Democracy Versus Republic {Stop calling it a Democracy}

http://www.patriots-of-the-republic.com ^ | June 30, 1986 | General Birch Services Corp.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Democracy Versus Republic

When our Founding Fathers established a "republic," in the hope, as

Benjamin Franklin said, that we could keep it, and when they guaranteed to

every state within that "republic" a "republican form" of government, they

well knew the significance of the terms they were using. And were doing all

in their power to make the feature of government signified by those terms

as permanent as possible. They also knew very well indeed the meaning of

the word democracy, and the history of democracies; and they were

deliberately doing everything in their power to avoid for their own times,

and to prevent for the future, the evils of a democracy.

Let's look at some of the things they said to support and clarify this

purpose. On May 31,1787, Edmund Randolph told his fellow members of the

newly assembled Constitutional Convention that the object for which the

delegates had met was "to provide a cure for the evils under which the

United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origin every

man had found it in the turbulence and trials of democracy...."

The Founders Knew the Difference

The delegates to the Convention were clearly in accord with this

statement.   At about the same time another delegate, Elbridge Gerry, said: "The evils

we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want

(that is, do not lack) virtue; but are the dupes of pretended patriots."

And on June 21,1788, Alexander Hamilton made a speech in which he stated:

       It had 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.

Another time Hamilton said: "We are a Republican Government. Real liberty

is never found in despotism or in the extremes of Democracy." Samuel Adams

warned: "Remember, Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts

and  murders itself! There never was a democracy that 'did not commit

suicide."' James Madison, one of the members of the Convention who was

charged with drawing up our Constitution, wrote follows:

       . . . 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.

Madison and Hamilton and Jay and their compatriots of the Convention

prepared and adopted a Constitution in which they nowhere even mentioned

the word democracy, not because they were not familiar with such a form of

government, but because they were. The word democracy had not occurred in

the Declaration of Independence, and does not appear in the constitution

of  a single one of our fifty states-which constitutions are derived mainly

from the thinking of the Founding Fathers of the Republic- for the same

reason. They knew all about Democracies, and if they had wanted one for

themselves and their posterity, they would have founded one. Look at all

the elaborate system of checks and balances which they established; at the

carefully worked-out protective clauses of the Constitution itself, and

especially of the first ten amendments known as the Bill of Rights; at the

effort, as Jefferson put it, to "bind men down from mischief by the chains

of the Constitution," and thus to solidify the rule not of men but of

laws.   All of these steps were taken, deliberately, to avoid and to prevent a

Democracy, or any of the worst features of a Democracy, in the United

States.

And so our Republic was started on its way. And for well over a hundred

years our politicians, statesmen, and people remembered that this was a

republic, not a democracy, and knew what they meant when they made that

distinction. Again, let's look briefly at some of the evidence.

Washington, in his first inaugural address, dedicated himself to "the

preservation . . . of the republican model of government." Thomas

Jefferson, our third president, was the founder of the Democratic Party;

but in his first inaugural address, although he referred several times to

the Republic or the republican form of government he did not use the word

"democracy" a single time. And John Marshall, who was Chief Justice of the

Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835, said: "Between a balanced republic and a

democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."

Throughout the Nineteenth Century and the early part of the Twentieth,

while America as a republic was growing great and becoming the envy of the

whole world, there were plenty of wise men, both in our country and

outside  of it, who pointed to the advantages of a republic, which we were

enjoying,  and warned against the horrors of a democracy, into which we might fall.

Around the middle of that century, Herbert Spencer, the great English

philosopher, wrote, in an article on The Americans: "The Republican form

of  government is the highest form of government; but because of this it

requires the highest type of human nature-a type nowhere at present

existing."

And in truth we have not been a high enough type to preserve the

republic we then had, which is exactly what he was prophesying.

Thomas Babington Macaulay said: "I have long been convinced that

institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or

civilization, or both." And we certainly seem to be in a fair way today to

fulfill his dire prophecy. Nor was Macaulay's contention a mere personal

opinion without intellectual roots and substance in the thought of his

times. Nearly two centuries before, Dryden had already lamented that ~no

government had ever been, or ever can be, wherein timeservers and

blockheads will not be uppermost." And as a result, he had spoken of

nations being "drawn to the dregs of a democracy." While in 1795 Immanuel

Kant had written: "Democracy is necessarily despotism."

