• stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I can’t wait for my first chance to ask someone the following:

    “I have three questions: 1. What does ‘Democracy’ mean? 2. What does ‘Republic’ mean? 3. What is your point?”

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      This is something I’m needlessly pedantic about. Democracy and republic mean roughly the same thing under most definitions. Republic tends to mean a country that’s not a monarchy, and democracy tends to mean a place with public input. Nearly every country on Earth outside of absolute monarchies (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Eswatini,etc) is some kind of republic with some level of public input into policy. Everything’s a democratic republic.

      American Republicans get all bent up about trying to explain how they’re structurally different than Democrats even though they’re largely two wings of the same bourgeois party

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Republicanism usually implies that the officials get a sizeable level of autonomy in their decisions once in office, and has no investment in proportional representation.

      • stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Untrue:

        Republic = no monarch or emperor Democracy = a form of choosing those who govern

        This is a very important distinction and you can have either with or without the other. I think that Republicans really want to say that your vote doesn’t matter.