...One frequent claim is that our nation is a democracy. If we've become a
democracy, it would represent a deep betrayal of our founders, who saw
democracy as another form of tyranny.
In fact, the word democracy
appears nowhere in our nation's two most fundamental documents, the
Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The founders laid
the ground rules for a republic as written in the Constitution's
Article IV, Section 4, which guarantees "to every State in this Union a
Republican Form of Government."
John Adams captured the essence of the difference between a democracy
and republic when he 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governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws;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." 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.
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.
Unlike that envisioned under a republican form of government, rights
are seen as privileges and permissions that are granted by government
and can be rescinded by government.
Here are a few quotations that demonstrate the contempt that our
founders held 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."
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, 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 highly respected 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."
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