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Let's be real, America is a Republic, and Republics came from Rome. Things America doesn't know about america: We are NOT a democracy, we are a REPUBLIC. http

Let's be real, America is a Republic, and Republics came from Rome. Things America doesn't know about america: We are NOT a democracy, we are a REPUBLIC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_democracy

protomyth 14y ago
A representative constitutional republic to tell the whole story. The article really lost me on this point. If you look that shallowly at what the Constitution established as a one word description, then yes, there were others before. If you look at the branches and, particularly the division between state and popular representation, the US is much different than what came before. It seems like the typical gloss job we find in high schools these days that really needs to be fixed.
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  Actually, a large part of the US government system - for example, the division between federal and state governments - was copied from the Ottoman Empire.
  - protomyth 14y ago
    I may be off but I don't think the Ottoman Empire had a legislator with one house based on population and the other house appointed by the states on an equal basis.
    - saraid216 14y ago
      Since that's not what the grandparent was talking about, you must be peachy.
    - vacri 14y ago
      According to wikipedia, the concepts behind modern bicameralism hearken back to the middle ages, where one house was based on commoners (essentially population), and the other house on the aristocracy (essentially state) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism The independence of the US and its political system was a great moment in history, but it didn't happen in a vacuum. It improved on earlier systems, but also left much to be desired in itself. One clear example is that later democracies allowed plausible multiparty systems, so you're not left with a mere binary choice.
      - protomyth 14y ago
        The aristocracy was not essentially states. Your missing the central innovation, one is based on population and one is based on land area division with their own non-uniform governments. Nevermind the structure and powers of the executive branch. Nothing happens in a vacuum, but if you discount everything that had roots in something before, then there is no such thing as innovation in any human endeavor.
        vacri 14y ago
        You're saying that the 'landed gentry' are not effectively 'land area divisions'? The aristocracy essentially performed the level of government that the states do these days. They still exist in the British parliament (house of commons vs house of lords - the latter is literally staffed by aristocracy). Counties, duchies, principalities - these were all forms of states. They just happened to be controlled by the aristocracy rather than an elected representative. So if one chamber is filled with these 'controllers of land', it's very much the same as being filled with 'states'. but if you discount everything that had roots in something before "The independence of the US and its political system was a great moment in history" doesn't sound like I'm discounting it much. The irony in your comment is that in order for me 'not to discount' the efforts put into the US revolution (which I didn't actually do), you're more than happy to discount efforts performed by earlier actors.
        protomyth 14y ago
        "controlled by the aristocracy rather than an elected representative" The House of Lords and the US Senate are pretty different. The states in the US have their own constitutions and elections. The different between unelected and elected is large.
        vacri 14y ago
        Keep on moving those goalposts.
        14y ago
Symmetry 14y ago
We're both a democracy and a republic. You can have oligarchic republic or theocratic republics or whatever else too. I think that hybridization is what people tend to mean when they call the US the first "modern democracy."
gnaritas 14y ago
Let's be real, the word democracy doesn't just mean direct democracy. Our "republic" is and always has been a representative democracy, and it's perfectly appropriate to classify the U.S. as a democracy. Republic and democracy are orthogonal concepts, we are both. The word republic just means our leaders aren't chosen by blood or inheritance. Since we elect our leaders, we are a democracy.
- tptacek 14y ago
  It'd be interesting to track down the origins of that misconception, that "Republic" and "Democracy" are two different kinds of government. Is it possible that so many people believe this because of the government types in the original Sid Meier "Civilization" game?
ArbitraryLimits 14y ago
To adapt the OP's original phrase, I think the US can lay legitimate claim to being the first modern republic, except maybe for the Dutch. Yes, there were nations with a republican form of government before that, but the purpose of that form was fundamentally different. The pre-modern republics were set up to allow all the aristocracy a turn at being king, while modern republics are set up to allow the non-aristocracy to prevent there being an aristocracy. For example, the ancient republics of Athens, Rome, and even Carthage were noted by their neighbors as being especially warlike precisely because, to take Rome as an example, everyone only got six months as consul and so they had to make it by launching wars immediately, both because the plunder would form the basis of their personal and family fortunes and because glory from war was the only goal worthy of an aristocrat. Regular kings, by contrast, could take their time. In the modern world, we don't respect glory in battle or plunder like we used to, and so we use the republican form of government to prevent anyone from amassing too much power on a permanent basis at all. People often think the purpose of voting today is to select the best leader, or at least a good one, but really it's simply to ensure that the current one has to leave since no one can please the majority of an electorate indefinitely.
bobwaycott 14y ago
You are wrong. America is a democratic-aristocratic-oligarchic republic whose history has consistently pressed for greater democratic equality. Republics can be almost anything in the world because the classification is based on a single important qualification: the head of state is not a monarch. There is no one true definition of republic. The American founders created a hybrid democratic-aristocratic-oligarchic republic based quite firmly in Montesquieu's classifications, in that it created what was overwhelmingly an aristocratic-oligarchic republic, built around three administrative federal branches, and incorporated limited democracy for landed persons. For 223 years, Americans has been hammering out more of the democracy and less of the aristocracy/oligarchy since it was codified in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. This in no way changes, nor will it ever change, the classification of America's form of government being a republican one. You do yourself and everyone else a disservice by exclaiming the US is a republic and not a democracy when a) the two are not mutually exclusive and the distinction you think exists does not, 2) nobody argues we are a pure democracy--and even if we were, you'd still be hard-pressed to not call such a thing a republic in the modern (and possibly classical) sense, and d) both classical and modern definitions of democracy and republic share intertwined concepts and throwbacks, while still being disputed by some scholars as to whether they even form a historical continuum at all. Statements like this are fodder for bumper stickers, not thoughtful discussions.
snowwrestler 14y ago
The terms "democracy" and "republic" are not on the same axis. "Republic" defines the origin of sovereign power (the individual citizens). The Soviet Union was also a republic, but was not democratic. "Democracy" describes how that power is exercised (through voting). Technically we're a representative democracy but that is still a type of democracy. The UK is also a representative democracy, but they are not a republic.

