Posted on 11/30/2019 7:32:56 AM PST by Moonman62
One of the most commonly encountered questions about the word democracy has nothing to do with its spelling or pronunciation, and isn’t even directly related to the meaning of the word itself. That question is “is the United States a democracy or a republic?” The answer to this, as with so many other questions about meaning, may be phrased as some form of “it depends.”
Some people assert that a country calling itself a democracy must be engaged in direct (or pure) democracy, in which the people of a state or region vote directly for policies, rather than elect representatives who make choices on their behalf. People who follow this line of reasoning hold that the United States is more properly described as a republic, using the following definition of that word: "a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law."
However, both democracy and republic have more than a single meaning, and one of the definitions we provide for democracy closely resembles the definition of republic given above: "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."
So if someone asks you if the United States is a democracy or a republic, you may safely answer the question with either “both” or “it depends.”
(Excerpt) Read more at merriam-webster.com ...
Distilled to its essence: The U.S. i a Constitutional Republic with democratically held elections.
was and not is.
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It’s neither.
It’s an oligarchy with trappings of democracy.
Neither. Elections are a sham. Kakistocracy.
america is a constitutional republic surrounded by third world $hit holes on the east and west coast.
It is both or either. A democracy has citizen participation in the government directly or by representatives. A Republic the same. Both are citizenry based and the personnel of the government changes by methods other than inheritance. Otherwise there is oligarchy, tyranny, and monarchy. We have our own special definition of Republic which is basically a representative democracy with laws applicable in theory to everyone. A democracy we now take as basically mob rule. Anything is open to decision by majority vote.
The confusion starts right there. The question is properly, “are these United States a democracy or a republic?”
We were a Republic before BOTH parties abrogated the Constitution by swearing in an ineligible usurper.
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