I remember having a conversation about this with someone once.
They said it's a republic, not a democracy.
That answer always makes me chuckle.
Why?
Because those two things aren't opposites. It's not like saying is this cat black or white, or was the universe always there or was there a beginningto it? A country can be both a republic AND a democracy. That is what the US is by most definitions.
Of course, there are different sorts of republics and democracies, so you can also define the US as neither a republic nor a democracy. The US is not a republic exactly as Plato described a republic. And it's not a democracy exactly as the Athenians practised democracy.
And it might be that the founding fathers and framers had particular definitions in mind when they said their things. But is there any reason to care what definitions they had in mind when we have our own? When we say democracy, we don't mean that the entire population votes on every issue. We mean that we vote for people to represent us for short periods of time and they vote on day-to-day matters.
But if we allow that the US has a president and not a monarch, that its constitution expresses the will of the people, that people vote for representatives to represent them, that the model is designed to follow the rule of law and to grant individual freedoms, then the US is what we generally call a republic by a normal definition, and the US is what we generally call a democracy, or representative democracy, by a normal definition.
So the question itself is bogus, because it treats a both-and situation as an either-or question.
Thought for a sunday morning. Enough of that.
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