What democracy? The United States is a Constitutional Republic

A clean election without fraud or manipulation is dangerous for our democracy

Children learning they can be anything and are equal regardless of skin color is racist. It's dangerous to our Democracy

Curious. How do you define Constitutional Republic? I define it as a representative democracy that has a written Constitution.

No problem.

con·sti·tu·tion·al
adjective
1.
relating to an established set of principles governing a state.
"a constitutional amendment"

Re·pub·lic
noun
a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.

So - Constitutional Republic is a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, which has a President rather than a monarch - and is guided by an established set of principles (The Constitution) governing the country.

Okay, pretty close to mine. Now, how do you define democracy? I define it as a system of government where the power is exercised by the people through elections (typically via representatives, as direct democracy is very rare these days).

It stands in contrast with authoritarianism, where power is held by the dictator with little-to-no accountability to the people. I view the two as opposite sides of a spectrum (not unlike the economic spectrum where free market capitalism is on end and centrally planned socialism is on the other end).

Perf said: It stands in contrast with authoritarianism, where power is held by the dictator with little-to-no accountability to the people.

Careful - you're describing Biden too well.

I agree 100% that, when talking about politics, it is best to focus on policies rather than people such as politicians. The latter topic tends to degenerate into partisan shout-fests (but for the record, I voted for Jo Jorgensen -- I view the two-party system as the root of many of our political problems).

You didn't mention whether or not you agreed with the democracy/authoritarian spectrum. How would you describe the amount of accountability that political leaders have to the people? Would you simply switch the labels to be something like "republic/dictatorship" or use something else?

As I indicate below, if you are arguing that we are not as close to the republic/democracy end as most people think, I would tend to agree. But I think we are still (for the moment) closer to the republic/democracy side than authoritarian/dictatorship countries like Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, China, or Russia.

I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America. And to the REPUBLIC - for which is stands...

It isn't and to the Democracy for which it stands.

That doesn't address the possibility I raised where Republic means representative democracy.

noun: democracy
"a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives."

We definitely aren't "by the whole population".
The next part has "Typically" through elected reps. Which means a democracy can exist outside of elected officials. Next definition...

"control of an organization or group by the majority of its members."

Control in our country is in an elite 1 percent thing. Next...

"the practice or principles of social equality." Well according to the left there is no social equality and everyone but white people are victims. That is of course unless the white person falls into a LGBTQ+ category. According to the right - that victim hood mentality is all made up and we do have social equality.

So I can barely make a stretch to see how we are a democracy by most definitions. I can definitely by definition though - see exactly how we are Constitutional Republic.

LGEBJ: "Control in our country is in an elite 1 percent thing."

I would tend to agree. What do you think the answer to that is? Me, I see two reforms as being the most helpful:

1) publicly funded campaigns (money will always flow around any campaign spending restrictions, and they also have First Amendment issues)

2) using proportional representation to implement a multi-party system, making it much harder for elites to capture all of the parties

For elections - I think they should be anonymous. You vote for a set of decrees and stances the candidate has, that you have to educate yourself about. Then, you decide based on the topics - then find out who is President.

You could know who is running, but not who answered a survey question a certain way. It's the only way a third party could win President and I think the country needs a third party president more than it need a woman president.

For the economy - it is what it is 1 percent will always control 99 percent of the wealth. Until that 1 percent decides to just cut losses and spread it around, it's dangerous to try to take more from them. Tax the rich is a good way to get the rich to head elsewhere...and I never got a good paying job from a poor person.

I like the anonymity idea! That's a new one to me. It goes along with what I said earlier about politicians/people being polarizing and would move politics back towards policies.

As a registered Libertarian, I'm obviously also a fan of third parties. I see the biggest problem being winner-take-all elections, where 10%, 20%, or even 40% of the vote means 0% of the seats. This discourages moderate third party candidates from running. I think a better system would award seats proportionally to the votes won. That requires multi-member districts, so you can't do that for the presidency, but it would work for Congress, and I think you'd see the two huge parties break up into smaller, less powerful, less corporatist, and more ideologically consistent parties.

For the economy, I agree that wealth redistribution to try and achieve equality of outcome is undesirable. We need strong incentives to excel, and taxing the rich would be the opposite of that. This is why I think the main problem is just how easy it is for wealthy elites to translate their economic power into political power via campaign contributions, and why I think the solution is publicly funded campaigns.

I would also be keen on dropping a Vice Presidential Candidate - awarding Vice President to second place. This would get both parties working together - as at least in that model you have representation at the top by both parties.

Or have Vice Presidential candidates - then second place and the vice presidential candidates all become a 1/3 power vice presidential role, where they would - again have to work together .

Well, that's how it used to be, but the Founders didn't like it, which was why it was scrapped (not sure if you've seen the musical Hamilton?). Another possibility along those lines is a semi-presidential system, but that would require an Amendment, and the historical track record isn't great (one of the countries that uses it is Russia, the other being France).

I think this site had a good idea to foster inter-party cooperation in Congress, creating a multi-party but centrally-weighted legislature: https://www.accuratedemocracy.com/

With a multi-party system, all of the parties usually have only minority power and *have* to cooperate to get anything done (and thus any political credit).

Democracy - Rule of Majority.
Republic - Rule of Law.

And how about when the laws are passed by representatives elected by majorities?