> The primary positions of power within a republic are not inherited, but are attained through democracy, oligarchy or autocracy.
We're a democratic republic. Just saying the US is not a democracy but rather a republic is a woefully uninformed statement. They are not disjoint. Now let's stop parroting this phrase once and for all.
Wikipedia is not a source. It's a spot to see what random people wrote about something. Maybe it's useful to find something, often I find it useful to see what is not said, but citing it is pointless unless you drill down to the edit and cite the editor.
The important point is we protect minority positions via inalienable rights. That is not guaranteed in a pure democracy. It takes a near impossible situation to disarm a minority in the Unites States. It is what sets up apart from traditional democracies. I'm fine with the term Democratic Republic, but if you are concerned about parroting It's not the word republic that gets parroted.
Yes, I remember when our teachers used to hound this into us. But frankly Wikipedia has been as verifiable as the Encyclopedia Britannica. If you're going to say Wikipedia (the most commonly cited resource) isn't providing a good definition, provide a good source that counters. Your reply has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion at hand.
Also, see [0] (a good source) 1b and the discussion below.
If you're going to act high and mighty, do some background research. No one likes an armchair scholar. And if you're going to be a combative armchair scholar, you better do some actual fact checking.
a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law
Calling it a Democracy without mentioning the more important word misses the point; your original comment:
The idea of a majority having more power than a minority is, as another user puts it "a feature, not a bug".
That is exactly what our Republic protects against. The minority has the same inalienable rights as the majority.
In theory, more of a federal republic whose constituent members are democratic republics than a democratic republic itself. In practice those members are more oligarchic (specifically plutocratic) than democratic, though, but most of the people saying “republic not a democracy” probably don't want to come out and say “federation of plutocracies.”
