Democracy is supposed to make people hate the people that those other idiot’s elected, instead of the king who was just born into the job. In that respect it works. Otherwise, I prefer it to the alternatives, so it works better than the alternatives. But ‘works’ in the sense of a panacea, I’m just not seeing that.
I realize you probably got that out of a dictionary but that’s an incorrect definition of republic.
Succinctly a republic is where you elect people who will work in your best interest as opposed to a democracy where you personally have to vote on everything.
most people call this Representative Democracy which is like calling a Television an LCD Flatscreen electronically transmitted image de-scrambler.
That’s what the greeks were thinking when talking about Democracy and Republic their definitions influenced later French governments which, in turn influenced us.
The way I see it populism is like nuclear physics, you balance great rewards (freedoms and great lifestyles for many along with great advances in medicine and technology) and you accept the risk that sometime it may blow up and wipe out half the world.
Personally I’m fine with flirting with danger for rewards like that and I think most people are but the day it blows up everyone’s right fucked.
Churchill nailed this one on the head. He was often wrong in his long political career, but this, spotting Hitler as outrageously dangerous early on and disappointedly and proudly stepping down when defeated because democracy was more important to him than winning were his up sides. The 10 year plan, Gallipoli his dislike of Ghandi were some of his stupider policies.
That might have been the meaning in ancient Greece, but it is not longer. What you describe at a Republic is a representative Democracy.
If you search Democracy in Google and start at the top you get:
Democracy is a political form of government in which governing power is derived from the people, by consensus (consensus democracy), by direct referendum (direct democracy), or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy)
de·moc·ra·cy
[dih-mok-ruh-see] Show IPA
–noun, plural -cies.
government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.
a state having such a form of government: The United States and Canada are democracies.
a state of society characterized by formal equality of rights and privileges.