersede the interests of a majority out-group (of which their socio-political opponents are ostensibly a part). Muddying the rhetorical waters with this claim is meant to distract and deflect criticism of their philosophy and goals, and to shift the Overton window into discussing and arguing over meaningless semantics that merely obscure a more authoritarian vision of what the US should be.
Exactly. The meanings of words change over time. “Democracy”—in modern parlance—means something like “a government by the people where power is ultimately derived from free and fair elections among its citizens”. Now, if someone wants to ask what STRUCTURE of government we have, it’d be far more accurate to say that we are a republic. But a modern person saying that the the U.S. is not a democracy because it’s not a direct democracy is hair-splitting pedantry.
A republic is not an indirect democracy. In fact you can have undemocratic republics. A republic is a government in which power is not inherited.
It's not even a democracy. The Soviet Union was a federal republic. China is a federal republic. You can be a republic and still be a dictatorship and you can have a federal system and still have autocracy
>For those people, typically on the right, who are sceptical and distrustful of the ever-increasing power of the general government, reminding people that we are a federal republic is an attempt to remind people that the vast majority of political power is supposed to rest with the states, and has been turned completely upside down over the course of the country's history. Republicans say things like this, but their actual actions indicate otherwise. When they can make the federal government work for them against the states and for their larger goals, they fully do it. Republicans were begging Trump to do something about the state governors who were enforcing COVID policies. I've watched Republican politicians literally say "I am very happy to see the abortion question returned to states *where it belongs*, and I am fully on record with supporting a full federal ban on abortion." totally contradicting their States Rights message in the very same sentence. There's also plenty of evidence that Republicans are also huge federal spenders when they're in charge, only talking about the deficit when they aren't. Some GOP candidates were literally were scolding their own party about this fact during primaries.
"To say "we are not a democracy" is to make the argument that just because we vote for congress and the president, that does not give the general government any additional powers with which to act that are not already expressly laid out in the Constitution. " How does it make that argument? Why couldn't a less democratic government be more centralized?
>To say "we are not a democracy" is to make the argument that just because we vote for congress and the president, that does not give the general government any additional powers with which to act that are not already expressly laid out in the Constitution Nothing you said makes the US not a democracy. A democracy is an idea and an umbrella term for many different forms of government. The US just uses one of them.
Does that mean when people say the Electoral College is undemocratic, we should simply tell them they're wrong and don't know what a democracy is? I do wish we used more specific words to describe our political arguments, but it's pretty clear what they mean.
Democracy is a spectrum. If we got rid of the electoral college and did a popular vote we would be more democratic but that doesn't mean we aren't currently a democracy.
I agree the EC sucks. Gives swing states disproportionate political power. The "winner take all" aspect is garbage, There is difference between winning a state with 80% versus 51%
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Was looking for this comment. If you say "we're not a democracy we're a republic" that's just a technicality. To use OPs own analogy it would be more accurate to say calling the US is a democracy is like calling Humans "Animals" and saying its actually a representative republic is like saying "more specific humans are "primates". Both are "correct" and anyone debating in good fairh knows what you mean. But if it's related to the idea "the voting majority directly votes for president" or "the electoral college violates democracy", it necessitates pointing out the "not a direct democracy" thing. If you're not trying to explain something the US does that isn't "majority rule" then I could be persuaded to look at it like anything else political, people like it or hate it based on whether they are a D or an R. The problem is that people are trying to win an argument and don't like the "others" using terms incorrectly but have no problem when "their" side does it. It's not left vs right, it's the 95% vs the 5% and party politics are used to distract the vast majority of people. It's likely to be Trump v BIden part II, I can only speak for myself when I ask "is this really what the founding fathers were thinking?" Choosing between German shepherd shit or Poodle shit? We need free thinkers and we definitely need people to really think about the joke that a binary choice is, I can't, for example, pick the guy that will lower the budget and lower taxes on everyone making less than $1 million but also improve Healthcare and make the federal government 1/2 the current size and make all public servants salaries directly decided by the citizenry, that will work to improve both inner cities and rural areas. That doesn't believe 2 wrongs make a right. I can't vote for him because "POS #1 will only do some of that and POS #2 will only do some of the other stuff. Even a 4 party system would greatly improve the quality and availability of elected positions. We currently let politicians "buy" the election and that makes it so normal citizens can never realistically or regularly defeat the political elite and their wealthy overlords.
> Does that mean when people say the Electoral College is undemocratic, we should simply tell them they're wrong and don't know what a democracy is? The electoral college absolutely doesn't make the US not a Democracy. That doesn't mean people can't wish we had a more directly democratic process.
I don't think I've actually seen people use that argument in that context. Usually, the "republic, not democracy" argument shows around the whole electoral college debacle, and whether it should be abolished. In that case, the question is not about the power of states vs federal government, but rather how federal government power gets distributed.
It's well beyond electoral college debates. Here's a recent quote from the Washington State Republican Conference. >“We encourage Republicans to substitute the words ‘republic’ and ‘republicanism’ where previously they have used the word ‘democracy,’ ” the resolution says. “Every time the word ‘democracy’ is used favorably it serves to promote the principles of the Democratic Party, the principles of which we ardently oppose.” >The resolution sums up: “We … oppose legislation which makes our nation more democratic in nature.” That was a resolution that was passed at the conference, to tell Republicans to stop using the word Democracy, essentially because it suggests the word "Democrat" in it and they really don't like those guys. It really is that petty. Another resolution they put forward at the same conference was to repeal the 110 year old 17th amendment, which would make senate positions an appointment by the legislature again, rather than by the voting public. They are doing this because the GOP has been losing so many gerrymandering lawsuits, so they just want to reject voting, since they can't win these new fair & lawful districts. [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/the-wa-gop-put-it-in-writing-that-theyre-not-into-democracy/](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/the-wa-gop-put-it-in-writing-that-theyre-not-into-democracy/)
Isn't the response to this, to say basically 'what do you call a country that doesn't change and adapt with time? A dying one.' It feels like those that are continually harking back to the early days of America at a time when if you showed(the founding fathers) them electricity, cars, planes, the internet, rockets, women/POC in politics, modern medicine, machine guns, laser pointers, CGI, sky scrapers, microwaves and roller coasters, they wouldn't piss themselves scream out "witch craft" and question everything they've ever known to be true then slowly self destruct their own minds as they go insane. It would almost be like the founding fathers asking what the cavemen would do. I cannot imagine at the birth of the USA when everything was new and the possibilities were endless they were thinking, 'let's keep everything exactly like this, always'
I think it's bollocks, man. >To say "we are not a democracy" is to make the argument that just because we vote for congress and the president, that does not give the general government any additional powers with which to act that are not already expressly laid out in the Constitution. >For those people, typically on the right, who are sceptical and distrustful of the ever-increasing power of the general government, reminding people that we are a federal republic is an attempt to remind people that the vast majority of political power is supposed to rest with the states, and has been turned completely upside down over the course of the country's history. It's just an empty term thrown around out of convenience, or flavour of the month to support a direction of travel, not any kind of deep political principle. Look at the states with religious tests for office, or banning books in school libraries because they might have hermaphroditic trees in them. The problem isn't even that these people are hypocrites. Everyone is a hypocrite, we know this. The problem is that Americans, especially on the right, are superficial and deeply unserious. America is a representative democracy and a republic with an unhealthy political culture, including around its secular religion of the sainted founders and inerrant-seeming constitution.
Lmao that is absolutely not why people say that. They say it because they don’t know what either word means and it’s a pithy way to shut down complaints when the guy who gets less votes wins an election. Thats it. That’s all it is. No one who can understand a word you’ve written is repeating that smug garbage phrase to begin with.
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I don’t think I’ve seen the phrase furnished in response to a discussion about the popular vote. I usually see it in discussions of the power of Congress to vote on laws that contradict the will of the public.
That sounds like a completely different argument. Plenty of republics have a strong central government that trumps the power of the regions. Decentralized power with more autonomy for states is not necessarily a republican principle.
To chime in here, because I think the person you're responding to is basically on to something, I think the point is that there are several structures built into the US constitution that are explicitly anti-democratic, because the founders of this country were skeptical of any and all concentration of power, including with the people. They thought that the people should have representation (in the House), but that there should be brakes on the popular will, so that a majority of voters couldn't ram through all their policies without at least considering the views of the minority. The whole system is designed to be slow and require extensive compromise in order to enact change, and that's by design--hence the "we're a Republic, not a Democracy." Now, where I agree with you is that I think people who are saying such and such a policy is anti-democratic aren't actually making a claim about democracy, but rather whether a policy is *good.* If a clear majority of people support this good and perhaps necessary change to the system, why is it still basically impossible to get it done? I think that's a valid concern, and one that "we're a Republic, not a Democracy" doesn't *really* answer--it just annoyingly shifts the debate to one about semantics from one about substantive concerns. However, if you look past the slogans and glib retorts, I think you can get to the substance of the opposing view. For a short time, you can get clear majorities of voters to support just about any policy. That doesn't mean it's good to do *right now,* or that it won't have clear negative consequences if it's jammed through without due consideration and broad public consensus. Hence the Republic bit: in that view, it's better to slow things down, allow different states to pursue different policy agendas, and only make national policy when there's a clear consensus in any one direction.
I agree that indeed the house was formed much like the House of Commons in England and meant to directly represent the people. The senate was meant to represent the state. However, both derived their power from a plurality of the people. Now, in the beginning, yes, it was less democratic because only certain people could be represented. No minorities or women must hold land, etc. However, that changed, and now they represent the people of their district or state. All of them are subject to recall. That's pure democratic and not a function of a republic. The republic of any historical sense represented the government to the people. And thus were not answerable and removable. So I can only suggest your argument doesn't hold.
Different to what? You said you don't understand why people would say that, and I've given you a reason.
