“The United States is a republic, not a democracy” implies that we cannot be both at the same time. As though the two words are opposites, or mutually exclusive alternative answers to the same question. For example: a t-shirt cannot be both 100% cotton and 100% polyester; on the other hand, it can be both 100% cotton and 100% red. A democracy is not the same kind of thing as a republic; they are not alternative answers to the same question.
Before I go further, the best thing I have ever seen on this question is this five-word mouthful: We are "a Constitutionally limited representative democratic republic" (Thom Hartmann). Not one or another of these qualities, but all of them. At the same time.
In its essence, republic means the government is a public thing, the government is a thing that belongs to the public, not to one man or any group of men, not even a majority of men. Another way to define it is a republic is the rule of law, every person is subject to the same laws, and no man is above the law (not even the president). Alternatives to republic are a monarchy (government that belongs to one man) and an aristocracy or oligarchy (government that belongs to a few men). A democracy on the other hand invests power in the people, one by one; not the “public,” but people or persons. So, a (representative) democracy implies suffrage, or people choosing their representatives, or voting.
But, perhaps the quibble is over our not being a "direct democracy" or a "pure democracy," both of which terms denote a government in which the people rule themselves without representatives. Imagine a time when 165 million American citizens go online to read an act of legislation (25 to 2000 pages long) before voting it up or down. Who has the time? Who has the expertise? That is why we don't have a direct or pure form of democracy. That is why we elect fellow-citizens to "represent" us. That is why we have a "representative democracy," not a direct or pure democracy.
The Declaration of Independence mentions the word republic or republican or any words related to republic zero times. Same for democracy, democrat, democratic or any words related to democracy. Zero times. In the Constitution proper, and the Bill of Rights and all the other amendments, there is no mention of democrat, democracy, or democratic. But there is ONE mention of republican (the adjective form of republic, a noun). Article IV section 4 of the Constitution reads: “The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.” That’s it, one reference, the federal government guarantees to every state a republican government. But no mention that the federal government is a republic. And no mention what a republican government is. So, is the federal government a republic or a democracy, or both? Our founding documents are pretty silent on the matter.
But not really.
When Jefferson penned the immortal words “all men are created equal,” he put in motion an ideal of universal suffrage, of everyone voting, of a democracy. And we have spent 250 years working toward that ideal by expanding who may vote. At first, only adult white Protestant land-owning males. Then – as who may vote rested with the states – each state advanced at its own rate. Catholics, Jews, working class, blacks, women, citizens old enough to be drafted. Now, with a quibble or two – felons and voter suppression – every adult person has the vote. We did not declare we were a democracy (or a republic) from the beginning; but when you give the people self-rule, you give them democracy. So, while we did not have universal suffrage from the beginning, the trend to it was there from the beginning.
James Madison, in his Federalist (papers written by Alexander Hamilton, Madison and John Jay to sway New York state to ratify the new Constitution) #10, expresses a real preference for a republic rather than a democracy. But his republic is our nation-wide representative democracy and his democracy is a small town’s direct (or pure) democracy. And he is after all making a case for the new federal government that our Founding Fathers were building. Neither democracy nor republic means what they meant 230 years ago.
Researching articles that declare “The United States is a republic, not a democracy,” one discovers authors arguing that democracy means “majority rules,” and then they craft a clever argument asserting that the rule of law is more important to America’s system of government than “majority rules." A characteristic of a democracy is that in many cases votes are taken and the majority rules. But that is not what democracy means! The rule of law always trumps majority rules without our being any the less a democracy, where the people – not always the majority – rule.
Quibble#1: there are two forms of democracy: “direct democracy” and “representative democracy.” The best example of a direct democracy is a Town Hall, where townspeople show up and talk and listen and vote issues up and down. But how many townspeople have the time, how many will show up, how many issues will they be able to consider and how many issues are they qualified to consider? Direct democracy may be someone’s notion of self-government, but it only works with small numbers, like Town Halls. Larger populations – nation states – need a representative democracy, where citizens choose other citizens to stand in for them. To learn, to talk, to listen, and to decide. Imposing a direct democracy on a growing nation worried James Madison and his peers. But, no one is talking here about direct democracy. To our modern ears, a democracy is a representative democracy.
Quibble#2: Truly, no Founding Father favored “democracy” as they considered it then. The word has a checkered history. The underlying demos means people and kratia means rule. People rule, popular rule, self-rule. Unhappily, the demos part originally meant a mob of illiterate people, not a bunch of educated individuals. Every one of our Founding Fathers was a card-carrying member of the aristocracy (not European style, but they were all well-educated professional men); they ALL feared the demos, the mob. If we were to impose their high standards of who is qualified to rule themselves today, very few Americans would be entitled to vote. Jefferson said: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” Jefferson would place conditions on our right to vote. But Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." All real alternatives to democracy are forms of tyranny of one sort or another. But a representative government that is chosen by fools is doomed as well.
I would ask my Republican friends who think we are not a democracy – who may not want us to be a democracy – what are we if we are not a democracy, what should we be? A republic is not an alternative to democracy; monarchy (rule by one man) and aristocracy (rule by a few men) are. What would you have us be?
One final point that I hope can unite us. In theory and by law, we are a democracy (popular rule, not mob rule) as, over time, we have extended suffrage to everyone. But in fact, we are not a democracy, not because we are a republic but because democracy means the people rule and we know who really rules – Big Money (plutocracy) rules. Maybe we should stop jawing about whether we are a democracy or a republic and fight together to become the democratic republic we have evolved to become, where we are a nation of laws and where we rule ourselves.
What can we do? Most of us are born citizens, born with the right to vote. As long as the right to vote makes no demands on us – no demands of responsibility, to know what we know and what we don’t know – we are doomed to failure. The corrective? Determine to become better citizens. Follow Ben Paine.
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