On Democracy and Republics

Republican Caucus-Goers Will Destroy America « Submitted to a Candid World:

As we’ve explained before, the incompatibility of “republicanism” with “democracy” is a view that Glenn Beck’s inculcated into his viewers, for some such reason, probably to equate the Democratic Party with some desire for the chaos of direct democracy, directly applied. I’ve even gotten comments about this site’s subtitle, which, I was told, indicates a subversive desire to build democracy in a constitutional republic like America. How dare I! Apparently the Tocqueville reference is lost on some. To set the record straight, in modern parlance, even in political science (cf. Arend-effing-Lijphart), a democratic republic may appropriately be described in shorthand as a democracy, or as a republic. “Democracy,” as a term of art meaning only direct democracy à la Athens, is archaic, but the kind of usage you’d expect from the unserious historical fanboys populating the populist right.