> You still *seem* to be missing his point and the point. "A Republic" 
> is a subset of democracy. People in it, largely, have equal rights to 
> participate in the processes of governance. The protections, in the 

As I understand it, a republic is a form of government where the
people elect the polititions that govern them.

One of the reasons that this is a popular form of democracy is
that a republic doesn't suffer from the communication problems
of a pure democracy. In other words, you need to get a smaller
group of people together to vote in laws.

In the US our elections are staged for the Senate such that only
one third of the senate may be changed every two years. This gives
us a safety margin in the case of sudden and unusual circumstances.

For example, the legislators are now questioning certain laws such
as the Patriot Act that they passed almost without question after
9/11.

There are many other forms of republic other than the US model.

> on circumstance. A barrier to action whose only real (non-spiritual) 
> strength lies in the will of the people to have it upheld and to 
> uphold it. Where those in power wish to take more power to themselves, 

Yes. And this means that the people have to actually participate in
democratic process. They should at least vote. One thing our last
presidential election did was to bring out the voters. I may have
disagreed with the outcome of the election, but I haven't seen this
number of voters in my lifetime.

> Democracy is the subset of anarchy where a majority of people are in 
> broad agreement and agree to formalise their consensus
> A Republic is a Democracy established and maintained by bureaucrats.

If you accept that definition of democracy, then *any* form of
government is a subset of anarchy.

> generally apposite. A libertarian is a person who wants nothing from 
> government except a strong police force to protect her from her 
> slaves.

I've always wondered why people get that impression of libertarionism.
All the libertarians I know would rather just be left alone by
the government. And as I understand it, the basic tenets of
libertarianism give liberty to *everybody*.
-- 
D. Jay Newman           ! Polititions and civilations come and
jay@sprucegrove.com     ! go but the engineers and machinists 
http://enerd.ws/robots/ ! make progress
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