A few weeks ago a friend of mine made a post on FB. One of her friends, a conservative, commented on it. As they bantered back and forth, the conservative posted - 'The US is not a democracy it is a constitutional republic!' I had to step in at the point and advise him that the U.S., while it is a republic with a constitution, it is has a representative democratic system of government. I provided examples of "constitutional republics" such as North Korea, Nazi Germany, et al.
My comment isn't meant to debate forms of government but rather the fact that a person who I assume, considers himself a patriotic republican who believes in electing his representatives, seriously argued in public that the U.S. was not a democracy. He wasn't trying to debate the finer points of how we may no longer be a democracy or how it's slipping away but that we NEVER were a democracy. I asked myself at that moment, what kind of psychological trickery/propaganda has been employed in this country to get an average citizen to change their earlier belief that the U.S. was a "beacon of democracy" to "we never were a democracy?"
I know I've heard in some right wing media the words "constitutional republic" but are they or another entity actively working to get a segment of the American population to cede our democratic institutions, in large part by convincing we never were a democracy?