Tariffs on Chips

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

In Canada this gets even more confusing.

The country is a "constitutional monarchy" even though we didn't have an independent constitution until the 1980s and the monarchy's role is totally symbolic at this point. "Parliamentary democracy" is a much more apt description for Canada's government. Occasionally one may need to trot out "constitutional monarchy" if they're trying to explain the role of the governor general or other historical oddities in our system.

[Jamiet99uk]

In Canada this gets even more confusing.

The country is a "constitutional monarchy" even though we didn't have an independent constitution until the 1980s and the monarchy's role is totally symbolic at this point. "Parliamentary democracy" is a much more apt description for Canada's government. Occasionally one may need to trot out "constitutional monarchy" if they're trying to explain the role of the governor general or other historical oddities in our system.

You've had a constitution since 1867, it just didn't contain anything resembling a Bill of Rights until 1982.

[CaptainFritz28]

What you call "semantic word play crap" is, at least here, the precise use of terms to accurately reflect their meaning. Democracy is a rule by the majority. It has, in the last, oh, about 100 or so years, had its original definition played with by those who want it to seem more favorable and has been skewed in most people's minds to mean any sort of representation in government

For the last few thousand years or so democracy has meant rule by the people. Demos meaning the people, kratia meaning power/rule. The question of whether or not a country is a democracy is simply one of whether or not political power is granted by the people. In the US it clearly is. I'm not sure where your confusion regarding this comes from.

'Democracy' and 'Republic' do, in fact, mean different things

As someone who has lived in a democracy that is not a republic for my entire life I assure you I'm aware of this . A republic is a flawed democracy typically born of the frustrations of left wing malcontents. Humanity's efforts to find a type of democracy without flaws has thus far proved unsuccessful.

Also... I'm curious where you get the notion that it's an American thing to say that America isn't a democracy.

Because literally the only people I have ever heard doing so are certain types of American right wingers, and it is a fashion that seems to have grown out of nowhere over the last decade or so. America is a democracy, is very obviously a democracy, and that is using the definition of democracy that has been pretty constant since before Jesus. You could argue that to be a pure democracy then Congress or Parliament or whatever should be made up of people drawn by lottery from the population and all major decisions put to referendum, but that is typically only a topic of historians. That form of democracy was also flawed, which is presumably why it didn't last.

After a bit more research, I think I found my mistake. I was referring here to a direct democracy, rather than what people usually mean when they say democracy, which is representative democracy (which is totally different, despite the similarity in names).

The United States falls best under the category of a Republic, still, but it can be defined pretty well using the term representative democracy. It certainly doesn't fall under the definition of a direct democracy, which, from said research, was the common use of the word democracy back in the late 1700s - early 1800s (see, for example, the federalist papers and their apparent disdain for democracy as a system of government). One definition that corroborates this is Webster's 1828 dictionary, which defines Republic as follows:

A commonwealth; a state in which the exercise of the sovereign power is lodged in representatives elected by the people. In modern usage, it differs from a democracy or democratic state, in which the people exercise the powers of sovereignty in person. Yet the democracies of Greece are often called republics.

Also, interestingly enough, I found a U.S. Army training manual from 1928 which is strongly against democracy, and which obviously is referring to direct democracy.

Democracy:
A government of the masses.
Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of " direct " expression. Results in mobocracy.
Attitude toward property is communistic — negating property rights.
Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate; whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.

Turning to a non-American source, from Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary:

Democracy
One of the three forms of government; that in which the sovereign power is neither lodged in one man, nor in the nobles, but in the collective body of the people.

Interestingly, from the same dictionary, here is the definition of Republic:

Commonwealth; state in which the power is lodged in more than one.

Interesting to see these definitions, as it shows how the use of democracy and republic have shifted in common use.

So, then, I would hold that it is accurate to refer to the United States as a representative democracy, being a more recent term made to describe governments such as ours, but it is ambiguous to simply refer to us as a democracy, as one gets mixed up in the historical use and meaning of that term.

[Octavious]

It's an interesting and well expressed answer, although I can honestly say that I've never met a single person who has ever got mixed up over the use of the word diplomacy