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Comment by jonathankoren | Hacker News Reader

A republic is a democracy. It’s just one that has a president, and not a king.

That’s all it is. It’s not representatives It’s not federalism. It’s just not having a monarch.

I find a lot of Americans display a belief that 'democracy' can only refer to a direct democracy and 'republic' is the accurate term to refer to representational democracies, but with the implication often being that the point of representative democracy (vs direct democracy) is primarily to prevent majoritarianism or 'mob rule'. None of that meshes with my knowledge of political science gleaned from education in my home country (parliamentary system) or in the United States, so I really wonder where this idea began.

As per my knowledge, representative democracies have an advantage over direct democracies primarily in ease of administration and legislation. I don't think there are any particularly strong reasons to suggest representative democracy is less prone to a tyranny of the majority than a direct democracy.

My hypothesis is that the idea is borne out of a necessity to resolve the dissonance between the US founders and constitution being in many ways anti-democratic, with a culture that holds up democracy & freedom as its highest ideals. (democracy in this case defined as it would be in the dictionary)

The "We're a republic, not a democracy," comes from the 1930s as an isolationist slogan to argue against getting involved with "the defense of democracies" (the FDR argument) during World War II. From there it became a quip from the John Birch Society to delegitimize a political party. I know that sounds, hyperbolic, but it's true.

Jamelle Bouie recently did yeoman work tracking down it's start.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/opinion/aoc-crenshaw-repu...

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