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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

The US is a republic, not a democracy. The Executive, Legislature, and Judicial branches form a triumvirate, which is a stable form of government. Their powers are complementary, and consist of numerous checks and balances.

One feature of the system, not a bug, is the protections against the majority riding roughshod over the minority.

> They must have smoked the bad stuff.

They did an incredibly good job. It's still the best Constitution.

I say this while still disagreeing with a lot of the decisions of the Supreme Court.

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> The US is a republic, not a democracy.

At the risk of sounding snarky, this line has become a major eye roller for me. Are there any democracies on Earth, by this definition?

It's a democratic republic in the sense that we have a direct election of leaders and lawmakers. It's a bit pedantic because nowadays people use them interchangeably but we don't really have direct elections over the laws themselves (not at the federal level anyways, some states do allow for direct votes on amendments at the state and local level).

It's a spectrum, but the more weight the popular vote carries, the further towards that end it is.

People today think of the US as one "country" but when its Constitution was written it was much closer to the EU: an alliance and economic free trade and free movement area with basic shared rules.

The vote to create the United States was done by unanimity of Member States not by a popular vote.

Is the EU a "democracy"?

This use of republic is particular to the US. Recently, it has became particular to the Republican Party. Some of it is from the earlier usage, but I suspect it is really to contrast the Republican and Democratic parties.

Athens was.

> The US is a republic, not a democracy.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a republic, not a denocracy.

The US is a republic that notionally is both democratic and federal.

> The Executive, Legislature, and Judicial branches form a triumvirate, which is a stable form of government.

No, they don't, because a tirumvirate consists of three people, and triumvirates are notoriously unstable. (The two ruling Roman triumvirates from which the term is generalized having lasted less than 15 years combined.)

> triumvirates are notoriously unstable

It works for the US. Also the Soviet Union - the Party, the KGB, and the Army. The reason for stability is one can block the other two. The Constitution is full of checks and balances to this end.

> It works for the US.

No, it doesn’t, because, again, the US doesn’t have one.

Republic means not having a monarchy. You can have a democratic monarchy like United Kingdom. Or you can have democratic republic like most of the countries on the planet including the US.

Some people try to distinguish between representative democracy and direct democracy but since the latter is rare, democracy usually just means the former.

Edit: I guess republic is particular from of democracy, plus non-monarch.

Citizens have a huge amount of power within the government, being able to vote in elections and pursue ballot initiatives. How is that not a democracy?

Citizens don’t. Because of two senators per state, people in sparsely populated states have far more power than people living in larger states.

Even within states since people are concentrated in urban areas, it’s easy for the minority to engage in gerrymandering so that the rural population voting power is more than urban voters.

That’s not to mention the fact that even in conservative states, on singular issues like abortion, drug legalization and the right for felons to vote, the population runs to the left of the legislation. When those initiatives are put on the ballot, they win. So the legislators in those states are making it harder for initiatives to get on the ballots.

You can look at states like Texas that are taking more power out of the hands of the city.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4007362-texas-passe...

We don't have ballot initiatives at the federal level. The US is a democratic republic, so it's a bit pedantic, but if you had to classify as one or the other the U.S. is a republic.

Republic means not having a monarch. The US is a representative democracy. So is the United Kingdom, but they are a monarchy.

No, that's not what a republic means. The U.S. is a republic. It is mentioned explicitly in the U.S. Constitution in Article 4, Section 4:

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence."

As mentioned, the definitions of republics and democracies have blurred over the years as people often use them interchangeably. Republics have representatives. Just as the ancient Roman Republic did, with its famous Senate. Pure democracies run on majority rule and direct voting on laws.

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIV-S4-1/AL...']

https://constitution.congress.gov/search/republic

> It's still the best Constitution.

[citation needed]

It has lasted longer than every other constitution for every other country.

Doesn't make it the "best" but on the other hand you can't achieve that kind of longevity by "smoking the bad stuff."

> It has lasted longer than every other constitution for every other country.

No it hasn't. The oldest written national constitution in continuous effect is that of San Marino, from 1600 (unless you count some charters that usually aren't treated that way, like Magna Carta). And plenty of nations survive just fine with traditional rather than integrated written constitutions, which are something of a modern fad, which is why none of the longest continuous constitutional systems have a written constitution in the first place.

I make no claim that a country has to have a written constitution.

Okay, oldest constitution for a country bigger than a football stadium.

Like I said, doesn't make it "best" but clearly has something going for it.

> I make no claim that a country has to have a written constitution.

The claim that the US has the oldest constitution, even with the caveats necessary to exclude older written constitutions, is simply false; countries without single integrated written constitutions still have constitutions, and many of those are much older in continuous operation than the US constitution (or the US).

It’s like 8 times older than the average age of most constitutions. So it has longevity and staying power.

The US is the most prosperous and free'est country ever.

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