Wow, you've dug up an old one, but I'm game

Unfortunately, things are not as simplistic as you've portrayed them. You've drawn a false dichotomy between a democracy and a republic.

Surely you can see that the USA (as well as most other western countries) has a democratic-republic? As you've shown, the USA has representatives for different regions of the country, but how did those representatives come into power? They came into power by the democratic actions of the people.

You cannot compare the extreme version of democracy (the people vote on everything) without also comparing the extreme version of a republic (the people are represented in all things, even the selection of their representatives). There are forms of republics that are non-democratic, we just don't think of them very much because they are foreign to the American way (think of a poly-archic dictatorship, one guy and his goons 'representing' the people but the people have no say in whether they keep their office).

This is all I meant by "political democracy": A "political democracy" is a society where the will of the majority is recognized in at least some area of life. Compared to a 'pure' democracy, a democratic-republic is not a different animal at all, just more specialized. A democratic-republic is a limited democracy in that the people don't get to vote on all (or even most) things. In the USA, these limits mean that the people are really only voting for representatives and for referendum style voting. The latter should really point out that the system in the USA is a de-facto hybrid of the the two forms.

If you reread what I called a "political democracy" you'll see that I haven't reinvented what I originally said:

Democracy vests the power to rule within the realm of the majority. The most common method… is by electing representatives.

Notice I didn't say electing representatives was the only form of democracy. Surely there can exist (and has existed throughout history), governments that take on larger democratic roles.

And where does your definition of democracy come from? What's so special about 51%? What about 1/2 (which is less than 51%, btw) or 33% or 95%? Where do you get this magical number from? Certainly, there are democracies that set other arbitrary vote thresholds than 51%.

My point of the original post (and now specifically to you) is that the single word terms "democracy" and "republic" are very ambiguous to start with, and to salt things further, it seems that their definitions have evolved over time. It is no longer even useful to use the terms flippantly without large descriptions of what we mean when we use them (as we have both had to do here in this post). It (marginally) helps to hyphenate words so as to more closely represent your original meaning, but the unhyphenated forms (just 'democracy' or 'republic') are clearly not going to cut it.

For the record, I don't see one form of government as inherently better than the other. I personally believe in non-aggressive, voluntary actions between free individuals. Neither a republic, democracy, nor any combination thereof (democratic-republic) has ever, throughout the course of history, accomplished much of anything without the use of aggressive force. Whether it be a king, a group of "representatives", or the social majority, they are all equally capable of violating my sovereignty. To hell with them all!

Thanks for dropping by David, I appreciate the discourse. I hope you can "hear" the friendly tone I tried to keep in the above comment.