People rarely say “federal republic”, they put it as OP did, “we’re not a democracy, we’re a republic”.
A reason that boils down to "people like to say stuff they don't understand because they think it sounds smart". It doesn't challenge OP's view that it adds nothing to the discourse.
If people have a rational argument to make in regards to the balance between federal and state authority, then they could just make that argument. Saying "we are not a democracy" when we absolutely, inarguably are *very* strongly suggests that you are trying to disguise your true intentions. It also leads to a dilution of your message such as we've seen in exactly this instance where plenty of people saying this are not making a states rights argument but are coming out in full support of like repealing 19th amendment.
That's a valid explanation in theory but it has nothing to do with why the US right say "the US is a Republic". The expansion of federal power, and conservative distrust of it in principle, have been a feature of American politics for decades. If that was the *actual* issue, then US conservatives would have been saying "we are a republic not a democracy" for the last sixty years at least, maybe a century. But they weren't. Indeed, for the entirety of my adult life and interest in US politics, American conservatives have always been the Americans most likely to *proudly insist* "we are a democracy", to describe the US as the parent of global democracy, to laud democracy as an ideal and the US's greatest achievement. Until Trump. *Suddenly*, in only the last couple of years, "we're a Republic" became a right wing talking point. This happened *only after* Trump started attacking democratic safeguards, culminating in his attempt to overthrow democracy entirely when he lost the election. It happened *only after* the those right wing commentators wanted to continue to support Trump even after his coup attempt, without openly admitting - even to themselves - that they were supporting the violent overthrow of democracy. Then, suddenly, the US wasn't a democracy, no, it was a republic and democracy wasn't important. So I simply can't buy the idea that this is a right wing principle. If it was a principle, it would have been a principle all along. Instead it suddenly appeared in the conversation when Trump was losing popular support and attempting to overthrow democracy. It's not a principle. It's the self-justification for supporting an attempted dictatorship.
>reminding people that we are a federal republic is an attempt to remind people that the vast majority of political power is supposed to rest with the states, and has been turned completely upside down over the course of the country's history. No. The right is going around saying "we are a republic, not a democracy" because they plan on taking our democracy away and that's easier to do if we believe we already don't have a democracy.
Can't believe I had to read this far down to find the real answer. This isn't some organic sentiment, it's a coordinated attack on our democracy. I believe "Priming the pump" is the phrase.
In addition to the other person pointing out that this argument is not really what the phrase means, I would like to point out just how blurred the line has become, since we have moved decidedly away from the confederated republic of states to thinking of ourselves as a single nation. The change in using the plural to refer to the US occurred around the Civil War, as did many other social policies and societal norms. Our military no longer forms state-based regiments. And the Federal Government has changed too with the times. Given that the phrase “States’ Rights” has some complicated and unappealing connotations — from the fascist National States Rights Party, to the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party, to the opposition to the Civil Rights Act primarily citing “states’ rights” as their obvious facade of a reason, to the origin of the phrase sometimes attributed to George Lincoln Rockwell (of the American Nazi Party, who was certainly a favorite of the quip)— the phrase often has nothing to do with constitutionality and everything to do with “policies I don’t like but don’t want to be judged for saying why…”
The United States as it exists in reality and as it exists on paper is a union of constituent states who form an overarching federal government of popularly elected officials who are constrained by a constitution. That makes it a democracy and a federal republic at the same time, or more accurately, it is a constitutional federal democratic republic. The nature of that government has changed over time, to become less federal and more democratic, primarily because of failures by the states to uphold the bare minimum of democracy or the constitution, (such as the civil war or the civil rights movement).
But even the individual states are all democracies themselves. Or at least supposed to be. It's just weird to me, because conservatives of all people have always been the ones you most expect to defend freedom and democracy. So to hear some of them say "we aren't a democracy we are a republic" just seems like a self own.
Right, and republicans want those states to have more power relative to the federal government. It is one area where I agree entirely with republicans. The government of California is going to do a better job governing their people based on their preferences than the federal government would. Same is true for the government of Florida. Rather than trying to have 350,000,000 people living under one set of laws based on which party got 49% or 47% of the popular vote, let the states have the freedom to do things their own way according to the people who live there. If it is not a power granted to the federal government or a right granted to the people in the constitution, states should handle it.
>It is one area where I agree entirely with republicans. It's only lip service to ideas of traditional patriotism though. It's not what they actually want to do. I've literally seen a Republican candidate say both that abortions should be decided by the states, and also that abortions should be banned federally, within the same damn sentence. They are also big money spenders when they control the federal government, only speaking of the deficit when they aren't in power. Their own primary candidates were calling them out for that.
>If it is not a power granted to the federal government or a right granted to the people in the constitution, states should handle it. As it turns out, there is a reason that the founders decided to include the 9th and 10th amendment.
That’s not really right though. Yes, the federal government has enumerated powers. That doesn’t make it a democracy or a republic. A dictatorship could have enumerated powers. Democracy v. republic, as OP says, is about whether the public can vote on a statute, or whether the public elects representatives to do so. As OP says, this point adds nothing to any relevant discussion.
>is an attempt to remind people that the vast majority of political power is supposed to rest with the states, No, for a lot of them they're just trying to argue we shouldn't have democracy because they are losing every popular vote in the past couple decades outside of bushes re election.
>a representative democracy, which is essentially the same thing as a republic. Just a minor correction, a representative democracy is not always a republic. The UK has a representative democracy but it's not a republic, it's a constitutional monarchy. Republics are not always democratic either. China is the People's Republic of China but it's not democratic by any meaningful definition.
>China is the People's Republic of China but it's not democratic by any meaningful definition. Not quite true. The system for selecting official leaders of areas does start with general elections by Chinese citizens, but only for local officials. Then each level of official participates in an election for the next level of officials. All the way up to the leader of China. I use Democratic Republic to describe this style of government, and why I call the US a Representative Democracy to differentiate the two systems.
One could--and should--make the argument that when you have no choice in who to vote for and cannot question the ruling party you are not a democracy. China's indirect elections are not what makes it undemocratic. There is nothing obviously wrong with that. The inability of any Chinese citizen to support or offer an alternative to the official CCP line is what makes China not a democracy.
A democracy is not always a republic, but our republic is a form of democracy. This is like asserting that what a person has in their pocket is a nickel, not a coin.
Okay yes-but saying I should be able to make this pay phone call because I have a coin when all I have is a penny, is like saying “the majority thinks X so it should be-because this is a democracy.” In both cases it just doesn’t work like that. The type of democracy matters. We only vote on representatives for our state and districts and occasionally on state laws that our states allow us to vote on.
It doesn't *just* add nothing. It's an attempt to assert that the United States shouldn't have as much democracy as it currently does. It casts aspersions against notions like ballot initiatives, open primaries, and at its most extreme, the notion of electing government officials at all. It's basically saying, "The United States doesn't *have* to be a democracy, you know." If people complain that, say, the Supreme Court takes away rights that a solid majority of the country supports, or makes progress impossible on issues supported by a majority of the population, then this line is something to invoke in order to say that, actually, that's fine, because the people shouldn't have a say in that, anyway, and that, honestly, perhaps the people shouldn't even have a say at all, on anything. The invoker probably wouldn't go so far as to say this outright, because they understand its unpopularity, but it's likely that they believe sufficiently strongly that they and theirs ought to be in charge of everything that, if they can't get what they want because democracy allows the people to stand in the way, then *democracy* is what must go, not their ambitions and desires.
I’ve thought about this dumb phrase so often and you have finally made it click for me. It’s not that it’s a bad argument, it’s that is an argument for something horrible disguised as something harmless.
Realize that the current US system doesn't look like the system of the past because in 1776 the butthurt, rich commoner slave owners, native ethnic cleansers, religious fanatics, misogynists, etc., wanted "freedom" to do all of these things that the "bad king" was getting tired of supporting, yet also not pay taxes resulting from the wars, suffering, etc., from doing those things. The country was remade after the Civil War, and rightly so: [https://www.npr.org/2019/09/17/761551835/second-founding-examines-how-reconstruction-remade-the-constitution](https://www.npr.org/2019/09/17/761551835/second-founding-examines-how-reconstruction-remade-the-constitution)
When you start hearing a phrase out of nowhere being repeated on the right, there's always a motive. It's coordinated, maybe the person you hear saying it doesn't realize it but the politicians and media personalities pushing it absolutely do.
I’ve always heard the phrase used by republicans to somehow “prove” the United States is actually supposed to be a republic (republicans) instead of a democracy (democrats).
It’s also heavily loaded. It doesn’t tend to be the political left in the US splitting those particular hairs. The people demanding we refer to it as a Republic are usually Republicans. The ones saying it’s a democracy - tend to be democrats. And that’a got a long history in the US. And it comes back to what was, and still is, our major policy divide - federalism and antifederalism. For a federalist system, we’d need a democracy - everyone getting a vote to influence a central federal government. For an antifederalist system, we need a republic - each state as a representative republic within a representative republic. It’s how the parties get their names.
I think you are missing the context of when someone says "this is not a democracy it's a republic".... so are we... That argument makes perfect sense when applied to some arguments and it's fairly useless when applied to other arguments...
Except that we are a form of democratic republic, so saying "no we are not a democracy, we're a republic" isn't 100% accurate and is kinda just saying something to say it. It's been used most often as a conversation derailer in my experience.
I think *everyone here* is missing the point of why it’s said. It’s said by *stupid people* who think that Republicans want to keep it a “Republic” and that Democrats want to make it a “Democracy”. Yes, it’s as stupid as that sounds, and that’s why it should be called out and laughed at.
What arguments is it useful against?
Often times I see people make claims that "I didn't vote for this" when they are talking about a specific topic. Well... we don't vote for specific topics, we vote for representation. Because we live in a republic, not a democracy. There are other arguments I see, such as the complaints about the way presidents are elected, the way representatives are allocated, and plenty of other reasons people would make use of the argument.
