Pedantic bullshite that fails to understand the general principle that words change what they mean and that what the founders were afraid of and mischaracterizes the history of Rome, Greece, America, and the rest of the world. Idiot Libertarian nonsense.

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Granted, it is rather simplified, and words do change. What I got from it was the basic message that there needs to be a balance between governmental power and individual freedom.
Didn't have time for a more detailed post, and was planning to get to it later.

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As with the vast majority of things the common terminology evolved due to historical happenstance. The short version is that it was based on where people were seated in the French Legislative Assembly of 1791. The royalists sat on the right and the radical republicans sat on the left. It is still a useful distinction if you understand that it is relative rather than absolute and has evolved over time. Arbitrarily rearranging the use of the words in a way that few others use is a rhetorical trick frequently used by libertarians and other ideologues or opportunists seeking to co-opt them.

Right has and continues to be used in the sense of wishing for things to either stay the same as they are now or to return to traditional values in whole or part. Left was and continues to be used in a way that means wanting to experiment with traditional institutions and values in whole or part. The specific policy prescriptions and issues do move and change with time, however. Someone today who wanted a republic where everyone considered to be an adult by age was allowed to vote might be considered on the right politically depending upon his other views whereas in the past it would have been considered a radical democracy. And that is another important point.

When the American founding fathers railed against democracies they meant precisely what we have today, giving everyone the vote. At the time it was unusual and radical to not have a property requirement and of course women and servants were not allowed to vote. They believed in rule by an elite as defined by age, wealth, and property. Additionally then a democracy might specifically mean rule by all the people in a gathering, what might be called a direct democracy today. There are very few such institutions in the world though a few Swiss cantons still practice it and the town hall meetings of some places in New England resemble the original Greek democracies.

Now democracy means any state that uses generally free and fair elections to elect leaders, representatives, or even directly enact some laws or answer policy questions. Republic has to come to mean a specific subset of all democracies, most often a directly elected head of state as in the United States of America (though we technically do not directly elect our president we effectively do 90%+ of the time) or the Republic of France. As opposed to a parliamentary democracy where either the head of state is a figurehead monarch and all the real power lies with the prime minister or else a largely figurehead president (Germany).

All this seems utterly basic to me and it is a wonder that anyone, autodidact or taught by a school system, could possibly get it wrong. But they do and they seem to do so on purpose to mislead people much as the party might have done so in 1984. Redefine the words so they mean something else. "War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength." Democracy becomes a fearful horrible thing foisted off on freedom loving people by the idiot majority and insidious international institutions. Republic comes to mean minimal libertarian government and is also defined as right wing so that anyone who votes for (Gasp!) regulations or social institutions gets labeled leftist or liberal. "The Republicans who don't want to tear down all government but those parts we define as good are no good socialists! Get'em!"

And the actual result is lots of arguments because everyone they can confuse start using words in a different way from everyone else.

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We don't really have a direct democracy, as the Electoral College is still in place. It has happened that the popular and electoral votes have not matched, but it's rare.
And to be fair, the rhetoric comes from both sides.

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