Posted on 09/29/2015 5:01:57 PM PDT by cotton1706
Most Of Us Have A Flawed Understanding Of Our Government, History Scholar Says
Ignorance can be problematic for a society that depends upon its citizenry, and depending on citizens is just what the structure of government in the United States does.However, there’s a large asterisk when it comes to understanding our governance, says history scholar Will Butts.
“The United States is not now, and never has been a democracy,” he says. “From its very beginnings, the United States has had a republican form of government. But the words republic and republican, in their governmental context, have become unfamiliar, where they were once commonly used and well understood.”
Butts is author of “This Republic: Illuminating Republican Government” (ThisRepublic.net), which addresses the differences between a democracy and a republic. He explores the subject via the extensive writings of founding father and second president of the United States, John Adams.
“If everyone made decisions about everything, and if mob rule held sway in our policies, then we would have a democracy, but that is not our system,” Butts says. “The law is the ultimate authority in our country, not mob rule. And laws are made by bodies called legislatures, whose members are elected by the people. This is republican government, not democracy.”
Butts reviews the facets of our republic and why it’s important to understand the true character of our system.
• John Adams wrote: “The preservation of liberty depends on the intellectual and moral character of the people. As long as knowledge and virtue are diffused generally among the body of a nation, it is impossible they should be enslaved.”
“Founding fathers like Adams thought for us all, and thought well into the future, using the collected experience of the past,” Butts says.
(Excerpt) Read more at palmbeachlwp.com ...
An Idiocracy?
it is definitely not a republic. Nor is it a democracy. It is a plutocracy. There is one set of laws for the hoi polloi and another set for the anointed. Old men and women in robes, a King in the oval office and a bought and paid for aristocracy in Congress along with a MSM that would make Goebells blush has rendered the Republic inoperable.
Universal Suffrage has caused us to devolve into a de facto democracy.
The Founders didn’t put a right to vote into the Constitution for a reason.
You win
I think that it is about to become a democracy, the silent majority is about to become the mob...
A degenerocracy on its way to despotism.
Why do you think so many of us voters, Legal American Voters are running this election?
This Country is a Republic, it is founded on God..and it’s FOR the people, BY the people, OF the people...
Right now we have a half wit muslim running this country, but it won’t last long...
This is The People’s Election and WE are deciding who is and who isn’t...and as you can tell, we don’t back down, and the p.c.b.s. that have been shoved down our throats is over...as is the GOPee, the lying media and talking heads...and we are backing those that are cleaning out the smell in Washington D.C. that the GOPee has shoved down our throats for years....
Semantics.
The structure of our government is as a republic. The means of achieving a republican form of government is via representative democracy (the popular vote). Some states (24 of them) have direct democracy via initiative, referendum and recall where citizens can directly implement their collective legislative will. Some municipalities have direct democracy via the Town Meeting.
Don’t forget the wheelbarrows filled with checks that Ted mentioned. Ted told us that we have no voice. Congress puts on one face for us “hicks and rubes”, but really gets down to business with K street lobbyists. We “hicks and rubes” are deluding ourselves. We have no voice, no power. Money talks. Big, BIG money. We must back Trump, we must encourage him, we must ensure him that we are behind him. He is the best shot that Cruz has to bust this thing wide-open. If it’s not too late. Go Trump Go!
I totally agree with you, as do a lot of the majority of people...we are called the ‘silent majority’ but we are becoming louder each day...and we are there to protect Trump’s back!!!
Democrazy = The tyranny of the majority!!!
No way! Right now it's a kakistocrisy!!! Google it...
It’s a nation state now. Democracy, yes. Republic, no.
The federal government blew a hole in the doctrine of “enumerated powers” decades ago, and the USSC reinterpretation of the Commerce Clause finished the job.
Or “Kakistocracy”, maybe?
The real nail in the coffin for the Republic, however, was 19A... at least my dear mother says so.
Women’s suffrage?
Really?
No, we live in a Republic.
The horror... how un-PC... Still, my mother has a point... letting women vote was a turning point and it’s been downhill ever since.
To the defense of Conservative/Republic/Independent women, a substantial amount of “male” voters support the socialistic crap the Democrat party is peddling.
This nation was founded as a Republic with the franchise limited to those who owned real property so that those who wanted to "democratically" take the property of others would be unable to do so. The Founding Fathers were smarter than the idiots who went whole hog for the 17th Amendment which has led to the Divine Right of Judges supplanting the Divine Right of Kings that our Revolution threw in the garbage can.
Enjoy the "democracy" of dictatorial Judges governing through a Federal Nobility and shut up or wake up and stop "Conserving" what has clearly failed.
JMHo
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