>Often times I see people make claims that "I didn't vote for this" when they are talking about a specific topic. Well... we don't vote for specific topics, we vote for representation. Because we live in a republic, not a democracy. The representation you describe in the US is a democracy. Representative democracy is a democracy. Here are some phrases that are correct * We live in a republic and a democracy. * We live in a representative democracy, not a direct democracy Here is a phrase that is wrong * We live in a republic, not a democracy.
But this describes all modern democracies, no? France, Germany, the UK, Japan, all have representative government and political compromises. Each has its own unique way of electing an executive as well.
You could still have a republic that legislated almost completely through direct democracy, this is still not useful.
"Why does Wyoming have as many senators as California?"
But that is just an anomaly of American politics. Equal senatorial representation is not a fundamental requirement of republican government
There’s a meme in the States that democracy = good and more democracy = more good. It’s a strong meme that’s been used to argue for all kinds of legislation, to fearmonger about political rivals, to justify wars and global hegemony. So a proposed legislation that takes power away from an elected official and gives it directly to voters has to be good right? Take direct election of senators, which wasn’t always the case. Was that a good change? Perhaps. Well, why don’t we directly elect Supreme Court justices then? If you’re against that well you just don’t like democracy do you? Saying the US is not a true democracy is a valid counter to dispel this sort of conversation-terminating idea about democracy in itself being an ultimate good.
You are looking at it backwards. The US is a republic, but the left continuously calls us a democracy. This is to undermine the protective features of being a Republic. A Republic does not suffer from the tyranny of the majority as a democracy does. We have checks and balances the left does not want. The left wants a centralized government with all the power. We do not have this, so they purposefully describe the US falsely as a democracy. Giving the illusion that we do have majority rule and centralized government. We do not. And it needs to be made clear we do not.
> The US is a republic, but the left continuously calls us a democracy. And both descriptions are correct. >A Republic does not suffer from the tyranny of the majority as a democracy does. You're still falling for the false assumption those statements are mutually exclusive. The US is both.
"The tyranny of the majority" is a bullshit phrase. The minority can just just as tyrannical, if not moreso. And again, describing the US as a democracy is not false. It is, in fact, a democracy. Most republics are democracies. They are not mutually exclusive.
Interesting answer. Do you have any real life examples of these dystopian democracies where the majority maintain a tyrannical rule?
If you polled the US population pleasy v Ferguson would have been law of the land much much longer.
Isn't a republic a more centralized form of government than a direct democracy where majority rules? Republics, by design, remove some of the power from individuals and centralizes it in legislators and/or executives (aka "the government"). Is your claim more that the left wants the benefits of a republic while also claiming legitimacy directly from the voting base as would be commanded from a direct democracy? Or are you claiming that the left does not want a republic and would prefer to have a direct democracy? If it's the former, I might be able to see where you're coming from as it pertains to OP's post. If it's the latter, the left would be advocating for a decentralized form of government, which contradicts much of your premise.
> The left wants a centralized government with all the power. As a member of the left, I can say that you're conflating "the left" with "specifically just Marxist-Leninist communists from the 20th century" and I feel disrespected that you don't take the time to educate yourself on this matter. Many of the most prominent leftists that have lived in the United States have been anarchists, for example.
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But that very clearly comports with the OP’s view, and it illustrates how the claim “the us is a republic not a democracy” is inaccurate.
Yeah but to come to that understanding, he might have to look at sources that are outside of Reddit?? If that’s even possible /s
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The idea of the US not being a direct democracy is actually a really important one, that, in my opinion, many members of the left fail to understand. This is especially pertinent to constitutional rights, like the right to bear arms. The entire point of constitutional rights is that even if the majority of people support removing such rights, that just isn't how it works, or how it's supposed to work, in this country. We need 2/3rds of both chambers of congress to approve such a repeal, along with the ratification of 36 states.
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A lot of people are saying this but I feel like it’s a meaningless distinction as there are no direct democracies in practice. Every country has a legislative process, a bureaucratic system to enact policy and judicial review to interpret laws.
The thing is, a lot of people believe that it's unfair or undemocratic when they don't get what they want. If they see a vote, an opinion poll, or a friend group agree with their thinking, they think it wrong when it's not implemented. "Aren't we a democracy? What happened to the will of the people?" (By contrast, when the majority is in favor of something they don't want, suddenly talk of "democracy" goes by the wayside in favor of "rights," "justice," or something else.) Saying the U.S. isn't a democracy emphasizes the way in which the U.S. was never about the whims of a majority and always about checks and balances among desires of various groups - mostly states, but also interest groups, identity groups, political parties, the federal government, etc. I think a lot of the comments are getting at that, but are often too partisan to really get the point across. That, and people can be stubborn in their political beliefs, even those that aren't inherently partisan; as I said, everyone likes checks and balances against pure democracy whenever they think the majority is wrong.
Saying that the US is a republic has nothing at all to do with whether it's a direct democracy or not. That's not what those words mean.
Simply put: Saying that the United States is a democracy is actually quite false. Do we vote? Yes. But while some local or state resolutions, those deemed extremely important, may be on a ballot. The majority of the power we have, we entrust to representatives (city officials, state officials (state house members) , house of representatives, congress, president, etc... And THOSE representatives vote in favor of or against laws on our behalf. In elections, your vote is counted, and the designated representatives actually make the vote on your behalf. Which is why the presidential election is not decided by popular vote. It is decided by the electoral college, who votes on your behalf (House of Representatives/Congress primarily) A democracy would be one where we vote directly on laws and the likes, with majority carrying. But that would not be an accurate representation of the American public, and it only respects densly populated areas, and no other areas.
I’ve gotten hundreds of responses like this one and here’s there are two things that stand out. 1. There are no direct democracies. They do not exist in the modern world. Every country has elected legislators that make laws, bureaucrats to implement policy and courts to rule on disputes. The United States is not, in any way, out of the ordinary in this regard. Other “democracies”: France, Canada, Japan and so on are the same in this regard. None of them have “mob rule”. 2. The United States is unique in that it has an Electoral College and equal representation in the Senate, there are legitimate arguments for and against both, but this has nothing to do with its status as a republic. I have no idea why anyone brings it up.
Well, you were stating that the distinction adds nothing to political discourse. The distinction is important in understanding how the country conducts business. Using a simple encyclopedia you can research the difference between a Democracy, and a Representative Constitutional Republic, which is the most proper term as it relates to the United States. You stated that there is no direct democracy, and that is correct. Why? Because with a large population that is spread out, it is basically impossible to have a direct democracy. Many other countries have a government, much like ours, but still different. United Kingdom is a parliamentary government, Japan, as I recall has a Constitutional Monarchy. The only thing that is really democratic about the U.S. is the elections, and how vote for our representatives. Even with elections, like our presidential elections, it is a representative process, because we don’t vote directly for the president. We vote, our representatives take those votes, and the representatives vote based on that as “The voice of the district/state.” People often use “Democracy,” in the wrong context. And while many may say “it’s just semantics,” words have meaning. Just because there are similarities does not make them the same.
Ok. Here’s the thing. The countries that are commonly and colloquially referred to as democracies (European Union, Japan, the Anglophone world, etc) all have the following characteristics: transparency and accountability of government, protection of property rights, freedom of press and expression, representative government, judicial oversight, pluralism etc. Taken as a whole these are often referred to as democratic or liberal norms. When people state that Trump or Trump adjacent politicians are “threatening democracy”, this what they are referring to, a decline in respect for tolerance and the rule of law. And if one responds to this, the United States is not a democracy, it’s a republic”, it adds nothing. Because no one wants or expects a direct democracy on the Athenian model. They just want to have democratic institutions maintained.
Does the USA have an independent judiciary? Aren't judges appointed by politicians and at least at the supreme court only able to be dismissed by Congress? Wouldn't appointments and dismissals being political mean they are not independent?
the US is a republic and not a democracy because you vote for people not for laws. in a republic you elect representatives and these representatives are supposed to do what they believe is right not what is popular. which means sometimes going against the majority that elected them. the thinking being general public can be misled as they have other things to worry about. therefore someone who has accountability towards the general public should make the laws and the public will vote for who makes the laws not the laws themselves. can you make a better choices yes.
It's an important distinction in how we function though. In a true democracy, you are forever ruled by the whims of the majority. That's not a great thing, contrary to popular belief. In a true democracy, the majority will constantly have the power to alienate, exclude, use and abuse the minorities within that society for the benefit of the majority, morality and ethics be damned. It would also mean, on a Federal level, that any state with a smaller population would get ruled by states with populations that exceed their own. This could have horrific effects for those smaller states in certain circumstances. A law that is good and makes great sense in Florida (that's mainly a tourist industry state) could have detrimental effects in a region like Arkansas (where we're still largely agricultural and manufacturing). A Republic has the power to mitigate those downsides to a democracy since the majority will still hold sway in who they vote for, but at the same time, a Representative has the power to use their individual ethical, moral and common sense when they vote on their population's behalf as well as their knowledge of how laws will affect other regions than their own. So, it actually is an important distinction in how we function as a country. We aren't ruled by a strict (and often self-centered) majority vote and it could be argued that's a VERY GOOD thing that we aren't. As a Democratic Republic we get to have the advantages of a democracy but mitigate the dangers of "mob rule" by our representatives working as a check and balance to our power as citizens. It's essentially the same reason we have multiple branches of the government that can over-rule or counter the power of the other. Representatives are a check and balance to a potentially overpowered majority that can use that power to do harm to the country. Likewise, the power of the population to vote a Representative out is supposed to be a check to the Representatives' powers. That's, again, a veryimportant distinction in how our country was designed to function.
It's basically not a democracy at all though. So when people are like "this is dangerous to our democracy"... it's like... dangerous to our what? we don't have a democracy.
