Conservatives love to argue that the US is a republic, not a democracy. Fine! Let's be a democracy instead!
Murray Bookchin on the distinction: "A face-to-face relationship between active citizens for the purpose of arriving at a consensus is alien to republican systems of government. 1/
"A democracy is participatory; a republic, representative. The first involves the exercise of power directly by the people; the second, its delegation to selected surrogates, who then reconstitute the political realm that initially existed at the base of the *koinonia* into 2/
"a distinctly separate and usually professional power at its summit. Republics are beyond the immediate reach of popular control; democracies are not even confronted by the issue of the displacement of power." 3/3
Murray Bookchin, "From Urbanization to Cities" www.akpress.org/fromurbaniza...
