Although most liberals don't know it, that is the phrase's actual Machiavellian meaning to the radical and authoritarian members of their own party.

What they should be saying is The Republic.

The founding fathers were very critical of democracy, and they have many quotes proving that, just search "Founding Father democracy quotes".

By so many people getting tricked into saying "Our Democracy", bad actors can fool us into giving up our Constitutional rights as long as enough people are uneducated enough and/or corrupt enough to go along with it. The United States of America, a constitutional Republic, is a democratic system, but not a democracy.

Critical Theory, postmodernism, intersectionality, deconstructionism, and various other Leftist ideologies made academia very confused, the effects of which then spread out from there and made the world incongruent because corporatists believed merging with Communist China made the most sense. China's decision to lie about the virus determined that belief to be incorrect.

If you want to learn how academics are pushing back against wokeness -- which is a broad spectrum of malign ideologies, many of which were originally intended to make the West fall apart enabling Communism to take over (Yuri Bezmenov was right) -- please go to newdiscourses.com to learn more.

Also read The Naked Communist by W. Cleon Skousen, The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt and Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James A. Lindsay to make yourself "Useful Idiot" proof which in this era is much needed.