AT THE CLOSE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what type of government the Constitution was bringing into existence. Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” The problem, as Franklin anticipated, was not whether a Republic could succeed but whether we, as Americans would have the strength of character to "keep it". It seems we no longer have.
At it's Constitutional root, these United States are a Republic.... A nation of Law.
My 96 year old Webster's Dictionary defines a Republic as "A government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law."
The "body of citizens entitled to vote" includes all U.S. adult citizens who are not felons, convicts, and who can with certainty identify themselves according to law.
The "supreme power resides in" these "citizens entitled to vote" and no one else.
Not the President, the Congress, the Supreme Court or a Political Party ... but to the people. When the people have voted for their "democratically" elected representatives, these representatives make all the decisions of government ... "supreme power ... is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to ... the citizens". This "governing" they must do, without exception, "according to the law" .... which is all that is contained in "The Constitution"... nothing more and nothing less. Our elected officials have absolute power to do that and absolutely nothing else. When there is a disagreement, Judicial branch, up to the Supreme Court, must decide exactly what "The Constitution" says about the problem and rule accordingly, without exception. Not according to their feelings about it or anyone elses opinion, but exactly what the Constitution dictates. Even the President has no power to act in opposition to our Constitutional Law, though this one does. I do not have to tell you that all three branches of our government, Congress (Legislative), Supreme Court (Judicial) and President (Executive), have been violating our Constitution, the Law of the land, which is the primary cause of our present turmoil and descendantcy into lawlessness.
The "democracy" part of our government is found in the Constitutional provision that our President and Legislators shall be elected by the people. But this provision is based solely upon the foundation of a Republican form of government. A pure democracy without a foundation of Law is nothing more than "mob rule" or the dictatorship of the 51%. Under such a government, the minorities would have no protection from the majority and the majority would vote itself all the benefits and largess and overtax the minority as it is done in Muslim dominated countries now.
Just imagine what it would be like if a majority of voters were for slavery or for free money without working or for the abortion of babies "after" they were born, or maybe they would vote to let everyone over 70 die without medical treatment and then maybe without food. Under a pure democracy, without our Constitution, that would all be possible, and has been done. Under Hitler's majority of German supporters, he chose to eliminate all the Jews and run roughshod over Europe ... with majority rule.
"How can Americans live with the belief that it’s OK to use the power of government to tax people in a disproportionate way? It’s no wonder that our founding fathers had harsh things to say about governing by majority rule." Gary North's Newsletter.
In the Federalist Papers, Madison writes that (pure) democracies are “spectacles of turbulence and contention.” Pure democracies are “incompatible with personal security or the rights of property. . . . In general [they] have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” Without a foundation of Constitutional Law, this is what has happened to all democracies in all of history.
Suppose a majority of Muslims took power in those European countries where some have already forced acceptance of Sharia Law, what would France or the others be like then?
John Adams, our nation’s second president quoted those who said, "The voice of the people is the voice of God", and he reasoned, "And so it is, sometimes; but it is sometimes the voice of Mohammed, of Caesar, or Catiline, the Pope and the Devil."
It might also be the voice of the mob or of a majority of takers who don't want to work.
That is why our Founding Fathers chose to be a Republic with democratic provisions.
Under our Constitution, we have historically been almost totally free to chose our own vocation, occupation without the restraint of a bureaucratic maze of restrictions. We could travel anywhere in the world or choose to live almost anywhere in the world without our government stopping us. Not now. We could spend our resources any way we pleased and go and do just about anything we pleased. That is changing radically and quickly. In our beginnings, America did not involve itself in foreign wars which did not pertain to us or our interests. For the last 60 plus years we have been the police force of the world. That may have been necessary just after WWII, but no more and it is surely dying daily on it's own. It could not and should not last.
George Washington counseled future generations of Americans in his Farewell Address:
She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart.... She goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.... She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence ... the fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world.The bottom line to this is, we have allowed our government to violate our Constitution and become so huge as to stifle individual initiative, and to become involved in so many unconstitutional things that it doesn't have time or will to enforce the laws of the land and will soon not be able to even protect the nation ... It's primary responsibility. RB
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