Here’s your merit badge for pedantry: The word “constitution” (without quotation marks) appears a total of three times in the full document, and it always has the definition “legal system” as in the definition “a set of laws governing a country or state” or “the rules of organization of an organization, society, or other group.” Secondly, they never define the word “republic.” And, even if it were true that a republic was a form of government created by “the people,” it would be a stretch to make the Constitution an expression of their wishes because the document (Article VII) was created by “We the People” (emphasis added) and signed by the president (which means a president other than George Washington) and its amendments all require the assent of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and then the approval of three-fourths of the states to take effect. The fact that I am a United States citizen is irrelevant to whether the United States is a democracy or a republic, it’s up to the government, which is all of us. Now, I love politics, and I love politics of all kinds, but I’m not a constitutional scholar so I’ll just put aside the question of which form of government the United States is and ask instead which one it’s not. Yes, there’s the matter of the Electoral College system which makes me mad as a hornet. (It makes me even madder to think about it, but I’ll save that for another time). But the way I see it, the whole point of the Electoral College system was to prevent any one person from becoming too powerful. George Washington was president for life, so was the president for life. What possible objection could there be to that? Well, there’s this whole concept called democracy. The word “democracy” appears exactly once in the Constitution in the clause that calls for the meeting of the Congress in “the second Monday in December,” but it is not defined, so let’s pretend that this is the only time it’s used. The point, of course, is that democracy is something that you do for yourself, not for someone else. (So why don’t we give “the right to choose the government and the manner in which it will be run” to someone else instead of to the “We the People” who just gave up all of our other rights when we asked them to vote for Washington and Alexander Hamilton? I don’t think that democracy is the only alternative to dictatorship. The founders would probably agree with me. “The power of the President shall be almost absolute” is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. We might have a democracy and yet still have a constitution which requires the President to get the consent of Congress before he can take actions.) But, regardless of any democracy or any constitution or any laws, any government, anywhere, is also a dictatorship and that’s just a fact of life that the government can’t change. Dictatorships can come in the form of nations, states, schools, factories, families, gangs, and businesses. That doesn’t change the fact that any government anywhere is a dictatorship. At any rate, one has to wonder why it’s so important for the people who can’t decide between living in a democracy or a dictatorship to try to convince other people that the United States is a democracy and that Barack Obama is a dictator, when no other country in the history of the world has ever been any of these. There are only two things that could possibly make our country a democracy: We must all be able to vote and then the government must grant us all that power. I don’t see much evidence of either of those things happening in the United States of America. Here are the most up to date data from the most recent Federal Election Commission reports. In this year’s mid-term elections in Virginia, for example, the Democrats got more votes than the Republicans but the Republicans got more congressional seats, thanks to gerrymandering and a number of other legalities that give them an unfair advantage over the Democrats. (These things aren’t in the constitution.) In 2014, there will be a new round of gerrymandering and other election-related laws that make it possible for Republicans to do it all over again in even more fair ways. What’s to stop them from doing the same thing in 2016? What’s to stop them from saying that there were only a few million votes against Romney and that he lost because of a small group of people who didn’t want him to be president but a lot of people didn’t vote and so this one time the people who don’t vote get their way. Meanwhile, every time President Obama steps up to a podium to make a speech about the health care law he’s been working on, you know the one that requires all of us to have health insurance, that’s a real dictator’s talk. He never has anything nice to say about the Republicans. But, in the end, the problem with calling the United States a democracy is that it’s just too simple. There’s really only one way to put it: The United States is a democracy which doesn’t exist. Just think about what I’m saying for a minute. In every other country, there’s a clear demarcation between citizens and non-citizens. In every other country, even if you don’t pay taxes, the state knows exactly what you owe it and doesn’t make it up on the spot and doesn’t start charging interest for your debt. In every other country, there’s no such thing as “citizens without documents” and no such thing as “legal permanent residents.” If you were to start a government of your own, every single one of those people is in it. If the idea of a democracy in which everyone is an equal citizen who owes the government no taxes and has nothing to do with it doesn’t seem like a good idea, you should think about what it would mean to be a non-citizen. If every government has the same rule and the same laws, then the way that it’s organized doesn’t matter. But that means that the constitution would be different for everyone and the United States is the only country in the history of the world that’s done that. Do you think the Germans who lived during the Nazi era really thought that the Nazis were a democracy, too? Do you think the people living in East Germany before the Berlin wall came down believed that they were a part of a democracy? Of course not. But, hey, we’re all smart and we all know how ridiculous this all sounds. It’s a game. The people who get the most votes win. That’s democracy. And all of us who read the paper know that so-called democratic governments have come to this conclusion, too. Just ask Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. The question is, what to do about it? And this is where I have a question of my own for those who believe that there’s any such thing as democracy. What do you want me to do, send a memo to every adult in the United States telling them that the United States is a dictatorship? That’s not going to change a thing. It’s like what’s-his-name said on the television show “House of Cards,” the guy who runs the government. If you don’t have any interest in anything that a democratic government has to say, don’t listen to it, and don’t vote for it. The rest of us are going to make this decision for you. I know that there are people who are working hard to make sure that this country is run in the same way that a democracy is supposed to be. When the people get together and think about the laws and the rules, I think that they’re doing it in the only right way that they can. By the way, just so you know: It’s not up to me. I think that the “We the People” form of government is outdated. But that’s what we’ve got to work with. Not much choice there, but not much choice in just about anything. I can’t see any other way. The only problem is that the “we the people” part is a catch-all term. If you are not a citizen of the United States, then you are not the people and you have no say in our government. No one likes that and no one wants to have to stand in line with other countries before you can have a voice in our government. So, it would be nice if they had another term. I don’t know that you can call it a democracy when so many people don’t have a say in what it does. The thing is, though, the election is over, it’s over. We are already governed. And yet, when the people get together they create rules that they don’t have to follow, rules that they haven’t had to follow for a very long time, and rules which keep their government away from them. I’ll bet that most of the people who are writing these rules just put their clothes on and go back to work like everyone else. But, still, there’s not one of those people who believes that the President should run around getting everything he wants with no opposition. You don’t have to be a dictator to