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I think I actually have to object slightly with Jonah on this one. The epistemic definitions of liberal or constitutional democracy are vastly different than their popular usage today. https://thedispatch.com/p/thoughts-on-the-meaning-of-democracy?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=twitter">https://thedispatch.com/p/thought...
While the epistemic definition of liberal democracy or constitutional democracy is, in fact, equal to that of a constitutional republic, neither the terms liberal nor democracy (nor even constitution) are used epistemically in political dialogue.
Thanks to FDR and left-wing statists after him, those we call "liberal" today are social democrats and progressives, hardly committed to reasserting a truly liberal order.
Further, we live in a political atmosphere where partisans on both sides seek to wield majorities as absolute mandates and are clamoring for weakening, if not outrightly abolishing, key elements that create the separation between liberal, constitutional democracy & pure democracy
In fact, our nation is in the midst of a growing crisis of legitimacy as a growing number of Americans view the Electoral College & unequal direct representation in the Senate as tyranny by a minority.
The term democracy may have evolved in its use in the classroom and among intellectuals, but the public understands it to mean what it& #39;s always meant: majoritarian rule.
And when the structures of a republic operate as intended and frustrate majoritarian rule, the public who keeps hearing everyone call out our nation a democracy think that something has gone wrong, that the system has betrayed them in some fundamental way.
So yes, in the classroom and in scholarly essays I might use the phrases liberal and constitutional democracy. But in everyday conversation, I eschew the term democracy and try to reassert the term republic, as Mike Lee did, because there& #39;s far less ambiguity to its meaning.