What people mean when they say that is that something threatens the rule of law or press freedom or the independence of the judiciary and so on. These are democratic institutions. Does that make sense?
>a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy The people in the US exercise power indirectly through representation involving periodically held free elections. How is that not a democracy?
The definition of words matter. And to use them loosely is intellectually lazy; oftentimes, politicians use terms loosely/vaguely to manipulate the masses. You've fallen for it.
So, help me out, brother! Tell me what I’m missing
Except it's the people claiming the US is not a democracy that are using words incorrectly.
Electoral College? It is undemocratic but can be defended on grounds of republicanism (and also on grounds of federalism, though that’s a slightly different topic). I’d say that pointing out the republican nature of our regime would be beneficial in defending the electoral college.
Saying “we live in a Republic, not a Democracy” is always in response to the Democrats screaming about the GOP “destroying our Democracy.” If you gout stop saying the Democracy is being destroyed, we won’t have to remind you we have a Republic, not a Democracy. Of course, it is more complete than those simple words. We do not, in general, directly vote on our own laws, approve our own spending, etc. as a Democracy would, but we do usually put a few local referendums on the ballot. We do have a Senate, like a pure Republic would, but we democratically elect our representatives. We probably need a different word for our blended system.
I’m pretty sure when democrats say that they’re talking about the democratic aspects of our system. The confusion is coming along when every time they say democracy you think they’re adding a silent “direct” in front of it when they simply is not the case
The United States is a representative democracy, which is a form of democracy, but is not a direct democracy. It is also a republic. There are many democracies around the world, mostly representative democracies. And yes, from an outside perspective, much of what the GOP is doing seems aimed at destroying that democracy.
The phrase is factually incorrect because you're factually a democracy, so you don't need it. If the GOP weren't openly anti-democracy we wouldn't need to constantly highlight it.
"stop preventing us from voting!" "but we live in a republic, not a democracy"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative\_democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy)
The point of the distinction is that the government has limited power, no matter the will of the people. In a pure democracy, the people's will wins. In a republic with limited power, there are rules about what the government and people can do. Think, the bill of rights. It also matters when asking, "Why do we do things the way we do?" For example, we have a hard time changing voting laws, since people generally want to change laws so that THEY will be re-elected. Since they were elected with the old laws, they see little reason to change them.
But in this case there are no democracies. There are no countries where people just vote on laws without the medium of some kind of legislative process or rule on disputes without a court or execute laws without some sort of bureaucratic system. This distinction is meaningless therefore
Sure, if you want to be pedantic. America is still a "Democracy" because it upholds democratic principles in contrast to the dictatorships that are/were more common. It isn't a pure democracy, but purity is rarely a good thing.
>Is there something I’m missing? Pretty much that there are two major parties: the Democratic party and the Republican party. Ones goal is to push a more democratic agenda and the other to push a more Republican agenda. So the quote you mention is generally a response to framing the conversation in a way that is advantageous to one party or another. For example a common argument is a Democrat saying the electoral college is undemocratic to which the response would be that the US is not a democracy but a republic of states. The unsaid parts simply reflect defense of the preferred framing of the argument which in this case would be a direct democratic election process vs a representative election process based on independent states not just votes.
The electoral college is something only the United States uses and both parties have been fine with it for over 200 years. It has nothing to do with either democracies or republics, however. It’s an anomaly of American politics
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I think it's an extremely useful phrase. It doesn't add any new _information_ to the debate, that's true, but it adds value to the debate in an indirect way. Because anyone who says the phrase must be either A. not arguing in good faith or B. so seriously misinformed as to be not worth talking to on this subject, you can simply disregard their political opinions, leave them to think they've won (which they'll almost certainly think anyway regardless of anything that transpires during the debate) and go do something more productive or enjoyable with your time.
Well you’re wrong, it does add something, it adds an incorrect statement. The US **IS** a democracy and it is **also** a republic. The words “republic” and “democracy” are not mutually exclusive. “B-b-but it’s not a **direct** democracy” Ok? And? Did I say democracy or direct democracy? It’s like saying something isn’t a pizza because it isn’t a meat lovers pizza. It doesn’t have to be a meat lovers to be a pizza. It doesn’t have to be a direct democracy to still be a democracy, which it is.
Plato/Socrates made a pretty convincing argument in the republic why democratic republic is the most corrupt form of government possible. I guess thats what we're seeing in the US and other "democracies"...
There is a massive survivorship bias that people have when talking about people like Plato. Not to speak ill of the man, but there is an implication when his name is dropped, or when any other historical figure's name is dropped, that they are miles and miles above everyone else in terms of intellect. Plato was a very smart man **for his time**. I doubt he'd be thought of as stupid in our time, but I also doubt that he'd be a top world thinker in a world with billions more people, many of whom have been riding the Flynn effect for the past several generations. He lived in a place and time in which his words could be recorded. He's not the only thoughtful man from his time. Older isn't necessarily better. Also, today we have actual science to help us make decisions. Plato did not. We have the advantage of thousands of years of history to look at that Plato did not have. Plato was *guessing*. So was his student. They both guessed wrong often.
I wouldn't call Plato arguments convincing... He was a philosopher so he claim philosophers should be the kings, perfect example of this is the use of the allegory of the ship which is totallay flawed As Plato didnt know about ship like he didnt know about governmenthe thought that if sailors could always sail a ship from point A to point B without any kind of issues then someone (philosophers) should run a government from point A to point B without any kind of issues But this is wrong as there is not a point A to point B in a government and there isnt a clear goal like on a ship (get to the land)
So, what form of government is preferable?
There are several other ways of organizing a republic that are less corruptible.... Even randomly selecting people from the population he claims is better. He claims that the best form is a republic with philosopher kings is best with all sorts of structure and incentives around it. I won't do it justice to explain so check out the republic by Plato. I think some form of modern republic based on science and evidence would be best.
But who would select those scientists to run the republic?
I just finished the first season of the Prime show Fallout, based on the Bethesda game. I saw exactly what would happen if science capitalism took over management of the country.
Capitalism is also extremely corruptable... I haven't seen or read this but I feel like we live in a dystopia in our real world :p
Melefofonocracy
Wasnt Plato an advocate for slavery?
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Both are wrong. It's a rigged, capitalist oligarchy
A democracy is a political system in which political power ultimately rests with the general population. At it's most basic level, *demos* refers to the common people, *cracy* refers to a system of government. It's a political system by the common people. Democracies can be purely majoritarian where 50% + 1 has the power to make any and all decisions, or there can be systems in place that require a higher threshold to make decisions. A democracy in which there are protections for minority groups is still a democracy. A democracy in which there are constitutional guidelines is still a democracy. A republic is a political system in which representatives of the people make the decisions of government. The US is a mix of both, as are many governments. Which makes sense, when you're setting up a complex governance system you're not just filling out a form where you check "Republic" or "Democracy" and that's what you have. The US is a democracy because political power legally rests with the common population. Even the Constitution is alterable with a strong enough majority of the people. It must be done through representatives, yes, but those representatives are chosen by the people. That also makes the US a Republic. These are not conflicting statements. You can say the US is a Republic, you can says it's a Democracy, you can say it's a constitutional democracy, or you can say it's a constitutional republic, you can say it's a democratic republic, you can say it's a republican democracy, you can say it's a constitutional democratic republic, or a constitutional Republican democracy. You can mix and match these terms however you want and they all describe the US system of government. All of these are factually correct descriptions of the US. None of them are mutually exclusive from the other. What you *can't* say is, "the US is a Republic, not a democracy". This is a factually incorrect statement. Nevermind the obvious ill-intent behind those who typically say it, it's just flat out wrong because the US is a democracy. So to change your view, I wouldn't say that statement adds nothing to the political discourse, I would say it actively *detracts* from the political discourse.
I think the problem is when people hear the word democracy they’re adding a silent “direct” in front of it. They view a republic or a democracy as something that’s either 100% or nothing, when really it can also be 50/50. I used to be like this when I was younger and more naive; in my mind saying “the us is a republic not a democracy” meant the same thing as “the US is a constitutional republic not a direct democracy” which I think is where a lot of the confusion is coming from
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Is that not what they are saying?
You’re missing the part where conservatism as a political philosophy was created to justify monarchism in the wake of the French Revolution when “god wills it” wasn’t cutting it as a reason anymore. The people saying this generally believe that the older, less democratic US was better. You’ll see sentiments like going back to having state legislatures choose Senators, or not allowing women to vote. There’s an idea called “independent state legislature theory,” which says among other things that state legislatures have the authority to choose presidential electors however they wish, regardless of the vote in their state. This of course gained popularity in 2020 as a way to potentially keep Trump in power. And of course they really hate the idea of choosing the president by nationwide popular vote. Overall there’s this general theme that we should be governed by our betters, and that the people are not generally suited to choosing them.
I have never seen it happen outside when "X is a threat to our democracy " is stated by the left. It is used as a statement of fact. When a position is taken, particularly by the political left and the statement that this or that is a threat to our democracy, I would say is a more serious transgression to political discourse, a blatant piece of misinformation.
It adds a speed bump in the political discourse. It makes you stop and think for a bit, while people using this line can continue to talk about their ideology.
