What’s wrong with this passage from Sunday’s New York Times?

“When it comes to nominating presidential candidates, it turns out the world’s foremost democracy is not so purely democratic,” Jeremy W. Peters began in a front-page story.

Really?

“For decades, both major parties have used a somewhat convoluted process for picking their nominees, one that involves ordinary voters in only an indirect way,” he continues.

Get outta town!

“As Americans flock this year to outsider candidates, the kind most hindered by these rules, they are suddenly waking up to this reality,” Mr. Peters adds.

Only if they were sleeping in civics or history class. Or not taught these subjects in the first place.

“And their confusion and anger are adding another volatile element to an election being waged over questions of fairness and equality,” he continues.

Good grief. Where does one begin with such manifest ignorance that has metastasized through the populace, the candidates and the media?

The simple fact of the matter is that the United States is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. And it is representative governance that protects us from the anarchy of pure democracy for which so many apparently pine.

Those who criticize the private party electoral process — rules long established and quite clear — that mimics our governance model indeed are right about it being “undemocratic.” But in their underlying ignorance, they sorely embarrass themselves and cast serious doubt on their fitness for office.

A Republic, Not a Democracy: A Defense of the Electoral College

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(c)2016 The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (Greensburg, Pa.)

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