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No, we are not a democracy and are not supposed to be. We are supposed to be a republic.

Was it then a democracy the framers created? Hardly. The system of restraints, on the face of it, was directed not only against individual tyrants, but also against a tyranny of the masses. The framers were well aware of the danger posed by self-seeking demagogues—that they might persuade a majority of the people to confer on government vast powers in return for deceptive promises of economic gain. And so they forbade such a transfer of power—first by declaring, in effect, that certain activities are outside the natural and legitimate scope of the public authority, and secondly by dispersing public authority among several levels and branches of government in the hope that each seat of authority, jealous of its own prerogatives, would have a natural incentive to resist aggression by the others.

But the framers were not visionaries. They knew that rules of government, however brilliantly calculated to cope with the imperfect nature of man, however carefully designed to avoid the pitfalls of power, would be no match for men who were determined to disregard them. In the last analysis, their system of government would prosper only if the governed were sufficiently determined that it should. “What have you given us?” a woman asked Ben Franklin toward the close of the Constitutional Convention. “A Republic,” he said, “if you can keep it!” We have not kept it. …

— The Conscience of a Conservative, chapter 2

(I)t is quite clear that in fundamental theory, socialism and democracy are almost—if not quite—one and the same. They both rest at bottom upon the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members. Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals. …

— Woodrow Wilson, “Socialism and Democracy”

It is extremely dangerous to forget our own history, and the character our government is supposed to have.