In 1850 Benjamin Disraeli, worried as was Herbert Spencer at what was

already being foreshadowed in England, made a speech to the British House

of Commons in which he said: "If you establish a democracy, you must in

due  time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great

impatience of public burdens, combined in due season with great increase

of  public expenditure. You will in due season have wars entered into from

passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace

ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your

authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season

find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete."

Disraeli could have made that speech with even more appropriateness before

a joint session of the United States Congress in 1935. In 1870 he had

already come up with an epigram which is strikingly true for the United

States today. "The world is weary," he said, "of statesmen whom democracy

has degraded into politicians."

But even in Disraeli's day there were similarly prophetic voices on this

side of the Atlantic. In our own country James Russell Lowell showed that

he recognized the danger of unlimited majority rule by writing:

       Democracy gives every man The right to be his own oppressor.

W.H. Seward pointed out that "Democracies are prone to war, and war con-

sumes them." This is an observation certainly borne out during the past

fifty years exactly to the extent that we have been becoming a democracy

and fighting wars, with each trend as both a cause and an effect of the

other one. And Ralph Waldo Emerson issued a most prophetic warning when he

said: "Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors." If

Emerson could have looked ahead to the time when so many of the editors

would themselves be a part of, or sympathetic to, the gang of bullies, as

they are today, he would have been even more disturbed. And in the 1880's

Governor Seymour of New York said that the merit of our Constitution was,

not that it promotes democracy, but checks it.

Across the Atlantic again, a little later, Oscar Wilde once contributed

this epigram to the discussion: "Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of

the people, by the people, for the people." While on this side, and after

the first World War had made the degenerative trend in our government so

visible to any penetrating observer, H.L. Mencken wrote: "The most popular

man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most

despotic  man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a man. They like him

to boss them. Their natural gait is the goosestep." While Ludwig Lewisohn

observed: "Democracy, which began by liberating men politically, has

developed a dangerous tendency to enslave him through the tyranny of

majorities and the deadly power of their opinion."

"... 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."

James Madison, known as the father of the U.S.

Constitution,  in "Essay #10" of The Federalist

Papers: ".

[I pledge allegiance to the flag..... and to the REPUBLIC for

which it stands...!]

[muffaletaman]

Actually, no, I don't think so.

The USofA is a Constitutional Republic - Not a Democratic Republic...

IMHO ;-)

[LibWhacker]

Bingo! Exactly correct. There are many forms of democracy. A republic is just one kind of democracy.

[PhilipFreneau]

Another great comparison of a republic and a democracy was written by Philip Freneau in an 1792 editorial in the National Gazette, titled, "Rules for changing a limited republican government into an unlimited hereditary one". Rule 5 contains the comparison:

"5. As the novelty and bustle of inaugurating the government will for some time keep the public mind in a heedless and unsettled state, let the press during this period be busy in propagating the doctrines of monarchy and aristocracy. For this purpose it will be particular useful to confound a mobbish democracy with a representative republic, that by exhibiting all the turbulent examples and enormities of the former, an odium may be thrown on the character of the latter. Review all the civil contests, convulsions, factions, broils, squabbles, bickering, black eyes, and bloody noses of ancient, middle, and modern ages; caricature them into the most frightful forms and colors that can be imagined, and unfold one scene of horrible tragedy after another till the people be made, if possible, to tremble at their own shadows. Let the discourses on Davila then contrast with these pictures of terror the quiet hereditary succession, the reverence claimed by birth and nobility, and the fascinating influence of stars, and ribands, and garters, cautiously suppressing all the bloody tragedies and unceasing oppressions which form the history of this species of government. No pains should be spared in this part of the undertaking, for the greatest will be wanted, it being extremely difficult, especially when a people have been taught to reason and feel their rights, to convince them that a king, who is always an enemy to the people, and a nobility, who are perhaps still more so, will take better care of the people than the people will take of themselves.

