Opinion piece (Johnathan Bernstein) via Bloomberg pasted here because some might hit paywall:
"At some point during the vice-presidential debate — my wrap is here if you missed it — Utah Senator Mike Lee tweeted out, “We’re not a democracy.” Man, oh, man, do I hate this one. I’ve argued before that this is one of America’s great crank ideas. But let me try again.
The short version of what I usually say is: For almost all practical purposes, when talking about the modern world, “democracy” and “republic” are best used as synonyms. Both are good words for describing the system of government in the U.S. The simplified history of the words in the American context: In the 18th century, there was a fad for Rome, and so people who liked Rome used the word “republic.” By the middle of the 19th century, there was a fad for Athens, so people started using the word “democracy.”
Back to Mike Lee. Democracy, he should know, is a word from ancient Greek meaning “rule of the people.” That’s it. It’s true that James Madison doesn’t use it that way in the Federalist Papers; he uses it in the way we’d use “direct democracy.” But that wasn’t really true in ancient Greece, where democracy wasn’t contrasted with a scheme of representation because the Greeks didn’t have any concept of representation. Neither did the Romans, for that matter. All that comes much later, and 18th-century theorists were still grappling with the proper words to explain the insights that they were coming up with.
"So my question to Lee and anyone else who trots out this idea would be: If we’re not to have rule of the people, who exactly should rule? Throughout American history, from the Framers up to the present, the answer has always been the same: the people. It’s true that we’ve had a lot of sharp debates about who’s included in that phrase, and that the answers have often been far too restrictive. But those debates weren’t typically over whether the people should rule. They were about who the true citizens were (or even, horribly, about who was fully human).
We’ve also had a second set of debates, from the 1770s on, about how the people should rule. Some have advocated for more direct democracy. Others, more representation. Some prefer strict one-person, one-vote rules, while others don’t. The Framers put together a wild scheme of separated institutions sharing powers, in which some representatives arrived by direct election (the House), some by indirect election (done one way back then for the Senate, another for the president), and still others by nomination and confirmation. We still fight about all of that.
But this set of debates has nothing to do with whether the people rule. No serious person has ever suggested, for example, a hereditary Senate. Or a Supreme Court that chooses its own successors. Or that certain families should make up the Electoral College and select the president. Or that a strongman should seize power and rule by his own authority. No. All legitimate government authority in the U.S. ultimately derives from the same place — the citizens, acting as an electorate. And that’s what makes it a democracy.
Or a republic! Republic is a fine word, too. Its origins are very different (from Latin for “a public thing”), and again the Roman republic wasn’t our kind of republic. It wasn’t at all the rule of the people. However, over time, the fact that Rome didn’t have kings and that the republic ended when it started having emperors wound up inspiring people who were trying to invent a modern version of popular politics. Various places called themselves republics if they didn’t have kings, and people inspired by that vision — eventually including those who made the American Revolution — adopted a “republican” philosophy that prized the rule of the people. Using the word “republic” is a fine tribute to this historical and philosophical tradition, as well as to the Framers. Just as using the word “democracy” is a fine tribute to a somewhat different tradition, as well as to President Abraham Lincoln and others who adopted its use.
The point is that we have two perfectly good words for a nation in which the people rule and are able to take political action. Inventing (or reviving from long-dead usage) a more restrictive definition of one of them doesn’t clarify anything, and doesn’t help us understand anything.
Unless, of course, Lee would rather that someone other than the people should be in charge. If so, he should spell it out."
Man, I sure hope Utah wakes the F up.
