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Democracy or Republic?

By Robert Brown   — May 2006

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,

and to the Republic for which it stands,

one nation under God, indivisible,

with liberty and justice for all.”

The media is filled with references to our Democratic form of government.  Our politicians proclaim their love for Democracy.  Even our President sounds the rallying cry of “Spreading Democracy”.  And yet, we pledge our allegiance “to the Republic”. 

This leads me to my first question:

#1 – What was the form of government established in the Constitutional Convention?

Just after the completion and signing of the Constitution, in reply to a woman's inquiry as to the type of government the Founders had created, Benjamin Franklin said, " A Republic, if you can keep it."

Alexander Hamilton: "We are a Republican Government.  Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of Democracy."

It is interesting to note:

The word democracyis not mentioned in the Declaration of Independence or in the Constitution.

However,

U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Section 4 says :

 "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union,

a Republican form of government . . . "

Not a Democracy, or even some combination, like a Democratic Republic.

#2 – What is the difference between a Democracy and a Republic?

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury.”

 -- attributed to Alexander Tytler, Scottish historian.

To put it simply:

A Democracy is not bound by anything but public whim. 

A Constitutional Republic must adhere to the Constitution.

The fundamental difference comes from the source of Rights.

In a Democracy, there are no rights, except that which the majority votes to give!  The rule of law is simply majority rule.  Whatever the largest group of people will support, becomes law, regardless of any ethical standard.  Only the majority interest will be served.

In our Constitutional Republic, we have a Constitution and a Bill of Rights, which restrain the acts of Government to simply protecting the God-given rights of all, including minority groups.

As stated in the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The source of our rights is the Divine Creator (which was so obvious, that it is stated to be “self-evident”), therefore, no government can take these rights away.  However, if the source of our rights were our government, then they can take what they have given.

Cicero in 65 B.C. – A legislative majority may pass laws that contradict the natural (God-given) law, but “these no more deserve to be called laws than the rules a band of robbers might pass in their assembly.”

According to Founding Father Noah Webster:

“Our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion.”

The values found in Biblical law were the foundation of the American republic.  Consider the stability this provides: in our republic, murder will always be a crime, for it is always a crime according to the Word of God.  However, in a democracy, if the majority of the people decide that murder is no longer a crime, murder will no longer be a crime.

Our Founding Fathers chose a Republic over a Democracy for many reasons; primarily because they remembered the most infamous “democratic” vote in all history. [i.e.] The lesson of a bureaucrat some 2000 years ago who turned to a crowd and asked which prisoner should be released – the crowd yelled - “give us Barabbas”. The ‘will of the people’ spoke that day. When the bureaucrat asked the people what should be done with this innocent man, this Jesus, the crowd responded with a loud – CRUCIFY HIM.

Jesus was crucified by a majority vote exercising pure democracy which was the emotional, changing rule of the mob. This is the reason our Founding Fathers wanted a Republic, a government based on the rule of law which could not be changed by the whims of the people.  

As John Adams explained:

“ Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy . . . and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure . . .”

Our founding fathers were very clear on this issue; that they had formed a Republic, not a Democracy.  They spoke of the evils of Democracy as we have been taught to speak of Communism!  But today, we are continually told that we are a Democracy!

This is a classic example of what William James was talking about when he said,

“ There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough. ”

Please help put a stop to this absurdity!  Don’t allow yourself or others to call our great country a Democracy!  Gently direct others who unwittingly repeat this fallacy, to one of the many great articles on the evils of democracy!

The following is a small collection of the many condemnations stated about Democracy.  Many of the speakers cited are our countries own Founding Fathers:

• John Adams: "Remember, Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself! There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide."; John Adams, letter to John Taylor, April 15, 1814.
• James Madison: "... 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." - from the Federalist Papers, #10, Nov. 23, 1787
• 28 Nov 1998, Steven Earl Newberry : "Democracy and Mobocracy are synonyms for a form of government in which the majority (mob) rules, and which by definition, guarantees the absence of minority rights."
• John Marshall (Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835): "Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."
• Thomas Babington Macaulay: "I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both."
• De Tocqueville once warned us that: ‘If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event will arise from the unlimited tyranny of the majority.’ But a majority will never be permitted to exercise such ‘unlimited tyranny’ so long as we cling to the American ideals of republican liberty and turn a deaf ear to the siren voices now calling us to democracy . . . We are in grave danger of dissipating this splendid heritage through mistaking it for democracy."
• 15 Nov 2002, Steven Earl Newberry :  "Democracy is a noose around Freedom's neck, gradually choking the dreams our founding fathers once had for this country. . . democracy becomes a great threat to our freedom and the overall health of our country. Excessive taxation is only one of the symptoms of . . . of democracy, . . .  Through excessive taxation, we have all become slaves to our government.  Excessive taxation creates a cannibalistic economy that feeds upon itself. Woe be it to those who are still here, when the plate of taxation is barren and has created an economy that has nothing left to feed on."
• Benjamin Disraeli 1870: "The world is weary, of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians."
• James Russell Lowell: "Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor."
• W. H. Seward: "Democracies are prone to war, and war consumes them."
• Oscar Wilde: "Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people."
• Ludwig Lewisohn: "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."
• 1931, The Duke of Northumberland: "The adoption of Democracy as a form of Government by all European nations is fatal to good Government, to liberty, to law and order, to respect for authority, and to religion, and must eventually produce a state of chaos from which a new world tyranny will arise."
• May 31, 1787, while addressing members of the Constitutional Convention Edmund Randolph said, "We meet here today 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...."
• June 21, 1788, Alexander Hamilton: "The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity."
• 1795 Immanuel Kant: "Democracy is necessarily despotism."
• 1850, Benjamin Disraeli, (British House of Commons): "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 expenditures.  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."
• Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors."
• Englishman, G. K. Chesterton: "You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution."
• Fisher Ames, Author of the House Language for the First Amendment:  “ 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 [excessive license] which the ambitious call, and (the) ignorant believe to be liberty.”
• 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.”
• Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration:  “ A simple democracy . . . is one of the greatest of evils.”
• 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.”
• John Witherspoon, Signer of the Declaration:  “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.”
• Zephaniah Swift, Author of America's First Legal Text:  “It may generally be remarked that the more a government resembles a pure democracy the more they abound with disorder and confusion.”

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