Yes, Guest,Tammy, you do have to use your common sense when trying to understand what a word means when it is used in a political context, rather than taking it at face value. Otherwise, you might end up thinking, for example, that the old "Popular and Democratic Republic of Algeria" was indeed popular and democratic; that the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) was indeed democratic; or that Saddam Hussein's Baath Party actually believed in "Wahda, Huria wa Ishtirakia" (Unity, Freedom and Socialism).

I would have thought that any understanding of history or politics would be based on this premise.