[Loveofwisdom]

The U.S is a republic with democratic values. A republic in a sense that people have to be 18 to votes, and the people do not decide, let's say, to go to war with simple or absolute majority votes. Rather it is the president that can engage in war and congress has the power to formally declare war. The U.S is a country of laws and not of men, the constitution is the supreme ruler of the land.

Although we do have democratic or classical liberal values. Such as free markets, the right to votes, and those rights guarantees in the Constitution, i.e, the 10 amendment.

Real democracy do not work. It is wolves voting to eat the lamb. It is tyranny of the majority.

The U.S is a mixed system, I believe it also has aristocratic values.

[Negotiator]

How exactly does this thread manage to shift from "the USA is not a democracy" to "the income tax is unconstitutional" in just a couple postings ? Those two things have nothing to do with each other ...

Taxes are inevitable. Any human society will necessarily demand you to provide for it. This is true for any social unit, even familys, even if those usually wont demand money. Larger units such as states have a massive amount of expenses and will thus tax you for these. While I'm not sure if the USA still does anything else, I'm fairly certain they still have a military to pay for. I would guess streets arent privatized over there as well, yet. And privatizing the social state will never work completely, either.

And if the income tax is constitutional or not certainly is in no way related to the question if the USA is a democracy.

According to Wikipedia, the definition of republic is just "not a monarchy and not a dictatorship", so yeah, obviously the USA is a republic.

Ethics have nothing to do with the law [...]

I'm fairly certain you didnt actually wanted to write that ...

The US is a plutocracy, not a constitutional republic.

I disagree. Purely from its construction the USA is a weak and outdated, but nevertheless legitimate parlamentary democracy. It ACTS like a plutocracy because:

(a) a modern democracy is controlled by a parlament that is voted for by the general public
(b) the general public is massively influenced by the media
(c) the parlament is even more massively influenced by the media
(d) the media is mostly owned by the rich and thus supports the rich
(e) thus the parlament most often supports the cause of the rich

Because of (b), there is no effective opposition to (d) or (e)

Because of (c), there is no real alternative to vote for in the first place. Republicans or democrats - you will always get a parlament that mostly supports the interests of the rich. Although the democrats remember on a regular basis what they are actually supposed to do, whenever there are elections, the influence of the media gets too strong at other times that they would really manage a breakthrough.

All in all, this system has proven to be stable over centuries, and very likely wont change in our lifetime, and very likely wont change with anything less but a full scale revolution.