by Brian K. Shoemake
America's founders had a clean slate. They could have set us up with any form of government. In fact there were some who wanted George Washington to be their king but the Founders knew history, and as outlined in their writings a republic was the only form of government that respected individual liberty. The Revolutionary War was fought to free the people from the monarchy of King George III, so the Founders felt that a republic was the only logical form of government for a newly freed people.
America's founders had a clean slate. They could have set us up with any form of government. In fact there were some who wanted George Washington to be their king but the Founders knew history, and as outlined in their writings a republic was the only form of government that respected individual liberty. The Revolutionary War was fought to free the people from the monarchy of King George III, so the Founders felt that a republic was the only logical form of government for a newly freed people.
When Benjamin Franklin emerged from Independence Hall at the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18, 1787, a woman asked him, “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Mr. Franklin replied, “A republic, madam – if you can keep it.”
The founders contempt for democracy was clear. Based on their knowledge of the early Greek city states democracy created some of the most unbelievable excesses of government imaginable. In every case they ended up with mob rule, then anarchy, and then tyranny under an oligarchy.
Unfortunately, today many Americans believe that the United States was founded as a democracy. Or they believe that republic and democracy are simply interchangeable terms. Nothing could be further from the truth. A democracy is a symptom of a faltering or failing republic. They are dissimilar variants of governance, and one should never be mistaken for the other lest we fall victim to schemes by other than honorable power seeking politicians who would attempt to usher the people from a free republic into a democracy which historically, as evidenced by the early Greek city states always ended in anarchy, and finally oligarchy or monarchy.
In it's purest form, democracy is the rule of the majority where the individual or any minority group of individuals holds no power against the rule of the majority. There is no respect for individual rights, and there are no restrictions on the power of the majority. A Constitution and Bill of Rights such as ours, cannot exist in a democracy because individual rights do not exist. There are no checks and balances and no laws to protect the minority against the tyranny of the majority.
I've often heard it described in this way: "A democracy is 3 wolves and a sheep deciding on what to eat for dinner." A simplistic but accurate analogy of a pure democracy or "mob rule". The Founders called it "Mobocracy" and they realized it was counter to the objectives of the Revolutionary War, and completely repugnant to a free society.
In a mob rule scenario or pure democracy as described above, the sheep would be the main course at his own last supper. However, in a Constitutional Republic the majority is constrained by the constitution and the rule of law, and the sheep would be entitled to "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," as outlined in the documents of freedom. Whether it's a vote by 3 or 3000 they would not have the authority to eat the sheep under a republic, the rule of law, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution.
True democracies are rare and short-lived due to the lack of individual rights, and their propensity to lead to anarchy, rendering them vulnerable to power seeking politicians who under the guise of saving the country will lead the people into an oligarchy, or monarchy, where there is a single person such as a king or emperor, or a small group of elites who run the government under some form of communism, socialism, or a religious theocracy like those in the middle east.
In The Federalist Papers Essay #10, James Madison wrote the following: "Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.."
Samuel Adams wrote: "Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself."
Alexander Hamilton, in a speech urging ratification of the Constitution in New York on June 21, 1788 wrote the following regarding democracy in a free nation:
"It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity."
It's clear that Alexander Hamilton agreed wholeheartedly with James Madison in Federalist #10. And it's also very clear that the Founding Fathers were keenly aware of the pitfalls of a democratic form of government. That it provided no protections for the individual, that it was one step from anarchy and tyranny, and that it could never support a constitution or a Bill of Rights such as the one our free republic was founded on.
Scoundrels will discredit the Constitution and will attempt to convince the people that they live in a democracy because it serves their overall objective of leading the population under false hope into a dictatorship under an oligarchy or a monarchy.
The uninformed will use the terms republic and democracy interchangeably because democracy has so often been mis-characterized as a kind, fair, humanitarian alternative to the rule of law which has falsely been portrayed as harsh, unforgiving, inhuman, and unkind.
The Founders had it right. Based on human history, they knew that democracy would be the death of freedom, so they clearly and intentionally forbade us from living under such an unstable and unjust form of government.
Most Americans would be surprised to know that the word "democracy" never appears in the Constitution, the Unanimous Declaration, or the Bill of Rights..Democracy does not belong in a free nation or in the documents of freedom.
Nor does the word democracy appear a single time in the Pledge of Allegiance:
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
There is no debate. The United States of America is not a democracy. It was founded as a free republic and the concept of a republican form of governance is enshrined in the documents of freedom. It is in no way, nor was it ever intended to be a democracy. Those who characterize it as such are either uninformed or they are intentionally misleading the people down a path to suit their own political ends, which the Founders never intended..
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