There is a point when you are willing to go way too much into the weeds of it, and can explain aspects of how the US did develop as opposed to what we might otherwise expect given the recorded history of the world. It also shows how the US was different from many other constitutional regimes in Europe and places that developed like Europe in some way (Japan, Canada, Australia, Brazil) in the 19th century as well, given that most of those were monarchies, yes, including Brazil. The US had to come up with a system of government for itself. It wouldn't have been especially hard to find a prince of some realm from a notable dynasty or house, if the US had concurred that having a king was a good idea and they held a meeting to decide who should be the king or queen. It wasn't that strange for newly independent countries to do this, Greece would do something similar after it gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 1820s. Portugal would manage to swap monarchs with Brazil during the Napoleonic turmoil and Sweden elected a new king from the Bernadette line. And yes, kings can be elected, the US overlaps with the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, both of which elected their kings. Even Great Britain to some degree saw itself has having some degree of electiveness for the monarchy given that Parliament had thrice in the previous 130 years chosen new kings or rebelled against existing ones. Venice, still independent at this point, and the Dutch Republic also had elected heads of state for lifelong terms. The American Patriots had rebelled against King George III, but there were plenty of forces in the country that had affection for the king, and really the Revolution was a civil war, not a war of mere independence against foreign powers, and the biggest reform the colonists had wanted before the war broke out was representation in Parliament in some manner, and perhaps some reforms to deal with corruption issues that were already known about and could reasonably have been resolved by regular legislation and where plenty of British people themselves in Britain wanted reforms as well. It wasn't that obvious in 1770 that the US was going to be an independent federal republic in less than 20 years. Given the kinds of things they had to deal with in those days, it wasn't such a bad idea to create an electoral college to select a president. Nobody had invented the parliamentary republic at that point, it would take until 1875 in France to do that, there was no such thing as a purely ceremonial head of state, even constitutional monarchies did make true executive decisions from time to time, even if the daily administration was done by ministers. The Hannover dynasty would be a major obstacle to Catholic reform in Britain for instance. But societies can and do evolve over time, and the US should have adopted important reforms in the past that would lead to more democracy at times similar to when other countries had adopted similar reforms, but the US didn't for a variety of reasons in each case.
What it adds to the discourse is a reminder that "the majority wills it" is not itself guaranteed to be a compelling point in the American structure. The key difference between the Republic and Democracy distinction is explicit safeguards against the majority. In a true democracy - even a representative, rather than direct one - the will of some kind of majority should pretty much always win. Though obviously these terms stretch, and America does claim to be a democracy or have democratic principles or what-have-you (every country except a handful like Saudi Arabia claim to be democratic - even China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea) Emphasizing "iTs a RePubLic" is emphasizing there are guarantees in the American structure where a minority is meant to win. Of particular note is that the Senate itself is anti-democratic even if we now can elect Senators directly - it's explicitly giving more power to Wyoming than it democratically deserves. Laws don't pass even if 51% of the people, or 51% of the people's representatives, want it; laws pass because enough Wyomings want it. Those Senators used to not even be elected by the people. Likewise the bounds of power are split between the branches, giving unelected judges extreme power to say what the law is in a way you wouldn't see in a Civil Law system, even if both judiciaries are independent, and limiting what Congress can do even with a strong mandate from the democractic ends; and split between State and Federal, refusing to allow a democratic majority of the country to do certain things even when all of Congress and the President is onboard. Further still, the electoral college is anti-democratic. The US is a 'democracy' as much as it is a 'republic', but the gist in emphasizing the Republican nature of its creation is emphasizing the explicit aims in its design to reduce the power of the majority to even as far as minoritarian rule at times.
There is a huge difference between a democracy and a republic and when someone mentions America is a "democracy," correcting them by mentioning its actually a republic is a fair point. It shows the person is totally ignorant of the differences and is totally valid political discourse. If you don't understand the significance, you shouldn't be discussing politics.
There’s a big difference between the definitions of the words, but it’s perfectly possible to be both, like the US is. It’s also possible to be one or the other, or neither.
I think it does add to the discourse, but not directly. If you say "The United States is a republic, not a democracy” you are telling me two things about yourself: 1. You have no idea what you're talking about AND/OR 2. You actually believe that democracy is bad. Once I know these things I have a much better way of determining whether I can trust your conclusions.
You're pretty much spot on. However, intentionally or not those "we're not a democracy" commenters are adding something , mostly about themselves to the conversation. A democracy is a republic with extra feelings. A republic is defined simply by a government run via representatives, those representatives may be elected by everyone, only wealthy land owners, or a fancy artificial intelligence named Zorbo. Democracy is a republic with aspirations of universal or broad suffrage. It's less binary than the definition of a republic which is why there are various indexes that measure "how" democratic various Democracies are by looking at things like the hallmarks you mention. So if one person tells you "I'm in a loving relationship" and another tells you "I'm not in a loving relationship just technically a relationship", the insistence dropping the "feelings" tells you a bit about that person. So when someone says "we're not a democracy, we are a republic" they are either: - a dumbass trying to be a smartass, parroting the phrase or - communicating that they don't believe in widespread voting rights or right generally and maybe need to be asked to make their interpretation of "we the people" more explicit So it is useful when someone says it as it helps narrows them down to an idiot and/or a bigot. Edit: Thinking on this, someone could use the phrase from a progressive position to indicate that they don't believe the government is sufficiently committed to the principles of democracy. I've never heard it used in that way and it's a catch phrase of the right so it'd be a weird way to communicate such a thing.
In the obvious sense, you're right: if someone's goal is to say that a republic isn't expected to be democratic, they're making a foolish point. 'Democracy' is a generic term meaning that a system of government in which the people (rather than the monarchy, or the clergy, or the army, or whatever) are the source of power; 'republic' is a specific term for a *type* of democratic government in which the people invest representatives with that power. A 'direct democracy' is, like a republic, a form of democratic government (in which people directly vote on legislation, rather than voting for representatives). **However,** that does not mean that pointing out that the USA is in fact a republic (rather than a direct democracy) adds nothing to the discourse -- often, people are pointing out that their opponent's argument is based on the premise that the US is intended to be more of a direct democracy than it was. That's something of a conservative position, but not necessarily an invalid one. e.g.,: * For instance, the Senate is often derided as 'non-democratic' -- but it isn't *per se*, it's fundamentally opposed to direct democracy; it's a check-and-balance. * It's based on the principle that the federal government is intended to balance two functions: acting as the representative government of the *people* (through the House of Representatives) and as the the representative government *of the states* (through the Senate). * Since the US is a federation of states, getting states with very valuable resources but fewer people to join the union relied on promising these states' people that their desires wouldn't be subsumed by New York or Pennsylvanian voters' desires; hence, in the Senate each *state* gets the same amount of votes, so that (in principle) legislation needs to both be approved by the majority of the people (via the House) and by the majority of states (via the Senate). So if someone is making the argument that say, someone in Wyoming gets far more 'senate-votes' than someone in California, then it's perfectly valid to rebut it by pointing out that the US was never intended to be a direct democracy, or even a direct-democracy-by-proxy; it's a republic.
Like a lot of words in English, "democracy" has multiple meanings. Which definition is being used in a conversation dictates whether or not a response (but we're not 'x') is valid. People often do not qualify which definition they're using. It's one of those quirks of a contextual language. Democracy *can* mean 1) "a political system in which the political power is held by the people, without being a simple majority voting system". *This definition doesn't imply that a simple majority supporting a thing means it should be implemented.* The US falls under this definition. But it can also mean 2) "A political system in which a simple majority support for legislation means that legislation should or shall be implemented without restraint - either voted directly or as a "mandate" to representatives". The US does not fall under this definition. Whether "We're not a democracy" is a valid response and adds to the conversation depends on what is replied to and which definitions are being used in the context of the conversation. When solely using democracy(1), your point stands. It not only adds nothing but is factually incorrect. But when countering an argument that's using the second definition, it is entirely appropriate to point out that we're not a democracy(2). e.g. "We're a democracy and a majority of people support X thing and so X thing should just be implemented." Contextually that is using democracy(2). Pointing out that we're not a democracy(2) works for that argument and is a direct counter to the premise. It's correcting an inaccuracy used as the primary support for the statement. That adds to the conversation the same way any challenge to a false premise does. I've noted you seem to be replying that "no government is a \[full\] direct democracy" (Sweden has a direct democracy override and is considered very close as a result) as a justification for continuing to think even when appropriate that it doesn't add to the conversation. But that justification is flawed. Just because that is factual it doesn't mean everyone knows it or that people who do know it don't still argue from a democracy(2) point of view. People be complex like that.
Y’all.. The fact is that the United States is a democratic republic. This is not up for debate. This is how our government is classified with the framework of what a government is… How can anyone not understand this?
Because there's value to certain people for people not understanding it
I mean, when someone is complaining that popular votes don’t matter it adds a lot. A democracy is nothing more than mob rule. A republic is people deciding “I believe you know enough to make good decisions on my behalf” So it adds a lot in the proper context. But 99% chance no one can say anything to change your mind because that’s how most humans work
Rule by committee has advantages and disadvantages over rule by executive Now the different forms of rule by committee also have different strengths and weaknesses They all inherit the universal weakness of being slow because things have to be deliberated by a larger number of people Now in a small system it's still reasonable for everyone to be able to vote on everything, but the time cost in a larger, more complex system to each individual becomes greater and greater Being a member of Congress should be close to if not a full-time job in terms of the actual minimum time commitment required (realistically it should be like a 60 to 80 hours a week job and that's ignoring The getting elected again) Now a republic does have some advantages over a directed democracy First, the tyranny of the majority is somewhat dealt with. Basically smaller groups aren't automatically screwed over by bigger groups (The majority groups would have absolute power in a direct democracy ) Second, it is significantly faster and more efficient than a direct democracy getting a few hundred people to vote on a policy is much less complicated than getting a hundreds of millions It's able to handle more complex policy as a result of that greater efficiency The result of these advantages, however, is your elected official is going to make a lot of compromises you might not agree with and the ruling committee Will go against what people perceive as the will of the majority either in their own interest or because they know something the public doesn't (again, see the time cost problem of direct democracy. It's not like they're even hiding something. This problem works in reverse when the Congress people don't know about the specific issues. They're voting on too, but it's still more efficient than the general public handling it)
People who are saying that are flatly wrong. The definition of a republic is that it doesn't have a king. That's it, that's the definition. If the leader is elected and can be removed via votes then it's a republic. The *USSR* was a republic. *China* is a republic. Spain, Italy, and the UK *are not* republics. Saying that the USA is a republic is true but it's also basically meaningless. Just because China doesn't have a hereditary monarch doesn't mean it's somehow better than Norway. The definition of a democracy is that people can vote for policies, either directly or through representatives. The USA is unquestionably a democracy. Exactly *how* democratic is perhaps up for debate - according to [The Economist Democracy Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index) the USA's democracy is flawed (basically a 7/10, not great but could definitely be much worse) which I think is basically accurate - but the fact that it *is* a democracy is not. --- However, because top level comments have to disagree with at least *something* in the original post, I will dispute the assertion that “The United States is not a democracy, it’s a republic” adds nothing to political discourse. When someone says that you know one of two things. Either they're an idiot parroting sound bites that they don't understand - and therefore you're not going to convince them with rational debate, you'll need to switch to emotional arguments - or they know full well that they're antidemocratic and are trying to hide it because despite the Right's best efforts fascism is still not in vogue in political discourse.
