I wish I had $100 for every time I heard some uneducated Trump supporter tell me this.

A democracy is a system where governmental power is derived directly from the will of the majority. A constitutional republic is a specific type of representative democracy where the people elect officials to govern, but those officials are strictly limited by a supreme, written constitution designed to protect minority rights from majority rule.

I remember a conservative friend who lived in Hawaii who complained that the native people objected to a project directed from Washington to build something at the top of one of their volcanoes, on the basis that this was their holy land.  My friend asked, “Doesn’t the majority rule?”

“Not necessarily.” Trying to make my point in the simplest way possible, I explained, “People have rights. My neighbors like me, but imagine that they didn’t, and 20 of them, a 20:1 majority, wanted to come in here and beat me to death. I have a right not to murdered. When you think about it, we’re lucky not to live in a country where ‘the majority rules.’”

“Oh. I guess you’re right,” my friend said.

Democracy v. Constitutional Republic