To which I say, we can, as a nation, walk and chew gum at the same time.
Dan Smoot may claim that democracies degenerate into dictatorships, but most have not. The degeneration of democracy is caused by people who have dictatorial ambitions seizing power and being at first autocratic then moving all the way up to being totalitarian. They get to be dictators by not being beholden to the people and not having elections.
The underlying premise for our democracy was talked about in our Declaration of Independence. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED."
Later they worked out the details of our, to be democracy, and decided that it should take the form of a democratic constitutional-republic. A democratic-republic, (even though it was limited at the time to being just free white males who could vote, to our founders this was "the people"), required that our officials be elected in a vote of the people (limited as it was). We refer to our elected officials as being our representatives, another indicator that we are a democracy.
Our republic provides that the people we elect by voting be persons with leadership qualities, who will work to maintain the people's life, liberty and their pursuit of happiness, and show a willingness to arrive, with other elected officials, governmental action that is for the public good. Representatives once elected operate without the direct participation in law making of people. (Representative yes, but leader based as well) So we are a republic where the officials are elected by vote, who are beholden to the people. And they can only stay as government officials by periodically requesting for the people's consent. In other words, they are elected again into office... which is a democracy.
We are a democratic constitutional republic. Our constitution until the amendments was mainly a description of how our government was to function. One of our founding fathers, George Mason, refused to sign the 1787 Constitution because it lacked a bill of rights. He, along with Jefferson, had made a bill of rights that was incorporated into the body of the Virginia constitution, which he wanted to include in the body of the US Constitution. Instead, Mason's bill of rights was included immediately after the constitution's ratification, in its first 10 amendment to the Constitution, what we call the Bill of Rights.
In the Bill of Rights is the first place where property is mentioned. It is mentioned in the 5th Amendment, and it is only mentioned as an assumption that private property exists and should not be taken away from an individual without due process. It is not an overarching philosophy of the Constitution. It is more of an assumption of liberty. To be free we should be allowed to have stuff and that stuff shouldn't be taken away by the government without there being a good reason, a reason either adjudicated in a court proceeding or by some other process acceptable to reasonable men.
Democracy does have the problem of being manipulated with propaganda and populist demagoguery by those with dictatorial ambitions. Because of this we really need to harden our democracy from these particular dangers. The next Congress and President should make changes to the law or even to the Constitution to outlaw the United States from becoming a dictatorship. Our Constitution sort of does this, but the strong push towards authoritarianism seen rise around the globe tells us we need to harden traditions and norms into actual law and required procedures. And we need to keep power from consolidating into the hands of one person or a very small group of people. Because of the existence of mind altering propaganda we may need to look at speech designed to deceive or confuse the electorate.
One piece of broken logic of Dan Smoot is his stated "tyranny of the people." We have laws against the tyranny of the people, that being our Constitution and the Bill of Rights in particular. We return to our unalienable rights of life, liberty etc. By its very notion, true consent of the people can't be tyranny. It may be unconscionable, but not tyranny. The responsibility for adverse action by the people against their own liberty lays with those who manipulate the masses for their own authoritarian, non-democratic ends.
So, we are a constitutional republic don't you know. Just one where government officials, or better yet the representatives of the people, are chosen through elections with the consent of the people, ie. a democracy.