Aaah, I see.
Ok, it's gonna get complicated now. Nonetheless I will try to keep it short and simple. Everyone who doesn't want or need this explanation and just wants to read on about the repugnant fascist Obama, skip this posting.
The writer of this article (sadly a PhD which proves to me once again, that in the US almost everyone can get a PhD...but that's another story...) has some serious faults in his argumentation. His terminology is all screwed up, so to speak.
The basic principles of the typology of states are as follows.
First, you determine, whether it is a "monarchy" or a "republic". In a monarchy, the head of state rules his entire lifetime and/or is in fact a monarch. Everything else is called "republic". Thus, of course, the United States are a republic, but so is China. On the other hand, Japan is a monarchy. You get what I'm hinting at? The words "republic" or "monarchy" don't explain the actual "quality" of the state (democratic, authoritarian, totalitarian,...).
So, secondly, you have to make further distinctions. Has the state a constitution, a written code of law? That means, is it a constitutional or a non-constitutional state. There have been (and may still be) peoples (like the Aborigines in Australia or the Ainu in Japan), who were incorporated into a nation-state and had no written constitution of their own and thus could have been seen as "non-constitutional states" at that point in time, but there currently are no sovereign nations without a written constitution. Every sovereign nation today is a constitutional state. That does not mean, that every system
is in fact constitutional in the sense that a democratic rule of law applies. Take a look at China, where we still have an authoritarian regime on the verge of totalitarianism. Or take a look at Ethiopia or the Democratic Republic of Congo. They may have a constitution, but hardly anyone follows its rules.
Now that we have stated, that the US are a republic and have a constitution, we may say, that the US are a constitutional republic. But so is China. Now, the author of this article furthermore states, that the US are not a democracy. And here his knowledge fails him. Because he has to make further distinctions and you have to know the history and the development of the term "democracy". It's as if I was saying, that you are an animal, because you are not a plant, but at the same time I'm denying you the status of human being, because I don't know the difference between mammals and amphibians. You know what I mean? You have to read the fine print and you have to know the history.
First, he fails to make the distinctions between democracy, authoritarian dictatorship and totalitarian dictatorship (that means to read the fine print).
A democracy means
- the constitution is steadfast (rule of law)
- the organisation of the governmental/governing system is pluralistic (that means the ways to create a political decision are not one-dimensional, but ramified, complex and influenced by many people, for example the voters, the political parties, the non-governmental organisations (like Green Peace, the Catholic church or the NRA for example), and so on)
- the structure of the society is heterogenous/inhomogenous (that means everyone is an individual of his own within the confines of the law through free press, freedom of expression, free choice of religion, consumer freedom, etc.)
- the legitimation of the ruling system is autonomous (that means, that the will of the people is not pre-defined by the government and is not declared "objectively identifiable or knowable", but is complex, multilayered, manifold and is to be expressed by the people, and thus the will of the people constitutes the power in the state)
By this definition, the US may have some deficits (and some of them the author states), but is clearly not just a constitutional republic (like China), but a democracy (unlike China).
Secondly, he fails to recognize the historical development of the term democracy.
Aristotle was one of the first ones to use the word "democracy". He said, that a democracy is a bad form of government. But that was because in his times, democracy meant "mob rule" (what is called "Ochlokratie" by scholars and scientist). And in his times (as far as Aristotle goes), the mob had no idea how to conduct politics. For him, politics should be conducted by noble men (aristocrats, farmers, warriors), not by slaves, foreigners, women, etc. The best form of state was the "Politie", followed by aristocracy and monarchy. He condemned democracy, oligarchy and tyranny. Many intellectuals till the end of the Middle Ages thought that way, until since then certain people (like Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant, Hamilton/Madison/Jay, Tocqueville, Mill, Weber, Sartori, Fraenkel, Luhmann, Habermas, Offe, Young, to this day) or certain events (like the French, the American and the German revolutions or the dictatorships of Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin) proved their theories wrong. At the end of the 19th century, we assumed that a democracy was a good form of government. And at the end of the 20th century, we knew that a democracy was a good form of government.
But when the part of Constitution the author refers to was written, this rethinking had not fully happened yet, because most countries of the world the newly born US despised were monarchies and had not constitutions written by the people. So for the founders of your "Great Nation", it was important to state in the consitution, that the US was a "constitutional republic". Well that had a more ideological meaning than a scholarly or legal one. Legally, the US is a democracy. Scholarly, the US is a democracy. And when the constitution of the US was written, there had been no authoritarian dictatorship in the recent past and no totalitarian dictatorship at all. The "dark ways" of non-democratic and non-monarchic tyranny/dictatorship were unknown to this people. Thus the term "constitutional republic".
The article is overly not very scholarly, I may add. For example, the author uses frequently the term "mobocracy". Well, that's a colloquial term and has no business being in a scholarly/scientifical article, essay or treatise. The correct term for what he means would probably be anarchistic-democratic Ochlokratie (anarchistisch-demokratische Pöbelherrschaft), not "mobocracy". And saying, that the US are on their way to becoming a anarchy-like mobocracy is a gross exaggeration. There is however a tendency (already under Nixon and especially under George W. Bush) towards authoritarian democracy. But that seems to be en vogue at the moment, as other countries like Italy experience the same thing.
