I hadn’t seen anyone attempt to make this fatuous argument in quite some time, but a politically illiterate individual on Threads pulled out the old, “America is not a Democracy, it is a Constitutional Republic,” nonsense just the other day.
If that dumbshit statement isn’t one of the surest pieces of evidence that education is important (and that our educational system is failing), I don’t know what is. Not to point fingers or anything, but I’ve only ever seen former Tea Party and current MAGA folks tossing this gem out there. You’re free to interpret that as you will. I know what I suspect is behind that particularly ignorant claim arising from one specific cross-section of the American Political Spectrum.
I know the people who say things like that like to believe it makes them sound intellectual in some capacity. I know they think it’s some sort of “Get Out of Argument Free” card that they can toss into a discussion when things aren’t going the way they want. Sadly (for them), all it does is clearly display that the person making the statement understands nothing about either a Republic or a Democracy…and probably shouldn’t be trusted as an authority on any matters of government.
This is why it sounds so stupid to anyone with a passing familiarity with political theory. It’s the equivalent of saying, “Brutus isn’t a dog, he’s a German Shepherd.”
A Republic is a subset of the Democratic form of Government, a Representative Democracy as opposed to a Direct Democracy (where everyone would be free and encouraged to weigh in on every matter and every piece of legislation), which would be tedious as Hell! Instead, a Democratic process determines Representatives who then act on behalf of the bloc that voted for them.
I’m tempted to ask if the person making that statement is stupid or simply ill-informed…but they’re not mutually exclusive…sort of like a Democracy and a Republic.
I suppose one might say, “He’s not ill-informed, he’s stupid,” because while not all ill-informed people are stupid, all stupid people are certainly ill-informed.
Domus Necrophagous 
Your article makes a common mistake by treating “democracy” and “republic” as mutually exclusive terms, then using that misunderstanding to insult people rather than engage with the actual political science. Here are the facts:
1. The United States is a constitutional republic. This is explicitly stated in Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees every state a “Republican Form of Government.” Source: U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Sec. 4.
2. The United States is also a representative democracy. Political science uses “democracy” as a broad category that includes both direct and representative systems. A republic is one type of representative democracy. Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Democracy; Britannica – Republic.
3. Saying “America is a republic, not a democracy” is incomplete, but not “illiterate.” People often use the phrase to emphasize that the U.S. system includes constitutional limits on majority rule — checks and balances, separation of powers, judicial review, and federalism. These are structural features that distinguish a republic from a pure direct democracy. Source: Federalist No. 10 (Madison); Federalist No. 39.
4. The Founders themselves repeatedly contrasted “pure democracy” with the constitutional republic they designed. James Madison wrote that pure democracies “have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention,” and that the Constitution instead creates a republic where the people govern through elected representatives. Source: Federalist No. 10.
5. Modern political science agrees: the U.S. is both.
Republic = power held by the people, exercised through elected representatives, under a constitution.
Representative democracy = power held by the people, exercised through elected representatives. These definitions overlap. Source: Britannica – Representative Democracy; Oxford Dictionary of Politics.
6. None of this requires insulting anyone. The article relies heavily on name‑calling (“stupid,” “illiterate,” “dumb”) instead of engaging with the actual definitions. That may feel satisfying, but it doesn’t make the argument correct.Summary
The U.S. is:
A constitutional republic (constitutionally guaranteed)
A representative democracy (political science classification)
These terms are not contradictory. They describe the same system from different angles. Your analogy (“Brutus isn’t a dog, he’s a German Shepherd”) actually proves the opposite of what you intended — a German Shepherd is a dog, just as a republic is a form of democracy.
A piece of advice; when you have to resort to name calling – you’ve already lost the debate. A good author looks for the high-ground and through the merit of exceptional debate, preparedness and a controlled demand of the facts maintains the high-ground. Your blogs, what very few of them I actually read, you jump right into name calling, “Us vs Them” – you do not cite your sources; therefore, I have to assume your blogs are just opinions. When your opinion launches into name calling – why write the opinion? You are virtually admitting defeat in what can only be described as a one-sided conversation. Damn, how sad is that?
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I get the impression there’s some misunderstanding here, because I’m not the one treating Democracy and Republic as being mutually exclusive things.
My post is a response to that misapprehension. Moreso, the countless times it’s been confidently expressed to me, as if the individual making the claim that America is not a Democracy has somehow revealed a truth that I and others had been unaware of until the moment they hit us with this earth-shattering counter. That argument has, in my experience, only been made by people who obtain their limited knowledge of political science and history from memes, and also only from one particular side of the American political spectrum. The insult is very much intentional, and directed at the people who spread misinformation in an explicitly condescending tone, as only the most confidently uninformed are prone to do.
Based on elements in your comment, I almost feel as if it was crafted through an AI like ChatGPT, because it seems to fluctuate dramatically with respect to how it interprets my post as well as the understanding of what was being stated.
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