protomyth 14y ago

A representative constitutional republic to tell the whole story. The article really lost me on this point. If you look that shallowly at what the Constitution established as a one word description, then yes, there were others before. If you look at the branches and, particularly the division between state and popular representation, the US is much different than what came before. It seems like the typical gloss job we find in high schools these days that really needs to be fixed.

enraged_camel 14y ago
Actually, a large part of the US government system - for example, the division between federal and state governments - was copied from the Ottoman Empire.
- protomyth 14y ago
  I may be off but I don't think the Ottoman Empire had a legislator with one house based on population and the other house appointed by the states on an equal basis.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    Since that's not what the grandparent was talking about, you must be peachy.
  - vacri 14y ago
    According to wikipedia, the concepts behind modern bicameralism hearken back to the middle ages, where one house was based on commoners (essentially population), and the other house on the aristocracy (essentially state) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism The independence of the US and its political system was a great moment in history, but it didn't happen in a vacuum. It improved on earlier systems, but also left much to be desired in itself. One clear example is that later democracies allowed plausible multiparty systems, so you're not left with a mere binary choice.
    - protomyth 14y ago
      The aristocracy was not essentially states. Your missing the central innovation, one is based on population and one is based on land area division with their own non-uniform governments. Nevermind the structure and powers of the executive branch. Nothing happens in a vacuum, but if you discount everything that had roots in something before, then there is no such thing as innovation in any human endeavor.
      - vacri 14y ago
        You're saying that the 'landed gentry' are not effectively 'land area divisions'? The aristocracy essentially performed the level of government that the states do these days. They still exist in the British parliament (house of commons vs house of lords - the latter is literally staffed by aristocracy). Counties, duchies, principalities - these were all forms of states. They just happened to be controlled by the aristocracy rather than an elected representative. So if one chamber is filled with these 'controllers of land', it's very much the same as being filled with 'states'. but if you discount everything that had roots in something before "The independence of the US and its political system was a great moment in history" doesn't sound like I'm discounting it much. The irony in your comment is that in order for me 'not to discount' the efforts put into the US revolution (which I didn't actually do), you're more than happy to discount efforts performed by earlier actors.
        protomyth 14y ago
        "controlled by the aristocracy rather than an elected representative" The House of Lords and the US Senate are pretty different. The states in the US have their own constitutions and elections. The different between unelected and elected is large.
        vacri 14y ago
        Keep on moving those goalposts.
        14y ago

