I picked up the "meme" long before the word "meme" entered the vernacular in the sense that I think you are using it. I had the good fortune of attending a Jesuit HS in NYC when grammar was prescriptive rather than descriptive, you took two years of Latin, and studied world religions, and the preciseness of language mattered. Mr. Caruso, my sophomore year History teacher, asked the first day back to school, "Is the United States a democracy?". Like most I said 'Yes'. He then lectured on early U.S., and other types of governments. It was an eye opener for me, and taught me to question my assumptions, and try to be more precise in my language and arguments (logical ones, not emotional ones). My comment about "diluting" comes from people throwing the term about to a point that it becomes meaningless out of context. For a similar commentary, this quote in the Wikipedia entry for a search on "democracy", seems in agreement: " However, the noun "democracy" has, over time, been modified by more than 3,500 adjectives which suggests that it may have types that can elude and elide this duality."

Thanks for the links. I found the first link interesting and then disappointing, since I had worked at a bookstore in NYC in the early 90s that carried a lot of philosophy books, economics books mainly from the Austrian School, and so the mises.org link caught my eye. Ryan McKaken the author of the article basically dismisses the use of "we're a republic and not a democracy" when used as an argument in two cases of what he believes people are thinking. I was pointing out that we are not simply "a democracy", but more precisely constitutional republic, no more, no less.

How do you answer the question, "What type of government does the U.S. have?"

Thank you for that context, even if it mostly relates to your personal experience and back story. I agree that we should be careful how we use words, but I don't think you can easily argue that "democracy" has become meaningless out of context, while also imposing your own idiosyncratic context to claim that the US isn't a democracy.

As to your question, I would say that the U.S. constitution defines (indeed, guarantees) the country as having "a republican form of government" (at the state level, but this is maintained at the federal level), and that the processes and principles that it puts in place, such as representative elections, qualify that system as democratic.