Jenny B. Robinson
We are a 'REPUBLIC' not a democracy!
Tue Jul 6, 2004 01:02
66.74.197.223

DEMOCRACY - THAT MOST VILE FORM OF GOVERNMENT!
Posted By: SCRIBE
Date: Friday, 12 September 2003

"And we were all supremely affronted by what he did to our democracy".

As for myself, I try never to listen to the opinions of any one who is so mis-informed, brainwashed, or un-educated to our Founding Principles, that they refer to our "REPUBLIC" as a "Democracy", that most disgusting and vile form of government!

“The general object was to produce a cure for the evils under which the United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origins, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy” - Congressman Edmund Randolph of Virginia - Constitutional Convention. “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 death.” - James Madison

Our nation was founded as a Constitutionally limited Republic (remember the Pledge of Allegiance: "and to the Republic for which it stands"...?). The Founding Fathers were concerned with Liberty, not democracy. In fact, the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. On the contrary, Article IV, section 4 of the Constitution is quite clear: "The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a Republican Form of Government. The emphasis on democracy in our modern political discourse has NO historical or Constitutional basis.

In fact, the Constitution is replete with undemocratic mechanisms. The electoral college is an obvious example. Small states are represented in national elections with greater electoral power than their populations would warrant in a purely democratic system. Similarly, sparsely populated Wyoming has the same number of senators as heavily populated New York. The result is totally un-democratic! But the Founders knew that smaller states had to be protected against overreaching federal power. The Bill of Rights provides individuals with similar protections against the majority. The First Amendment, for example, is utterly undemocratic. It was designed to protect unpopular speech against democratic fervor. Would the same politicians so enamored with democracy be willing to give up freedom of speech if the majority chose to do so?

Our Founders instituted a Republican system to protect individual rights and property rights from tyranny, regardless of whether the tyrant was a king, a monarchy, a congress, or an unelected mob. They believed that a representative government, restrained by the Bill of Rights and divided into three power sharing branches, would balance the competing interests of the population. They also knew that unbridled democracy would lead to the same kind of tyranny suffered by the colonies under King George. In other words, the Founders had no illusions about democracy. Democracy represented unlimited rule by an omnipotent majority, while a Constitutionally limited Republic was seen as the best system to preserve Liberty. Unalienable individual Liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights would be threatened by the "excesses of democracy." And they Have!

• Program Trains Americans to Spy on Each Other — Time Magazine, Tue Jul 6 02:02
• RE: Republic vs. Democracy — S.I.MAJOR, Tue Jul 6 01:17