Symmetry 14y ago

We're both a democracy and a republic. You can have oligarchic republic or theocratic republics or whatever else too. I think that hybridization is what people tend to mean when they call the US the first "modern democracy."

gnaritas 14y ago

Let's be real, the word democracy doesn't just mean direct democracy. Our "republic" is and always has been a representative democracy, and it's perfectly appropriate to classify the U.S. as a democracy. Republic and democracy are orthogonal concepts, we are both. The word republic just means our leaders aren't chosen by blood or inheritance. Since we elect our leaders, we are a democracy.

tptacek 14y ago
It'd be interesting to track down the origins of that misconception, that "Republic" and "Democracy" are two different kinds of government. Is it possible that so many people believe this because of the government types in the original Sid Meier "Civilization" game?

ArbitraryLimits 14y ago

To adapt the OP's original phrase, I think the US can lay legitimate claim to being the first modern republic, except maybe for the Dutch. Yes, there were nations with a republican form of government before that, but the purpose of that form was fundamentally different. The pre-modern republics were set up to allow all the aristocracy a turn at being king, while modern republics are set up to allow the non-aristocracy to prevent there being an aristocracy. For example, the ancient republics of Athens, Rome, and even Carthage were noted by their neighbors as being especially warlike precisely because, to take Rome as an example, everyone only got six months as consul and so they had to make it by launching wars immediately, both because the plunder would form the basis of their personal and family fortunes and because glory from war was the only goal worthy of an aristocrat. Regular kings, by contrast, could take their time. In the modern world, we don't respect glory in battle or plunder like we used to, and so we use the republican form of government to prevent anyone from amassing too much power on a permanent basis at all. People often think the purpose of voting today is to select the best leader, or at least a good one, but really it's simply to ensure that the current one has to leave since no one can please the majority of an electorate indefinitely.

bobwaycott 14y ago

You are wrong. America is a democratic-aristocratic-oligarchic republic whose history has consistently pressed for greater democratic equality. Republics can be almost anything in the world because the classification is based on a single important qualification: the head of state is not a monarch. There is no one true definition of republic. The American founders created a hybrid democratic-aristocratic-oligarchic republic based quite firmly in Montesquieu's classifications, in that it created what was overwhelmingly an aristocratic-oligarchic republic, built around three administrative federal branches, and incorporated limited democracy for landed persons. For 223 years, Americans has been hammering out more of the democracy and less of the aristocracy/oligarchy since it was codified in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. This in no way changes, nor will it ever change, the classification of America's form of government being a republican one. You do yourself and everyone else a disservice by exclaiming the US is a republic and not a democracy when a) the two are not mutually exclusive and the distinction you think exists does not, 2) nobody argues we are a pure democracy--and even if we were, you'd still be hard-pressed to not call such a thing a republic in the modern (and possibly classical) sense, and d) both classical and modern definitions of democracy and republic share intertwined concepts and throwbacks, while still being disputed by some scholars as to whether they even form a historical continuum at all. Statements like this are fodder for bumper stickers, not thoughtful discussions.

snowwrestler 14y ago

The terms "democracy" and "republic" are not on the same axis. "Republic" defines the origin of sovereign power (the individual citizens). The Soviet Union was also a republic, but was not democratic. "Democracy" describes how that power is exercised (through voting). Technically we're a representative democracy but that is still a type of democracy. The UK is also a representative democracy, but they are not a republic.