Posted on 02/05/2014 5:16:56 AM PST by cotton1706
Some time ago, I got tired of hearing politicians, etc. refer to the United States as a democracy when it is a republic. So I took it upon myself to do something about it.
My idea was to produce a short, cheap book which explains the fundamentals of the American government, that could be easily distributed far and wide, similar to Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" or Barry Goldwater's "The Conscience of a Conservative."
There is very little material out there on republics and republican government, due to the fact that the word republic has had numerous and various meanings over time.
However, using the writings of mainly John Adams, the preeminent expert on the subject, I have successfully boiled down the basic ideas.
I hope the book is well received by the people, for a thorough understanding of the principles of republican and constitutional government can help them to halt and push back the forces of tyranny.
I'm working on having the search key words changed on Amazon, BN.com, etc. so it will be more easily found, but there are direct links at my website, thisrepublic.net.
I did. I self-published.
No kidding! Congratulations! I just bought a copy!
bump to self
Will check it out. I read all your posts regularly and interested in your book
Good luck with your book
Thanks for the heads-up and congratulations on the book.
Congratulations and thank you on your book...
Just bought a copy on Amazon, and looking forward to reading...
“Just bought a copy on Amazon, and looking forward to reading...”
Great! Thanks!!
If a newly elected representative bucks the House speaker, they will be pigeon holed and neutralized to the point of being unable to represent their state. There has to be a better way.
I think party primary voters should select the Speaker and Majority-Minority leaders.
It’s ironic that we say government is to blame for problems when we should say ‘our representatives are to blame for problems..
“There has to be a better way.”
There isn’t. And the type of power you’re talking about has existed since governments began. And it’s that power checking power that protects the people and the law through a republican system of government.
The speaker wants more power, the chairmen want more power, they struggle against each other to get something done, or to stop something from being done. And then if they get something done, it is then sent to another body, whose members were chosen by totally different constituencies than the first body, and that same power struggle occurs there too. And then should both bodies actually agree on something, it has to be sent to a third part of the legislature, a single executive, who can utterly reject all that work.
And should it even become law, it is subject to review by a body separate from all of these, a court who can compare it with the guidelines of the people (a constitution) to determine if what they did was legal.
And all of these different people can be removed from office by either the people or their representatives.
It’s messy, but brilliant.
I'm slowly plowing through a 1970 book on Alexander Hamilton by Gerald Stourzh. This morning a page jumped out at me, for it elaborated on the importance of first principles to republics. Beginning with Aristotle and on to Machiavelli, Coke, Algernon Sidney, Trenchard, George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, . . . all wrote at length on the importance of endless repetition of first principles to keep republics vibrant and protective of their rights.
Over these past hundred years, the left has expertly replaced our first principle, securing our unalienable rights, with a bumper sticker slogan, democracy. I wager 95% of Americans think our founding principle is majority rule.
Well, thank you!
I’ll send you the recent revision; I found a punctuation error.
It just never ends.
“Over these past hundred years, the left has expertly replaced our first principle, securing our unalienable rights, with a bumper sticker slogan, democracy. I wager 95% of Americans think our founding principle is majority rule.”
That was another reason I wrote the book, to dispel this idea of “democracy.” Democracy has come to mean self-government. And while it is true that the people govern themselves in a democracy, democracies have quickly descended to anarchy and tyranny, because there was no opposing power.
The United States is democratic, because the people choose the members of the legislatures, and the legislatures in general govern themselves by majority rule, but it is not a democracy. There’s a difference, which I do my best to explain.
Congrats!! Sneak it in to public school libraries and history classes! No, wait....Sunday school classes might be more effective ;-)
No argument. I was using the vernacular sense. What came to mind in particular was that rotten baloney from Woody Wilson, “Keeping the world safe for democracy,” which has oozed over time into the American subconscious.
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