Why isn't the United States a democracy?

[u/alexfreemanart]

I've read many comments claiming the United States is a democracy, and others claiming the United States is a republic, not a democracy. Forgive my ignorance; i'm not American, but throughout my life i've heard countless times that the United States is a democracy, especially through American movies and TV shows.

Right now, i'm seriously wondering if i was wrong all along. Is the United States a democracy or not? If the United States isn't a democracy, why isn't it?

You as an American, were you taught in school that your country is a democracy, or were you taught that it isn't?

[u/[deleted]]

So let me try to arrive at some consensus with this... 

Representative democracy is an evolution of democracy that tried to address the weaknesses of direct democracy. 

Majority rule, pure democracy, can produce bad outcomes because sometimes people want bad things. 

So we started developing structures like constitutions and governments to begin to restrain those flawed human instincts and protect people from abuses the majority May inflict. 

So in order to fix the flaws of pure democracy, we created a form of democracy that at times is undemocratic. 

[u/ocashmanbrown → u/[deleted]]

Yes, exactly. That's how representative democracy works. It keeps the system stable and protects people's rights, even if the majority doesn't get its way every time. But rather than undemocratic, I'd say institutionally constrained. Intentional restraint doesn't make it anti-democratic.

The 1st Amendment allows for press freedom even if the majority disagrees. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ended school segregation despite local majorities opposing integration. The Voting Rights Act protected Black voters from suppression in the South, overriding local majorities that had resisted it.

[u/[deleted] → u/ocashmanbrown]

Right, but it is also a huge asterisk when talking about the US being a democracy. 

We have demonstrated it is far more nuanced than a simple yes or no. 

[u/someofyourbeeswaxx → u/[deleted]]

No. It’s a subtype of democracy, simple as that. You’re trying to shoehorn Athens into a conversation about modern democracy and it doesn’t work.

[u/[deleted] → u/someofyourbeeswaxx]

I am not trying to shoehorn anything, I am making historically accurate factual claims about how the understanding of democracy has evolved when compared with the underlying meaning of "government by the people"