Rand Paul tells Hugh Hewitt: "We are not a democracy"

The "We are not a democracy, we are a constitutional republic" line is a long standing canard that is being repeated a lot lately. Here's my view.

The idea that the term "democracy" can only be applied to an ancient Athens-type direct democracy is arbitrary and preposterous. Why? Calling a constitutional democratic republic a democracy is a crisp and accurate description. Get over it. Who made these people arbiters of language?

Plus the male land owners of ancient Athens essentially acted as representatives of the rest of the community, so even the Athenian government wasn't as "strict" and "direct" as potentially could have been the case.

I agree with the argument of the Founder's that democracy has its dangers and am against the direct election of Senators. But that doesn't mean a representative democracy can't be called a democracy! Let's quit with the totally arbitrary nonsense.

Also, Hugh Hewitt explains his hard opposition to Representative Ron Paul's foreign policy positions and lets Senator Rand Paul respond to his multiple concerns. Rand Paul thinks there should be a debate on many of these issues and sees himself in the middle of the debates. Hewitt recommends reading The Triple Agent: The al-Qaeda Mole that Infiltrated the CIA by John Warrick and The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9-11 by Lawrence Wright.