Board Thread:Community Discussions/@comment-6218837-20150429175435/@comment-4964341-20150501101322

GuacamoleCCXR wrote: Keplers wrote: GuacamoleCCXR wrote: Keplers wrote: GuacamoleCCXR wrote: So, in general I did think this was a good post, but I'd like to point out that there's a little bit of confusion between form of rule and system of government. Democracy, for example, is a way to legitimise a govermental structure by sourcing its power from the people. It does not describe just what that structure is, hence, democracy is only a form of rule. A republic, on the other hand, is a system of government, because it actually entails a certain configuration of political bodies. This is why saying "democratic republic" isn't a redundancy, as only by using both terms you will accurately describe the political situation in, say, Germany.

Overall, I felt like OP mashed the two categories together, but it's not really a large issue. Actually, a democracy is also a form of government in which all the citizenry vote on every issue (essentially what we have now on this wiki, and not actually seen since, like, ancient Greek city-states). A republic is a form of government in which elected officials vote on the legislature for the people whom they represent (i.e. a United States Senator for the people who elected him). I don't think he meant to use "democracy" in the polis-sense of the word, though. It wouldn't work anyway because I don't think there's any men older than 30 on this wiki who could discuss and vote on issues. :p All context points to that being exactly what he meant. Your attempt at humor is noted but unappreciated at the moment. Context is one thing, semantics is another. If he did in fact mean polis-democracy, then he should have said so, because I'm pretty sure that any 21st century definition of that word does not primarily signify that.

Note that while I criticised how he expressed his points and pointed out possible misconceptions, I never said that the actual message was false. Fair enough points. It just seemed obvious to me.