“And to the REPUBLIC for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
I am of the opinion that the education system, esp High School and College, no longer teach the differences between a democracy and a republic. Perhaps by design to enable the implementation of the socialist / marxist agenda.
Franklin was walking out of Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when someone shouted out, “Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?”
To which Franklin supposedly responded, with a rejoinder at once witty and ominous: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
> the United States is not a democracy <
The meaning of words evolve over time. The word “democracy” is now also taken to mean the type government of the United States has. Yes, it would be nice for folks to know the original meaning of the word.
But to insist that the United States is not a democracy, well that’s a bit too Karen-like for me.
Pure democracy is like two foxes and one chicken voting on what’s for lunch. ...also like the House of Representatives voting on impeachment for no wrongdoing. Our founders wrote an amazing Constitution.
The real difference between the two is that in a Republic the founding social contract sets limits on the government’s powers in order to protect minorities; in a Democracy it is the people, not the social contract, that sets those limits, which in practice means that there aren’t any. In a republic a citizen may enjoy the right to speak freely, in a democracy that citizen enjoys that right only if the mob allows it. Which sounds sort of familiar, doesn’t it?
Oh please Lee, shut up. And send all those donations back to Big Tech.
Anybody who understands what The Great Compromise was meant to be - and much later the passing of the 17th Amendment knows that senators are elected my mob rule these days (the whole state, I.E. democracy, not a representative republic) would also know that today a senator represents his/her party rather than the state they supposedly represent.
Smell a wee bit of hypocrisy here.
Since December 2000! ;)
The Founders were far too intelligent to create a democracy that could lead to a tyranny of the majority.
The Founding Fathers had utter contempt for democracy. James Madison, principle author of the Constitution, wrote this in Federalist Paper No. 10, “...there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual.”
He went on: “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. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.”
At the Convention, Virginia Gov. Edmund Randolph said that “in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.” John Adams wrote: “Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.”
And Alexander Hamilton said: “We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty is found not in the extremes of democracy but in moderate governments. ... If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy.”
DB (Sorry for the lengthy personal intro. Just wanted all of us to understand a point the left does not want widely known.)
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-crisis-bill-of-rights-protects-freedoms/
I always hate it when anyone, especially politicians claim they want to protect “our democracy”. Ignorant tools.
Yup. The word, “democracy” is not found in the US Constitution nor the Declaration.
We are a democratic Republic - not - a pure democracy.