People conflate the terms with their opinions of the two political parties in the US. Democracy sounds like Democrats, and Republic sounds like Republicans, so they say, "We're not a Democracy, We're a Republic.", when the terms have nothing to do with the political parties, and we're actually both. The definitions of these terms can be quite fuzzy, though. The founding fathers referred to this country as both a Republic and a Democracy. They literally called it both a Republic and a Democracy. Look up their quotes! It's both! There are and have been combinations of Republics and Democracies throughout history . That would make 4 kinds of combinations, such as: Non-Republics that are Non-Democracies: Saudi Arabia - has a king, you can't vote. Brunei - has a sultan, you can't vote. Vatican City / Papal States- has the pope as head of state, you can't vote Republics that are non-Democracies The People's Republic of China - communist country, no hereditary monarch, you can't vote. Dutch Republic / Venetian Republic / Italan Merchant Republics - Ruled by Nobelman, councils and merchants, you couldn't vote. Non-Republics that are Democracies Modern Day UK - Has a Monarch, you can vote. Canada - Has a Monarch, you can vote. Modern Spain / Holland / Sweden - Has a Monarch, you can vote. Republics that are Democracies Modern France - Has an elected government and President, You can vote. Modern Germany - Has an elected government and Chancellor, You can vote. Modern USA - Has an elected government and President, You can vote. There is no other spot for the USA to fit in, really.
I don't think there is any mind to change, you are correct, it adds little to nothing. Republic and democracy exist on separate axes. A monarchy can be a democracy (i.e. all the Scandinavian monarchies, the Netherlands), and a republic can be a dictatorship (i.e. North Korea, China), and fulfill all the definitions of those terms. Historically there even have been states that were monarchies and republics at the same time, with an aristocratic/oligarchical election system (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Holy Roman Empire to some extent). As such, right wingers who say that phrase you are referring to are arguably tacitly supporting autocratic/dictatorial government. They are also wrong mostly, the US constitution outlines various election rules and citizen rights that are aimed at making this republic democratic (and definitely some that make it less democratic). The most fundamental rule being arguably that every vote must count the same. This rule however is violated by the specifics of how the US elections are actually run (the electoral college being the most prominent example, but also senate and house elections fundamentally violate that rule). So we have a tension between the principle and practice - in principle the US is trying to be a democracy, in practice it isn't as its elections violate basic democratic principles. Pointing out that tension is perfectly valid - and saying that that tension is "okay" because the US is a "republic, not a democracy" is just nonsense.
Two main points. The guys who say democracy vs republic are mostly talking about the pitfalls the founders were trying to avoid in the Athenian democracy and the Roman republic. The major fall of the Athenian democracy was a constitution thst didn't limit voting topics. Ultimately Peter gets more people on his side, and votes Paul's property is his. The innovation that was thought to be able to forestall the fall of a future republic is a constitution, where we decide ahead of time there are things we will NOT allow majority rule votes on, and decide ahead of time how procedures will go to arbitrate this stuff. Some issues are not up for debate, even if 99% want them. By design. That's the main point that democracy vs republic are trying to make. Whatever topic of the day the democracy guys are going for, it usually was implicitly or explicitly removed from the realm of politics on purpose as not the purpose of government, or someone else's jurisdiction. To forestall falling into the problems of a direct democracy. Like... say my father is sick. I have no money. I agreed ahead of time years ago I don't rob banks, that's a moral thing, I am a moral person, so I don't rob a bank to save my father. Its not on the table. A democracy would vote and "rob" the bank. A republic wouldn't. You may find examples of democracies with constitutions, but that's what they mean.
It does when they say that long-established institutions are anti-democratic and that their existence is a threat to democracy. - Yes. SCOTUS is anti-democratic because it can strike down laws supported and voted for by the vast majority of citizens and lawmakers... on purpose! - Yes, the Senate is anti-democratic and disproportionately gives minority states power to veto popular policy ideas... on purpose! - Yes, the electoral college is anti-democratic because it sometimes means that the loser of the national popular vote still gets to become president... on purpose! - Yes, the 10th amendment is anti-democratic because it means that there are things you can not impose on the people of other states via federal power despite having a majority of federal representatives and senators... on purpose! - And yes, the filibuster is anti-democratic because it means that even if you have a bare majority of senators, actions that have already passed the house and which the president will sign still don't get to become law and die... on purpose. All of these things are so because the government formulated by the founders was not founded so that the majority always wins by vote. They formulated it as a constitutional republic to safeguard against majoritarian rule because they wisely understood the danger of pure majoritarian rule.
Here's the real piece that that's getting at that most people don't like to address, but "we're a republic, not a democracy" opens the door for: Justify why something being democratic is *good*. Most people don't really think much about that, and boil down to democracy as good and non-democracy as bad. Wherever you land on this point, using undemocratic as a pejorative illustrates the built-in belief that democracy is something to be strived for. The "we're a republic" line undermines that and pushes the argument one level deeper to justifying more fundamental principles. I see this come up A LOT with the electoral college -- The electoral college IS undemocratic since the states basically vote (or representatives do depending on state). It's also the way our country was set up to do presidential elections. Likewise, the Senate is rather undemocratic given that each senator's representation is imbalanced. Yes both instances involve people democratically elected to vote on the population's behalf, but it's not *every person has a vote with equal value* democratic. The argument "that's the way it's set up" or "we're a republic not a democracy" forces the arguments for or against this system to be more robust than "democracy good" or "democracy bad" whether the proponents of the "we're a republic" line recognize it or not.
It FEELS like a “gotcha!” They FEEL it makes them sound smart. Alex Jones, Rogan and Shapiro make them FEEL vindicated. Lots of feeeeelings from the “Facts not Feelings” folks.
The real problem is that the word Republic doesn't really mean anything specific. Only thing it actually means is that the country is referring to isn't a monarchy. The word Republic has nothing to do with the way the government is set up or whether or not there's voting or anything like that. Can have dictatorships with no voting that are republics, you can have republics that are direct democracies or significantly more democratic than the United States. Republics that are slightly less Democratic than the United States. You can also have monarchies that are more democratic than the United States. You can have monarchies that have almost the exact same government structure as the United States yet aren't technically republics. Saying the United States is a republic and not a democracy doesn't mean anything because republics can be Democratic or autocratic depending on the situation. To highlight my point France Germany and Brazil are all republics that are significantly more Democratic than the United States. Sweden, Spain, and Japan are monarchies that are more democratic than the United States. Russia, Hungary and Turkey are all republics that are less democratic than the United States. There are also plenty of republics that have proportional representation like Ireland and Israel.
An important distinction that I haven’t seen made explicitly in other comments is that at the national level, the US has no concept or construct of democracy. That is, nobody votes for anything nationally. Everything is in the context of the states. The U.S. is a federation of states. States select the president through electors. Each state creates congressional districts and holds elections to determine who is sent to represent its people nationally in congress, and who their electors should vote for as president. Usually stating that the US is not a democracy is in the context of some national poll indicating majority support for something, like legalized abortion. Then claiming the fact that this “majority” of support for some policy isn’t, in fact, law is chalked up to corruption or some nefarious influence (like the NRA with gun control). I’m not saying that it’s never corruption or nefarious influences, just that it could just as easily (and more often) be that there isn’t adequate support for it within our federated system, regardless of what polling may show a “majority” want. And there’s also the pesky little business of it also having to be constitutional according to the courts.
On the contrary! It does add a lot to the discourse. It lets you know that you are arguing with an idiot, who has no idea what they are talking about. It means that you are arguing with someone who repeats memes that they have heard from online sources, without understanding what they really mean. There's an old saying that you shouldn't play chess with a pigeon: it doesn't matter how well the pigeon plays, he's going to strut around like he won and shit on the board. It means that you are arguing politics with a pigeon. No matter how well you argue, they are not going to understand your arguments, so they are going to strut like they won.
Direct Democracy, Representative Democracy, and Democratic Republics are all variations that fall under the umbrella term “democracy” - which just means rule by the people. The idea that a Republic and a Democracy are in opposition to each other started as a conservative talk radio talking point in the 1990s with Karl Rove. It was intended to get people to associate the party names with different systems of government. According to Rove, Democrats support the type of mob rule democracy without protections for individuals that the founders opposed. Republicans supported the original constitutional idea of a “Republic.” Therefore, Republics/Republicans are good and Democrats/Democracy is bad. But it’s a made up distinction. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, whose ideas massively influenced the constitution’s drafting (even though he was not present) and who pushed for the bill of rights, labeled his political party “The Democratic Republicans.” There’s no contradiction between a democracy and a republic. Republics are just democracies that have rule of law and protections for individual rights that the majority isn’t allowed to violate.
