[SFJulie]

euh... Don't confuse Republics and democracies.

Letting the people vote is a not an equivalent statement to let the people rules.

Condorcet has shown how voting systems can be unfair, and a quick look to every elected assembly from the G20 is showing a clear non representation of the demography of the people in the assemblies.

We do not live under democratic systems, neither was USA in 1861. These are Republics. And Plato was firmly convinced that democracies were bad. After all he was sponsored by the wealthy ones that hated the people to have power.

[mseebach]

Thats a fairly irrelevant objection. Both the NYT, Huxley and the GP are referring to the system still in place in the US and Europe today (and so were Churchill in the "worst system, except for all the others that has been tried" quote), whether correctly identified as 'democracy' or not.

[curried_haskell]

Republic and democracy are not mutually exclusive... I think you are confused if you think they are. According to Wikipedia, "It is a constitutional republic and representative democracy."

Perhaps it's less of a democracy then we think it is, but it's not wrong to call the US a democracy.

[urza]

Fair point, you are of course right.

However I used the word in the way how it is used nowadays by public. I am from Europe and people here will tell you we have "democracies".

[eli_gottlieb]

I mean, of course we don't actually have democracy. That's the problem.