Democracy vs. Republic
Dear editor:
Just returned from a trip and picked up a copy of Sunday’s American Press, which a neighbor of mine saved for me. It’s great to return home and be able to have the best laugh I have had in the longest time. It was hard to stop laughing while reading the letter from Mark Bordelon which commented about my letter dealing with the use
of many languages throughout our great country. He missed the obvious entire point of the letter and instead chose to accuse me of not understanding that our country is not a democracy, as I stated in my letter, but rather a republic. Shame on me.
Mr. Bordelon points out that according to the World Book Encyclopedia the “United States is the world’s outstanding example of a successful republic.” True as far as it goes. He also claims to have learned that “somewhere in between the third to the fifth grade.” Hope and wish he went further in both, for half an answer and half a research is worth exactly what you have…half a definition and half a truth.
If anyone would take the time to research both forms of government in something like the Merriam Webster Dictionary they would find that our government is both a republic and a democracy, and referring to it in either way is correct.
According to this respected research tool: “A Republic is a government having as chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president. A government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers.” Yes, that’s us.
“A Democracy is a government by the people; especially: rule of the majority, a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections. The absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges.” Yup, that’s us too.
So here we are two things at once. But it doesn’t matter, because it works. And spending all that time and space on a letter to separate the two and wrongly trying to catch a mistake is an absolute waste.
Just returned from a trip and picked up a copy of Sunday’s American Press, which a neighbor of mine saved for me. It’s great to return home and be able to have the best laugh I have had in the longest time. It was hard to stop laughing while reading the letter from Mark Bordelon which commented about my letter dealing with the use
of many languages throughout our great country. He missed the obvious entire point of the letter and instead chose to accuse me of not understanding that our country is not a democracy, as I stated in my letter, but rather a republic. Shame on me.
Mr. Bordelon points out that according to the World Book Encyclopedia the “United States is the world’s outstanding example of a successful republic.” True as far as it goes. He also claims to have learned that “somewhere in between the third to the fifth grade.” Hope and wish he went further in both, for half an answer and half a research is worth exactly what you have…half a definition and half a truth.
If anyone would take the time to research both forms of government in something like the Merriam Webster Dictionary they would find that our government is both a republic and a democracy, and referring to it in either way is correct.
According to this respected research tool: “A Republic is a government having as chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president. A government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers.” Yes, that’s us.
“A Democracy is a government by the people; especially: rule of the majority, a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections. The absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges.” Yup, that’s us too.
So here we are two things at once. But it doesn’t matter, because it works. And spending all that time and space on a letter to separate the two and wrongly trying to catch a mistake is an absolute waste.
posted by Sam Schoolsky | 12:20 PM
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