US Democracy

Myth: The US isn’t a Democracy, it’s a republic.
Fact: We are a Constitutional Republic AND a Democracy. That’s because a republic is a form of Democracy.

The founding fathers believed in a democratically elected government, but they didn’t support a purely Rousseauian-style democracy. So, they devised a system where representatives are democratically elected by the populace to serve at the pleasure of the citizenry.

The existence of voting representatives gives us the “republic” part of our government. But we also have the Senate to balance out power between states–that is, to keep larger states from overpowering smaller states–and the House of Representatives to accurately represent the citizenry of states based on population.

The beauty of the American system can be found in its effort to combine democratic ideals with a classical republic to develop a practical democratic system. In fact, it’s this republicanism that makes democracy work in America.