The following are some statements about democracy from some of the Founding Father's and early American statesmen.

James Madison (in Federalist Paper #10): ". . . 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."

Alexander Hamilton: "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."

John Adams: "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

Noah Webster: "In democracy there are commonly tumults and disorders. Therefore a pure democracy is generally a very bad government. It is often the most tyrannical government on earth."

Benjamin Rush: " a simple democracy is one of the greatest of evils.

John Quincy Adams: "The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived."

John Witherspoon: "Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state ... it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage."

Gouverneur Morris: "We have seen the tumult of democracy terminate as [it has] everywhere terminated, in despotism . . . Democracy! savage and wild. Thou who wouldst bring down the virtuous and wise to the level of folly and guilt."

Samuel Adams: " . . . it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds . . ."

Samuel Adams: "Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes itself, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

Zephaniah Swift: "It may generally be remarked that the more a government resembles a pure democracy the more they abound with disorder and confusion."

Edmund Randolph: "[The purpose of the Convention was] to provide a cure for the evils under which the United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and trials of democracy . . ."

Fisher Ames: "...there will not be morals without justice; and though justice might possibly support a democracy... a democracy cannot possibly support justice."

Fisher Ames: "Liberty has never lasted long in a democracy, nor has it ever ended in anything better than despotism."

Fisher Ames: "A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way. The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be liberty."

Fisher Ames: "It has been said that a pure democracy is the best government for a small people who assemble in person. It is of small consequence to discuss it, as it would be inapplicable to the great country we inhabit. It may be of some use in this argument, however, to consider, that it would be very burdensome, subject to faction and violence; decisions would often be made by surprise, in the precipitancy of passion, by men who either understand nothing or care nothing about the subject; or by interested men, or those who vote for their own indemnity. It would be a government not by laws, but by men."

Fisher Ames: ". . . Our sages in the great convention intended our government should be a republic which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism. The rigours of a despotism often oppress only a few, but it is the very essence and nature of a democracy, for a faction claiming to oppress a minority, and that minority the chief owners of the property and truest lovers of their country."

A final note. In a series of essays on "Monarchical versus Republican Government," Fisher Ames warned against appeals to "the will of the people," claiming them to be mere camouflage for demagogues to seize tyrannical power without regard for the rule of law.

[LibWhacker]

Continuing with an analogy . . . We wouldn't say an oak is not a tree because it's an oak. An oak is a tree. Similarly, America is a democracy, but it's a special species of democracy called a republic.

[o_zarkman44]

Democrats are in name only. socialist is their creed. Undermining the Constitution with watered down translations and divisive rhetoric is just a small part of the socialist agenda. Rebuking tradition and re-writing history to shape the minds of youth into like thinking socialists is the heart of the socialist revolution in America.
We have to remind the socialist Democrats that our Republic says no to their agenda. NO!
Such whiners they are. They can't stand to be told no.
They can't stand to lose. They make excuses and tell blatent lies to further their agenda.
We should show no mercy or patience for their requests to be included. We have to tell it like it is. Too bad so sad, you whiner democrats aren't getting your way!

[Taggart_D]

["Democracy, which began by liberating men politically, has
developed a dangerous tendency to enslave him through the tyranny of majorities and the deadly power of their opinion."]

Funny, this is the strategy so often used by the left. It looks to me like we should call ourselves the "Democrats".

The RATs will tax workers to death in order to provide welfare for the few; they'll provide 'rights' through the courts even though the Legislative branch has disallowed it;...uh can't think of any more.

Am I wrong here? Would someone correct me if I am?

[o_zarkman44]

The US is a "Constitutinal Republic", not a Democratic Republic.
The Constitution defines the structure and expectations of our citizens, recognizing that actions that benefit the MAJORITY are given precedence over the wishes of a few.

[x]

True enough as far as it goes. But we've become increasingly democratic starting in the 1820s or so. Plenty of us wouldn't have the vote under the earlier republican system.

