by AlchemicalDream21
Background:
The United States was founded on July 4th, 1776. Founding meaning it was declared independent from the Kingdom of Great Britain.
All the delegates who signed the draft of the declaration are known as the Founding Fathers of the United States, the term which includes those who signed the declaration as well as those who framed the constitution.”
In 1787, anxious citizen waited outside of the Independence Hall to hear the results of the Constitutional Convention. As delegates left the building a woman asked “Well Doctor, what have we got?”
Without hesitation Franklin said “A Republic if you can keep it”
Context:
“Contrary to popular belief, America is not, nor was it meant to be, a pure democracy nor a democratic republic. America is a republic. Nevertheless, more and more voices today are calling for America to become a direct democracy.”
“The US is a Constitutional Republic, not a “democracy.” No American founding document, not the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, or the Constitution mentions “democracy”. This is because democracy was viewed as dangerous to the rights of minorities.”
John Adams knew democracies had short lives: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
Here’s the confusion:
“The term “Democracy” comes from the Greek political and philosophical thought during classical antiquity. Demos, “common people” and kratos, strength. Democracy is government by the people; the rule of the majority. A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.”
“When any interests controls most of the information the mob learns, it’s easy to control what the mob wants.”
“The term “republic” comes from the Greek word politeia, which means the “rights of citizens.” (It also comes from the Latin res publica, which means “public affair.”) A Republic is a government system where the power rests with a nation’s citizens.”
A Democracy is when majority rules. There’s no individual rights, only representing the majority resulting in minorities individual rights being stripped in rule of the majority.
A Republic stands for individual rights, even if a majority vote favors, the minorities rights will never be infringed upon and thus safe keeping individuals rights over majority rule.
The Pledge of Allegiance states “in the Republic for which it stands”
“America’s Founders carefully thought through the problems of direct democracy and explicitly rejected this model—and for good reason. They saw that because ancient democracies lacked any social or institutional forces that could check, refine, or moderate the will of the majority, they were prone to great instability, riven by factionalism, and subject to the passions and short-sightedness of the public. Direct democracies were thus vulnerable to tyranny”
“America is a republic and not a pure democracy. The contemporary efforts to weaken our republican customs and institutions in the name of greater equality thus run against the efforts by America’s Founders to defend our country from the potential excesses of democratic majorities. American republicanism and the ordered liberty it makes possible are grounded in the Federalists’ recognition that non-majoritarian parts of the community make legitimate contributions to the community’s welfare, and that preserving these contributions is the hallmark of political justice. But, the careful balance produced by our mixed republic is threatened by an egalitarianism that undermines the social, familial, religious, and economic distinctions and inequalities that undergird our political liberty. Preserving the republican freedoms we cherish requires tempering egalitarian zeal and moderating the hope for a perfectly just democracy.”
“American republicanism, by contrast, offers protections from the instability, rashness, impetuosity, and social and political tyranny of democratic politics because it recognizes that the majority does not equal the whole of the community. Republicanism recognizes the valid contributions to the welfare of the community by non- and even counter-majoritarian parts of the community. Indeed, justice demands that, even in a nation rooted in popular consent, non- and counter-majoritarian forces must be blended together. In this way, republicanism protects the minority from unjust majorities and secures the conditions for the political and social freedoms that are the true goal of the American revolution.
But this is not all. As Tocqueville correctly foresaw, the limitless passion for equality—the root cause for seeking direct democracy—undermines respect for all of those social, familial, civic, and religious institutions that separate individuals from one another, establish hierarchies, dictate codes of behavior, and, most importantly, help us preserve our liberties. To advocates, this pursuit of ever more equality represents a panacea, a “one-size-fits-all” solution, to the various political conflicts we face. In promoting greater equality, they would impose a single, uniform view of justice upon a republican order built on the recognition that the political community is more than just the majority of its citizens. Our republic is built on the recognition that no single part of the community has a monopoly on justice. Genuine political justice therefore requires tending to the legitimate needs and contributions of a community’s non-majoritarian elements and preserving the social, familial, civic, and religious practices that define them. Given the importance of such practices to human flourishing, the recovery of republicanism means the recovery of our humanity.”
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