You have been duped by a talking point the rightwing has been circulating for years.
The Rightwing tosses around the word "Republic" because on some blog somewhere they read that is was a good argument to use explaining why our nation should ignore the popular will of the people, and allow dumb ass sh*t like the archaic Electoral College continue to allow the minority to exercise tyranny over the majority.
The word "Republic" is so nebulous as to be almost meaningless.
^ That is as nebulous and imprecise as it gets.Republic (noun) - "a country that is governed by a president and politicians elected by the people and where there is no king or queen"
Oxford Dictionary
So many nation-states have called themselves Republics, that the word imparts virtually no information about the structure of government >>
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
People's Republic of China
First French Republic
German Democratic Republic
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Democratic People's Republic of North Korea.
The framers of the Constitution studied the democracy of Athens and the Roman Republic when they were writing their constitution. That was over two centuries ago, and you cannot take those words out of their historic context. Our 21st century government in no tangible way, shape, or form, is a replica of the Roman Republic.
The framers where wealthy, landed white men who believed in Oligarchy. The most radical and democratic were people like Jefferson, but his opinion did not hold sway and win the day. Oligarchy is what most of the framers intended to establish. The House of Representatives was their only nod to a quasi democratic institution. Given the historical context, is was well understood that a Democracy requires an educated and informed citizenry - which was not the case in 1789.
The country has changed by leaps and bounds since 1789. Free public education is universal, literacy is universal, access to information is ubiquitous, and we still have a free press. That is more than enough to form the basis of a representative democracy.
The framers of the constitution purposefully recognized the legal right to modify and amend the constitution as future generations saw fit for their place and time in the arc of history. We have repeatedly modified the constitution since 1789 to make our government a true representative democracy by any plausible definition of the word.
Some years ago, a wingnut in some opinion column floated this trial balloon of using the word "Republic" as an excuse for defending the tyranny of the minority. You just got duped into parroting that talking point.
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