It doesn't hurt to bear in mind that we are a republic and that democracy isn't necessarily the ideal system. But when we talk with people from other countries, who've gone through a long and painful evolution from monarchy or tyranny or oligarchy to what they call democracy -- often due to our influence or power over them -- it helps to have some terms in common.

We should certainly admit that democracies have their flaws. They don't always work, and can collapse into anarchy or tyranny. But the world has undergone and is undergoing a transition towards greater recognition of the value of the ordinary person or the human being as such, above and beyond distinctions of rank or belonging. Much of this movement was inspired by Christianity and goes under the name of democracy in much of the world. We've been a big part of this transformation, and we might want to remember or reflect or try to understand it some time.

[carlr]

When I was in high school (late 70s early 80s)we were taught that we were in truth a representative republic but that FDR started calling the US a democracy because it sounded more like democrat.We also learned that the civil war was primarily about economics,not to minimize the abhorrence of slavery but to reflect the overall history of the era.I don`t imagine a school child has heard these things in the last decade or more.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

I don`t imagine a school child has heard these things in the last decade or more.


LOL mine has !

[jedi150]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1259556/posts

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Thanx and bookmarked

[itslex71]

battle PING of the republic

[GnL]

A good post for Free REPUBLIC.

[libertyman]

Please don't blame the Dims alone about this now: time after time we hear Republucans (who I think should know better) sing the praises of democracy, mention the "fact" of America being a democracy, etc. etc.

It is all a LIE, however well intentioned it may be. American NEVER WAS a democracy, is not a democracy now (in spite of the growing influence of voter ballot initiatives & changing their own state constitutions by majority vote)....& we should hope & pray that it will NEVER become a democracy.

[libertyman]

Please don't blame the Dims alone about this now: time after time we hear Republucans (who I think should know better) sing the praises of democracy, mention the "fact" of America being a democracy, etc. etc.

It is all a LIE, however well intentioned it may be. American NEVER WAS a democracy, is not a democracy now (in spite of the growing influence of voter ballot initiatives & changing their own state constitutions by majority vote)....& we should hope & pray that it will NEVER become a democracy.

[datura]

America will always remain a Republic as long as the 2nd Amendment stands. The very minute that it falls, we will have become a Democracy - with all the horrible things that become of all Democracies.

As for nations abroad that have become 'democracies' through our assistance, note that they are generally set up as Constitutional Republics. Even Vladimir Putin openly refers to the new system of government in Russia as a constitutional republic rather than a democracy. Afghanistan, the newest Republic on Earth, is set up to follow their Constitution. Iraq will follow suit as well.

The only ones in the US who desire - no, demand that we become a Democracy are the Rats. Go figure.

[RedTulie]

The government that was chosen and set forth in the founding documents which are the law of this land is a republic. It is NOT a form of democracy. In a republic, individual rights are the final word; in a democracy, 49% of the people are at the mercy of 51% of the rest of the people. There are no individual rights, only group “rights”. This group historically destroys their democracy because they vote for more and more “freebies” until there’s nothing left. It becomes mob rule at some point.

[LibWhacker]

in a democracy, 49% of the people are at the mercy of 51% of the rest of the people

No, that is just one type of democracy, called a pure democracy. It is not true of all democracies.

There are other types of democracies. One is a democratic republic, or just republic, which the United States is.

Look it up. Look up 'democracy' and look up 'republic' in any good dictionary and then check out the synonyms for the two. Guess what? They are synonymous. It is 100% correct to call the United States a democracy. It is a type of democracy called a republic.

A republic is a democracy. At least historically. Nowadays, you've got all kinds of dictatorships trying to co-opt both titles in an attempt to gain legitimacy.

Furthermore, rights have nothing to do with it. Rights are recognized in the constitution of a constitutional form of government (which the United States also is). Once again, look it up. There is nothing about rights in the definition of a republic. Without a constitution to guarantee those rights, any rights one may think he has can be stripped away in a republic almost as easily as in a pure democracy. All you need are representatives with squishy backbones and your rights can vanish in a republic. A constitution gives your rights an extra layer of protection. But even a constitution can be attacked and torn down, as we are seeing happen before our very eyes.