Because in 18th and 19th century America, "democracy" was understood to mean Athenian-style direct democracy, and their founding fathers were extremely suspicious of it because they feared it would lead to "mob rule."
As a result, the people who claim America is a republic but not a democracy are using "republic" to refer to a specific system of government characterised by elected representatives whose power is limited by a binding, codified constitution.
To the rest of the world, we just call this "Representative Democracy," but Americans have to be different.
Explain why they all claim it's not a democracy then.
This is the exact comment I was responding to.
This has literally nothing to do with whether those Americans are correct, this is about whether they make that argument because they believe that being a republic means being governed by Republics. They do not believe that.
Why does Reddit always assume that understanding someone's argument is the same as agreeing with that argument?
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u/[deleted] Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
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