The text of Federalist 10 shows that this is not a useful distinction in our contemporary context. Madison defines the "republican principle" as majority rule, and further defines "pure democracy" as direct government by an assembly of the citizen body, i.e. Ancient Athenian Democracy, something which does not exist at any scale in the contemporary world. A republic, as Madison defines it, is one in which the citizen body elects representatives, who then carry on the work of government. In modern parlance we call this a representative democracy. Further, Madison emphasizes the vital importance of majority rule in a republic as a guard against faction, so much so that he call majority rule the "republican principle" as noted above.The bottomline is that the essential features of what Madison calls a "republic" is what the contemporary world calls a "democracy" or more specifically a "representative democracy". Insisting on calling American government a republic and not a democracy, when Madison's definition matches what we think of as a representative democracy, just obfuscates what's being discussed.
throwawaycities|2 years ago
I’m not insisting, the US Constitution is the law of the land and establishes a Republican form of Government. The author(s) and advocates of the Constitution were very clear in their intent and rationale for creating a Republic and not a Democracy.
Sure words evolve but calling the US a democracy removes all meaning of the word and form of government - its not clear why anyone would even use Democracy to describe the US besides erroneously thinking elected Representatives relates to Democracy because their is a vote of some kind. Contemporary usage or not unless the Constitution is changed I’ll defer to the law of the land which expressly establishes a Republican form of government.