Man, I hear this ALL the time! A really good break-down of the debate. “…if you think these people are indifferent toward democracy, you couldn’t be more mistaken…it certainly wouldn’t hurt their cause any to convince a large part of the public that democracy never even existed in the first place.”
From what I hear, lots of people already believe that.
It’s bound to happen. Mention something about protecting American democracy within earshot of a right-winger, and you are pretty much guaranteed these days to get a canned response like this: “America is not a democracy, you libtard snowflake moron! It’s a republic!” This is a snappy comeback intended to “own the libs”, but all it actually does is demonstrate ignorance and gullibility.
Saying that a nation is “a republic and not a democracy” is like saying that an animal is a dog, and not a mammalian quadruped. Because democracy and republic are not at all antithetical or mutually exclusive. Rather, a republic is a particular kind of democracy: namely a democracy in which citizens elect representatives to make laws on their behalf.
As the entry for republic over at Britannica states:
republic, form of government in which a state is ruled by representatives of the citizen body. Modern republics…
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