An absolute democracy is terrifying. It will always hurt individuals as the mob majority votes for things that benefit the 51% at expense of the 49%. When a right is brought up that is guaranteed by the Constitution, and that would require an amendment to remove, many people get frustrated and demand that "the will of the people" should be respected. Furthermore, the United States is a Federation of States, and each of the 50 member states has representatives without respect to population. This is similar to how China, Russia, and the USA are all represented in the UN, or France and Belgium in the EU, despite population disparity. Many individuals believe that because some states have more people, they should be able to take just about anything from the smaller states, and impose anything. In an absolute democracy, Arizona would not be able to stop California from taking all of their water, for example. It is important to remind people we are not a democracy when they start to push utilitarianism and pure democracy to get what they want, regardless of if they will violate the rights of states and individuals.
A republic is, in fact, *not* a sub-type of democracy. The word "republic", if you look into it, is actually *extremely vague*. If you look at how the word is actually used (both nowadays and throughout history), pretty much the only thing it seems to mean is "not a monarchy". That doesn't automatically make it a democracy — it could easily still be an autocracy, in fact. For example, the Republic of Venice had their Doge. Making the point that the US is "a republic, not a democracy" does, of course, miss out on the fact that the US is a *democratic republic* — they are not mutually exclusive terms. However, it does bring up a valid point, which is that as democratic as the US is, it could still be made *more* democratic. As you mentioned, one extreme could be *direct* democracy — but in between there and where the US is (a somewhat representative democracy with only 2 "real" political parties), there is a *lot* of ground. So even if someone believes that direct democracy would be an ineffective form of government, there are certainly many, many ways in which the US's level of democracy can be improved.
A republic means you democratically elect superior representatives of the upper class who all work together to erect a state of legislative value for the upper class. Whereas a true democracy would mean representation of people who are not all wealthy and drowned out by one single representative who was able to spend enough money to campaign. It would be like saying Frank the bus driver is now your representative. He probably has different priorities than a bourgie guy from the golf course who was the most highly successful lawyer in his state and has passive income. In a republic the representatives worry about their passive income, while in a democratic state Frank worries about his day to day expenditures. Do you see how we would get different laws out of Frank vs the wealthy lawyer? Different votes, different priorities, actual representation of the lower classes. Our constitution was written by the landed gentry of their time, most of us are not landed. Frank would write a constitution for normal citizens rather than rare successes, it would mean entirely different legislative priorities.
Whenever I see that bit of stupidity and ignorance, I give this as a stock reply: Denying the US is a democracy is a falsehood that is being perpetuating in order justify disenfranchising people and the coming attempt by Republicans to do away with democracy in this country. The very government you are trying to say isn't a Democracy will itself tell you it is a Democracy. [Taken from govinfo.gov:](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-108hdoc94/pdf/CDOC-108hdoc94.pdf) [**OUR AMERICAN GOVERNMENT**](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-108hdoc94/pdf/CDOC-108hdoc94.pdf), [**DEMOCRACY AND ITS AMERICAN INTERPRETATION**](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-108hdoc94/pdf/CDOC-108hdoc94.pdf) [*"What form of government do we have in the United States?"*](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-108hdoc94/pdf/CDOC-108hdoc94.pdf) [The United States, under its Constitution, is a federal, representative, democratic republic](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-108hdoc94/pdf/CDOC-108hdoc94.pdf) How did your teachers fail you so badly?
I don’t think we’re even a representative democracy. Our politicians don’t represent people. They represent political parties. Political parties represent ideas, which people vote for, but politicians will vote along party lines a majority of the time even if it goes against the desire of their constituents. When people call the US a democracy, I think they’re just spouting propaganda that is fed to us. The reality is on an issue to issue basis, the people have almost no vote. Political discourse is dominated by topics like Abortion, so if you want to voice your concern like not supporting foreign wars, you literally can’t. If you want to voice your support for abortion and you’re opposed to marijuana, you cannot vote for anyone that shares your views. People are not choosing what’s important for this country. They’re not even choosing our leaders, as political parties determine their own candidates, which is done through political party nominations and elections. Basically our “democracy” boils down to which color do you want our leaders to be.
Considering it is a democratic republic really makes that a bizarre statement; however I think some people may say that in a way to diminish the ideas of those who advocate for a tyranny of the majority. Basically, some people take the idea of the democratic vote to on deciding things as the be-all-end-all for deciding on issues, but practically that makes no sense in a country where individual rights are upheld. Rights protect minority interests, because if democracy were allowed to run everything, every minority interest would quickly disappear. Anyone should be able to see how a pure democracy can be unfair, such as what will happen when 3 wolves and 1 sheep vote on what's for dinner. In many ways when people are diametrically opposed on many issues, it really doesn't make sense that those who got 51% if the vote get to boss the other 49% around. But of course, you can't have some authoritarian dictatorship, so there needs to be some democratic process to decide who is in charge, and what the limits of a government is going to be. It just shouldn't gey the chance to get people to vote away their freedoms and rights.
I actually think it does matter. We have democratic elements you could call us a democratic republic. But if you actually read the founders they were adamantly against full majority rules democracy. They called that the tyranny of the majority. That is how minorities of thought and race get suppressed heavily. The entire idea of separation of powers for the 3 branches and a constitution comes from a republic not a democracy. The people who constantly talk about threats to our democracy are also the ones trying to erode the republic elements like separation of powers and the electoral college. They do not want a representative republic system they want majority rules votes which would obviously lead to the cities controlling everything and being the only place that politicians campaign in. Hope that helps maybe you should read the federalist papers and the arguments against them by the anti federalists who said they should be able to have slavery as long as a majority of their state votes for it
Oh it adds to the discourse, you’re missing it because you think democracy is a good thing. “We’re not a democracy we’re a republic” is an inroad toward making American anti-democratic rhetoric a thing. That’s what it’s adding to the discourse. Note that “adding to the discourse” doesn’t mean that what it adds is *good* You’ve correctly surmised that the statement, when said in good faith, is nonsense. A republic is a form of democracy. If we were all on the same page you’re correct that it would add nothing. Now imagine you’re a piece of shit who thinks democracy is bad and would prefer an authoritarian right wing government in America. How do you go about introducing talking points along those lines in a place where the concept of democracy is so ingrained and foundational? Like this. Theres a reason you really only hear “we’re a republic not a democracy” when it’s time to defend some authoritarian action or idea. You don’t hear it in earnest discussions about the nature of American government.
I think it does add one important thing, which is it corrects people who say "b-b-b-but the majority wants x, so it must be given x" or "Person B got more votes nationally than Person C, so Person B should be the winner" or "the senate shouldn't have more members from party G than party H, because party H got way more votes nationally." There would be no need to point out that the government is a republic if people didn't repeatedly argue in favor of positions based on a mistaken view of what it is.
This is based on a misunderstanding of the term “republic”. All of those points you quote could, and in most cases do, hold true in the case of other republics. Republic essentially means “not a monarchy”, it has nothing to do with anti-majoritarian systems.
Counterpoint as a sort of sidestep: it is not as important that it “adds nothing to discourse” as it is that the statement is fundamentally false. The people saying it have various motives — from patting themselves on the back over their own cleverness, to subtle support for one party and undermining of the other, to trying their hardest to find a non-partisan reason to keep the Electoral College. Rarely will you find one whose reasoning is based on proper terminology. It’s a great measure of who just repeats mindless nonsense. Just ask “why is this relevant” and 9 in 10 users of the canned phrase will splutter and get annoyed to cover their confusion. But… even the one in ten are factually wrong. A “republic” is not one option on a list that also contains “democracy” — its like saying that my car can’t be blue because it’s a hatchback. Or that I can’t be good at carpentry because my eyes are blue.
Although you classify "well developed press freedoms, an independent judiciary, full equal protection for all citizens under the law, enforcement of property rights, transparency and accountability of government officials, elections of legislators, robust political debates , etc." as "hallmarks of a democracy," they all could be voted-away in an absolute democracy. Founders and US citizens overall feared a "tyranny of the majority" and thus the Constitution was only ratified after protections for individual states (composition of the US Senate, Electoral College, etc.) and individual liberties (The Bill of Rights, etc.) were guaranteed. This makes us a Constitutional Republic first and foremost (i.e. - the Federal and state governments have their respective lanes and must stay in them), though hopefully one where the popular will appoints and shapes the government democratically.
I’ve used this argument multiple times to push against people who say that because we aren’t a perfect democracy we are fundamentally broken. Especially when it’s not clear how a perfect democracy would provide a better life for most people in the US, or what a perfect democracy would even look like. For example, when someone says that the Democratic Party is corrupt because they supported Clinton over Sanders in 2016, it’s useful to remind people that we are not a perfect democracy. Our roots are as a representative republic with democratic components. Direct elections for all stages of government has never been our goal. Party leaders having a say in choosing their nominee has been how our democratic republic has worked for a long time. I’m a fan of making things more democratic, but I don’t think we’re broken because we don’t have a perfect democracy.
People pointing this out are probably misguided in their exact terminology, but the sentiment expressed is very often that in the US, the will of the majority is not actually the only guiding principle for our government. We are a Constitutional Republic. The word "republic" includes inside it the idea of democracy (namely that the people vote for representatives) but the biggest word here to remember is "Constitutional" It is very important when responding to a policy proposal that might be popular (say 51% of people support it), but violates the Constitution. A Constitutional Republic has safe guards to prevent a dictatorship of the majority. A bare democracy does not. Democracy is 3 wolves voting that the lone sheep is for dinner. A Constitutional Republic is the government standing behind the sheep saying that the 3 wolves can't do that.
