I’m going to start simple, with an apparently commonly unknown fact. So very many people these days seem confused as to the type of government that we in the United States live in. Did you know that the United States is a Republic? While many of our elected Representatives, intellectuals (as well as not so intellectuals), and TV personalities will bandy about the word “democracy” in reference to the state of the U.S. government, this is simply not true.
For a flash of nostalgia, repeat after me: “I pledge allegiance to the United States of America, to the Republic for which it stands…” I hope I didn’t just give you a hazy grade school flashback, but those words that your teacher forced (gently encouraged) you to repeat every day may not have a personal meaning to you, they do hold a fact, the U.S. is a Republic.
While the Pledge states the fact that we in the U.S. have a republican government (FYI, republic and Republican are entirely different things, if there’s any confusion, I’ll do a post on this later) it does little to illuminate the details of this state of affairs. Let me do what the pledge fails to do, and explain what a republic is, why we have one, and the differences between a republic and a democracy.
The Republic: The defining feature of a republic is representative government. Representative government basically means that the citizens of that country vote to elect representatives to do the dirty work of running the country for them. These representatives are then empowered to make decisions on a local, national, and international scale in the name of the citizens that elected them.
I’ll not go into the branches of the U.S. government (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial), but besides the Judicial (which is a kick in the nuts for any argument in favor of calling the U.S. a democracy), these branches are all made up of people elected by citizens of the United States, or appointed by these representatives (think bureaucrats, also not democratic) to run the country, an example of these other unelected bastards is the FCC.
The citizens in a republic never draft legislation (laws, ideas, things that need to be done, to be painfully simple), and rarely vote on it, though there is the rare example of a citizen suggesting legislation to their representative and later having it be made into some form of legislation (the natural cynic in me assumes it’s hardly recognizable). The rare direct vote (Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in Cali being an example) on a law leads some credence to calling the United States a Democratic Republic, but this type of thing is quite rare, and simply means that as a republic, the U.S.A. has decided to borrow some aspects of a democracy, this does not make the U.S. a democracy though.
The Democracy: A democracy is far more simple to describe in its workings than a republic. The complexity of running one comes from the simplicity of the form of government. In a democracy, every citizen is their own representative. They may elect a single representative to be their supreme voice in times of war, but in domestic decisions, the citizens of a democracy vote on everything. Yes, I did say EVERYTHING. Public spending on irrigation? VOTE! Should we invade so-and-so’s ass-hole country? VOTE! Should we raise taxes, lower taxes, or leave them the same? VOTE! Get it? Got it? Good.
So, does anyone out there remember voting on whether or not we should invade Iraq? On whether or not we should reform health care, and then all that time you took crafting plans to do so and then voting on them? (Congressman and Senators are excluded from saying yes, you uppity elected fucks… Just kidding keep up the hard/lazy work!) Holy shit, you don’t?! That’s because you live in a Republic, where you elect representatives. If you didn’t know that, now you do.
Thanks for reading, and if you learned something, you’re welcome, but I’m more welcome because you did. 
