If you thought you’d seen and heard all of the laughable ignorance that can possibly come from Colorado Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, she outdid herself today, and it resulted in one of the most humiliating (and hilarious) self-owns you’ll ever encounter.
For some reason, Boebert decided that she’d offer a lesson in civics to everyone on Twitter, posting this:
“This is your daily reminder that America is a Constitutional Republic, not a Democracy.”
Is Boebert right? Nope.
Yes, we are indeed a Constitutional Republic, but if we weren’t also a democracy, then what would be the point of the republic?
As the Washington Post rightly noted in a 2015 article:
The United States is not a direct democracy, in the sense of a country in which laws (and other government decisions) are made predominantly by majority vote. Some lawmaking is done this way, on the state and local levels, but it’s only a tiny fraction of all lawmaking. But we are a representative democracy, which is a form of democracy.
[…]
To be sure, in addition to being a representative democracy, the United States is also a constitutional democracy, in which courts restrain in some measure the democratic will. And the United States is therefore also a constitutional republic. Indeed, the United States might be labeled a constitutional federal representative democracy. But where one word is used, with all the oversimplification that this necessary entails, “democracy” and “republic” both work. Indeed, since direct democracy — again, a government in which all or most laws are made by direct popular vote — would be impractical given the number and complexity of laws that pretty much any state or national government is expected to enact, it’s unsurprising that the qualifier “representative” would often be omitted. Practically speaking, representative democracy is the only democracy that’s around at any state or national level.
Long story short: The United States is a republic governed by the Constitution, but it’s also a democracy because we elect those who represent us to make the laws by which we’re all governed.
So Boebert is wrong yet again, which isn’t surprising when you consider that she needed multiple attempts before she passed the GED high school equivalency exam.
Twitter users couldn’t resist reminding the Colorado Republican that she had once again managed to prove her own ignorance.