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tavavex 5 hours ago

> It's a Constitutional Republic.

Which is a kind of democracy. Democracy is a broad term describing all forms of government where power is granted by the people. This is a weird framing that I see brought up by Americans only, and I don't understand it, because direct democracies (what these Americans are actually referring to when they say 'democracy') are basically extinct in the modern world. They keep trying to distance themselves from the term. Most democratic nations today are presidential or parliamentary republics, just like you, or something that can be approximated to one of them. I'm doubtful that the US founders didn't recognize they were founding a democratic nation, just a specific subcategory - but ultimately still a state that should hopefully answer to the people.

Neither does federalism relate to the form of government - you could have a federal or distributed direct democracy if you wanted to. They're just different categories of things, the way you choose how to best represent the will of a group of people is a different question from how you subdivide these groups into self-governing blocks.

andrewla 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But Adams was specifically arguing not against democracy in the broad term, but specifically, unconstrained direct democracy, so this is not relevant to this discussion.

abernard1 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't know. Is it irrelevant?

Is it interesting that all these "democracies" around the world have persistent speech bans? When someone says something they don't like?

I seem to have a recollection of flipping through HN for a decade or so and people talking about all the meanie-pants who want people to be able to speak freely, even if it hurts people's feelings and might not be endorsed by the elected government.

abernard1 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Democracy is a broad term describing all forms of government where power is granted by the people

No. It's not. I encourage you to read the quite enlightening treatment of democracies in the Federalist Papers. And Greece's government was nothing like Rome. If there is a conflation there, it is one largely created by America.

Which in its own right is interesting. What is interesting about the longest-running continuous constitutional government in history (America)?

hamper653 2 hours ago | parent [-]

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