Is America a democracy, or a republic?
Both, to varying degrees. It is perhaps more of a republic than a democracy though. A democracy and a republic are *almost* different words for the same thing. Not quite though, since a democratic political system is one governed by majority rule and a republic is one ultimately governed by a charter… therefore a republic is automatically less democratic than a pure democracy. Which is just one of the reasons why America is not as democratic as it thinks. That America is a republic first and foremost means that it can never be completely, and entirely, democratic. Really a democratic republic is almost an oxymoron. (It is far more complicated than I make out here, and we could go on about this clarifying the difference and how compatible the two are for hours).
A quote that is erroneously attributed to Jefferson goes: “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%.” While this isn’t a direct quote of his, it does sum up his attitude towards open democracy. This is why the US government is a Constitutional Federal Republic. We have a Constitution that sets up the rules for the government to follow, including a Federal-State system of power and system for elections in two branches of government, and appointment in the other. Many people don’t realize that in actuality, you don’t vote for the president directly. Each state gets a certain number of electoral votes that the executive branch can use however they see fit. The intention was that state governors would actually elect the president, not the people. Currently, each state picks an elector for each vote they have. Usually they already have a pool of people that they know will vote for one or the other candidates, and they appoi
