Did the framers of the U.S. Constitution set up the country’s government to be a republic or a democracy? Some folks have surprisingly strong opinions on this question, often with good reason. Yet the words republic and democracy have very similar meanings, so what’s the big deal? The answer has to do with the ways that the historic founders of the USA thought about history—specifically the histories of the democracies and republics that came before them. To make things even more confusing, the Constitution’s authors got some of their history secondhand, through one of their favorite political philosophers, Charles Montesquieu (1689–1755), who had some very specific—and surprising—things to say about republics and democracies. Check out this episode to learn why many people of the past would find many of our present-day political debates on this topic to be especially odd.

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