The word democracy means “majority rule.” What does this mean in practical terms? Well, fundamentally it means that when faced with a decision that results in “rule” the majority of people decide.
Let's quickly imagine what a majority ruling could mean in reality. Think about various scenarios: race demographics, companies that employ us, folks on a camping trip, etc. And now imagine that for each situation there are no guiding principles but rather decisions voted upon by a group of available contemporaries and whatever that majority looks like in that moment decides what the current rule looks like. Sounds sort of wild-west doesn't it?
Now, you might imagine that a majority rule scenario was how we were founded, correct? But rather than voting on a moment requiring a ruling, we voted on a constitution that established a basis for future rulings. In that case you would be mostly right, except for the fact that we didn't vote as a country of people in an opportunity. A number of colonial leaders voted or rather drafted the Constitution which defined a new way of governing, not by majority rule but by a rule of law that outlined a limited form of government with a very particular purpose.So if Democracy means majority rule, how did the phrase get re-purposed to mean a select group of people rule? Is it still a Democracy if the majority does not rule but there is another guiding rule of law that is simply implemented by a representative minority?
Is America a democracy? Well, I believe as a philosophy, we could say that we are philosophically democratic. But in reality, we are ruled by established law and to this day we continue to refer to the Constitution as our basis for law and legal rulings.
To offer a little Democracy backstory, in ancient Rome if you were a citizen, you were allowed to vote in the Assembly (think about how big those meetings must have been!) This was a more true form of Democracy. In an American form of government you cannot vote with regard to Congressional laws unless you are a seated senator (and even there you will find certain exceptions.) So, clearly America may be philosophically a Democracy, but in reality and by all practical means, we are not a Democracy by that definition of that form of government.
By the Middle Ages, Democracies began to take a different form. The groups being allowed to vote became smaller and more representative rather than inviting citizens to vote. Some might blame the degree of education or lack thereof during the Middle Ages on the reason voting power became representative. Said another way, Democracies simply began to morph into an elite group of empowered individuals who ruled in their delegated minority and simply called themselves representatives of the majority. It is as if by the Middle Ages the notion of Democracy almost fully transitioned from a true form of citizen governance to simply a philosophy of words. In this sense of the definition for Democracy, America does partly fit this form of rule. But we still have a guiding Constitution which forms a basis for rule, which again challenges the notion of America having a Democratic form of government.
Finally America was established and we “Declared” and “Constituted” our rights and rule of law. Interestingly enough there is not a single mention of democracy in either of these documents. I find it interesting that while there were documented (not in these documents) various philosophies of Democracy, that our form of government is not described as a Democracy.
In the case that you might be thinking I am drawing up a straw man, I am not. You might want to ask me, “Well, just because they didn't say it, doesn't mean it isn't true, right?” Let's take an example of that:
If you were to say, “Steve is a fighter,” and your basis for this is founded in the probability that Steve didn't mention that he isn't a fighter, well, you might be right, but you might as well be wrong. Now, what if I did explicitly say, “Steve is a lover.” In that case would it not be more accurate to say, “Steve is a lover, not a fighter.” It would be more accurate yet to say “Steve is surely a lover, but he might also be a fighter,” as long as the two things aren't contradictory.
Equally as interesting, it is explicitly documented in the constitution under Article 4, Section 4, that “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government...”
In the blog article for What is a Republic you can decide if it is possible for America to be both a Republic as well as a Democracy and if these ideas are contradictory.
Here is where you scratch your head. If you have been asked or asked people “What form of government does America have?” and the popular answer to date has been, “We are a democracy” then you might want to examine why the notion of a Democracy is now more popular that the answer “We are a Republic.”
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