Don’t tell me America is a democracy, those are fighting words. Many people, media included, endlessly say America is a democracy. That is wrong. If we have become a democracy, it is a betrayal of our founders. The founders correctly saw democracy as a form of tyranny. The word democracy does not appear in our nation’s two most fundamental documents.
We are a republic and have been from the start
Democracy is in neither the Declaration of Independence nor the U.S. Constitution. To the contrary, the founders laid the ground rules for a republic. As written in the Constitution’s Article IV, Section 4, there are guarantees “to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” Seems pretty plain, right?
John Adams captures the essence of the difference between a democracy and republic. Adams said, “You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.” In “A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765”
Contrast the framers’ vision of a republic with that of a democracy. In a democracy, the majority rules either directly or through its elected representatives. With a democracy as in a monarchy, the law is whatever the government determines it to be. Laws do not represent reason. They represent power. The restraint is upon the individual instead of the government. Under a democracy, rights are seen as privileges and permissions that are granted by government. Therefore they can be rescinded by government.
The framers contempt for democracy
Our founders had contempt for a democracy. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, wrote that in a pure democracy, “… there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.” This is something many among us do well to reflect on. Edmund Randolph said that “in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.”
Alexander Hamilton agreed, saying: “We are now forming a republican government. [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.” John Adams reminded us: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
John Marshall, the fourth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court observed, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.” Thomas Paine said, “A Democracy is the vilest form of Government there is.”
Democracy and the Electoral College
The framers gave us a Constitution full of undemocratic mechanisms. One constitutional provision that has come in for recent criticism is the Electoral College. The framers gave us the Electoral College as a means of deciding presidential elections. Through its structure, heavily populated states can’t run roughshod over small, less-populated states.
If we chose the president and vice president by popular vote, the outcome of presidential races would always be decided by a six highly populated states. California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania contain 134.3 million people, or 41% of our population. Why go anywhere else to campaign? Who cares? Right?
Presidential candidates would safely ignore the interests of the citizens of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Delaware. Why? They have only 5.58 million people total. That’s 1.7% of the U.S. population. We would no longer be a government “of the people.” Our government would be put in power by, and accountable to, the leaders and citizens of a few highly populated states. It would be the tyranny the framers feared.
It is Congress that poses the greatest threat to our liberties. The framers’ distrust of Congress is seen in the negative language of our Bill of Rights. Think about it: Congress “shall not abridge, infringe, deny, disparage, and shall not be violated, nor be denied.” Don’t tell me America is a democracy, those are fighting words.
