Thread: What is a democracy?

I hope no one here thinks that the United States is a democracy.
It is a Republic.

Here's a decent reference .

A major problem is when the elected officials actually think it is supposed to be a Democracy. Even worse is when laws are written as though it really is.

Originally Posted by LX_Emergency

Ok, recently I was thinking about this. My reasoning was that if the leaders of a nation don't do what the people of that nation want them to move to it is not a democracy (democracy coming from the words ruling and people in Greek if I'm not misstaken).

It's not democracy purely, no, but then there is the issue of "do the people of the nation actually know what's right?" For instance, there are a great many people who think that the US government should provide jobs for everyone who doesn't have one. They think that the 16,000 people that GM is laying off somehow is the fault of President Bush. I believe it would be a great tragedy to put the economic decisions of this country in these millions of people's hands. This opens up many new problems, but I think that the US's original way of doing things was best when people elected learned individuals who actually stood for what their constituents believed. Oh well...