>> Democracy seems to be more of a key characteristic of our form of government but not necessarily the ultimately definitive characteristic. <<
Yes, I think it’s the protection of individual rights that’s most distinctive about our form of government, but that’s hard to preserve without the good will of the majority. As I’m about to explain, it’s not true that our Constitution prevents the majority from taking away our freedoms. Sure they can — if the majority is large enough to pass amendments. What it did is make doing so very difficult.
People often argue about this topic using made-up distinctions between a democracy and a republic that do not reflect the way the words have been used over the thousands of years that they have existed. The most famous early republic was the Roman Republic. Would we Americans have wanted one like that? Of course not — not enough power to the people, nor enough protection for individual rights. “Republic” most of time was used simply to distinguish a government by a group of prominent men from monarchical by a single ruler. In some republics that group of rulers was relatively small, but by the time the United States was formed the word usually implied considerable participation by the people. Also sometimes there was a good bit of individual freedom too; sometimes there wasn’t.
Our Founders took both government by the people — at least on a large scale — and guarantees of individual rights a step further than ever before, and that’s why its founding was such an important event in world history.
There is no perfect guarantee of freedom and individual rights, though. Though I agree with the speaker in the Instagram video about the importance of individual rights, it’s not true that under our government 99% of the people couldn’t take away the rights of 1%. With enough support among the people to pass amendments, every single guarantee in the Bill of Rights could be taken away. Just like prohibition they could be overturned.
We can say that individuals and minorities have natural born rights, but for their enjoyment they depend on the good will of the majority (and, if oppressed, on their own ability to resist and cause trouble for the majority).