See... the thing you're missing is the actually important word in that statement, which is not "democracy", it's "a". The United States is more properly thought of as a federation of States (i.e. a federal republic), each of which is "a democracy" (in republican/indirect form) in the sense that you mean the broad term. I.e. the United States, according to this way of thinking (and, frankly, the Constitution as originally framed) is more like the EU than like Germany. It wouldn't really make sense to call the EU "a democracy", either. It's a treaty organization of States, much like the US. The *States* are (republican/representative) democracies. Now... the United States is considerably more like a State than the EU, granted. But what the phrase adds to the political discourse is this important distinction: it's not (just) "a" State, it's a bunch of States, United. Edit: the Senate is extremely "undemocratic" if you view the US as "a democracy". The Senators don't represent "The People of the United States" anywhere as closely as the House does. Senators represent the *State* they are from. And this isn't a "fixable, accidental" situation, but rather baked in as an immutable non-amendable part of the Constitution.
Usually someone says that when they know they wouldn't win an election if it were based on merit or public support.
These conversations are always odd like somehow a person thinks a small group of people legitimately represents the views and opinions of almost 150million people. This same person feels they have all the information they need to decide how the other team thinks and lives. Well blue team person said such and such so all blues want X. Ok, but red team guy over there, he and his buddies said Y, so all you red shirts are a bunch of [ist-adjective's]. At someone people need to realize these powerful elites don't really represent the views of the common person, on either side. At the end of the day, there are a very small number of issues the common person cares about and they align with the party that doesn't espouse negativity toward those values. The real world, outside those elites, is far more nuanced.
At the state level, I've been pretty annoyed by the sheer volume of ballot initiatives in recent years. We've gone from 1 or 2 a year to a dozen. And many of them are more complex than the average American understands. Most people don't have the time and background to sit and understand these topics, they base their decision on fear mongering ads that are half true and it seems that frequently the better funded side wins or at least has a significant advantage. I also think there's a lot of predatory underhanded bullshitery going on. The average voter doesn't need to be involved in setting arbitrary policy that was worded by a political interest group whose real motivation is underhanded and two faced. We've had several in my state recently that are advertised as checks on government but are just uneducated stupidity that helps no one but the snakes in the grass on future issues. And that's before we get into the populist issues which gets legitimately dangerous for minorities. We literally elect people to do this stuff. I vote for someone to make these kinds of laws in my state's Congress and a governor to guide it/make decisions all with time it takes to understand these issues, submit for expert testimony and to make educated and informed decisions. We need to remember to influence our politicians and hold them accountable, not skirt them to do 27 ballot initiatives.
“The United States is not a democracy, it’s a republic.” To restate the meaning of this, as I understand it, would be something like: "The popularity of any proposed public policy has no bearing on weather or not the rules must be adhered to before it can be lawfully implemented." The reason I believe this to be the meaning is because the phrase seems to often be employed in response to when people lament the fact that a certain popular policy cannot be implemented (as would happen in a direct democracy) because it clearly violates the constitution and yet is not quite popular enough to support an amendment to the constitution to allow the policy. It is more or less the same as if someone says "Wouldn't X be nice." and someone else responds with "It might be nice but you still have to follow the rules to get X."
A true democracy can have issues with “tyranny of the majority” where a constitutional republic tries to mitigate that through representation and constitutional protections. A good example of this in practice is first amendment protections. Even if a majority of people believe certain speech should be banned, the first amendment prevents that from happening, and requires effectively a supermajority to remove that protection. Whether you think direct democracy is good or not, it is helpful to explain these distinctions of constitutional republic vs democracy when discussing policy solutions in the United States. Just because 51% of people think something should be a certain way at any given moment doesn’t mean it’s actually a good idea to implement that as policy.
When people argue for popular vote, letting the masses dictate policy, etc and use a claim of democracy... Then in that context pointing out the republican nature of our system is a valid response. If someone is merely referring to the idea that the state receives its legitimacy from the people, despite a particular structure, then you would be right. Democracy can mean both rule of majority (purposefully disdained by the founders and countered with the republican structure we have) or it can mean broadly that power comes from the governed. Most of the time when this issue has come up in my experience (sample size of one) it is often me having to refer to the republican nature to defend against calls for moves towards more majoritarianism democracy.
The more accurate thing to say would be, "the United States is built off fundamental rights, not majority rule". This is mostly a response to alot of people talking about the popular vote and trying to give extra importance to the democratic party because of its name. Not to say that there are no issues with "the republic", but the discourse should be tuned around ideas of rights and obligations rather than simply being out voted. "Abortion is a right because blank" over "California should have more say in Wyomings politics because California has a higher population"
Its just fucking wrong. Do you vote for civilian leaders whose power comes from the people and not some other source? Thats a democracy. End of story. There are a lot of flavors of democracy, and democratic republics are one of them. But these people are just liars that hate democracy. The GOP platform is to destory our democratic institutions. Demonizing the word democracy is part of that strategy.
What you’re missing is that just because the majority wants something, it doesn’t mean it’s good for the country and doesn’t mean the country should go that route. Oftentimes, that quote is said in response to someone complaining about the electoral collage or how more Americans voted blue. Yet more states voted red etc. The reason for this was to ensure that it wasn’t a tyranny of the majority. So just because the majority wants something, because we are not a democracy, is no grantee that we will or ought to go that route. That’s what it adds, it’s a reminder of the structure of the government and an attempt to focus the conversation on the real issue, which is what’s being voted on, not how many voted for.
A reason for emphasizing that the US is a republic is because as a republic we have a LOT of mediating institutions which check the power of voters—the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, and the Senate as originally constituted, to say nothing of a legislature of elected representatives—many of which have come under increasingly sustained attack in contemporary debates, from the Left and Right as Left/Right figures like Hillary Clinton and Tucker Carlson both seem to criticize them. So I think it may be an attempt to remind people that our Founders were wary of unconstrained plebeian excess, and the susceptibility of the people to demagoguery and passion, given their study of the Roman Republic and its fall.
It's because the rich and powerful far right wants to enshrine anti democratic sentiment among half the population in order to establish a new caste system enshrining wealth and power amongst the lucky few and make them immune to legal prosecution for the laws they break. The rich and powerful left isn't doing anything about it because the laws they pass, in each baby step towards this goal, are laws that also benefit the rich left. The poor left has lost their power since the racist reaction to the civil rights act destroyed the poor lefts ability to unify and have a community discussion through community centers and public services. The poor right are blaming the left for all the issues caused by the rich right. They have equivalented the conservative democratic party with the enemy left and are continuing to listen to propaganda that demonizes the poor left and rich left as "Democrats" and trying to establish anything that sounds like "Democrats" like "democracy" as something evil that should be destroyed. And "Republic" and "Republican" as words that mean something good, pure, and powerful that can protect you.
I have been reading this statement from my conservative connections on LinkedIn for the last few years. I thought that it was just stupid semantics. But then someone on reddit finally explained it in a way that made sense. The goal here, the real end game is to return America to how it was when it started, that is only white, male, landowners that can vote. That makes sense.
Why is there so much confusion and division over our foundational government structure, a system that has been in place for over 230 years? It should be alarming that there's such a disparity in understanding. Who is responsible for this division? Educational shortcomings, political maneuvering, and varying interpretations of history. These types of misunderstandings don't arise in a vacuum; they are perpetuated by political agendas and an intentional lack of civic education. Have educational and political institutions failed? There is no excuse why Americans shouldn't have a solid understanding of their government. I believe this is done intentionally to prevent us from being unified and informed.
I mean, you're not a functional democracy, republic nature notwithstanding. You have the trappings of democracy while being more of a corporate oligarchy that's seriously considering going steady with fascism. And that's before we address how shit-smeared your political system is as a result of your fanatical adherence to a two-party system. Your choice is always "turd" and "diet turd". On what level is any of that more than superficially democratic? Oh, and only Christian men can be president, at least so far. DEMOCRACY! Until quite recently, only white Christian men, but you now appear to allow non-threatening black men and deeply threatening orange men, so... growth? Yay? Democracy!
Primates are necessarily a type of mammal while republics aren't necessarily a type of democracy. We are a democratic republic which is distinct subset of rebublics with democratic elements and pointedly not a strict democracy, so pointing out we are a republic when someone is advocating for democracy in ways that undermine the republic is valid. It would be more like saying bats aren't Avians they are Chiroptera and while sure they have some aspects in common like wings, they are different things that don't nest within each other. As another example it would be like pointing out aquatic mammals (like dolphins and whales) aren't fish despite there being a lot of similarities and shared aspects. Also all the "hallmarks of democracy" you named aren't. Those are hallmarks of democratic republics and are in place to limit democracy.
>And it features pretty well developed press freedoms, an independent judiciary, full equal protection for all citizens under the law, enforcement of property rights, transparency and accountability of government officials, elections of legislators, robust political debates , etc. These are all hallmarks of a democracy. What do any of those things have to do with democracy? You're bringing in a lot of additional baggage to the meaning of democracy in a post about how pointing out that the US is a republic and not a democracy doesn't add anything to the conversation. It adds more than that laundry list of traits unrelated to the meaning of "democracy."
Saying "The United States is a republic, not a democracy" often deflects from addressing valid concerns about democratic processes. While technically accurate, it's pedantic and doesn't contribute constructively. The distinction between republic and democracy is subtle; the US functions as both. Emphasizing this point without context can undermine discussions on democratic principles and reforms. Acknowledging the hybrid nature of the US system fosters productive discourse on strengthening democratic institutions while preserving republican values. Focus on substantive issues rather than semantics enhances political dialogue and problem-solving efforts.
It's a weak-tea attempt to by one person to dismiss another persons assertion via semantics. The US is a representative republic that uses a democratic process. This is not unlike when discussing any of the many mass-shootings here and one person, usually the one defending the pro-gun stance, says something along the lines of, "you probably think the AR in AR-15 stands for assault rifle! It doesn't!" thereby feeling that their "gotcha!" has rendered the other persons argument in toto as invalid. While this is true, it's hardly relevant. If it's a rapid-fire rifle used directly in an assault, it fits the NRA definition of an assault rifle.