Every once in a while in conversation about the government someone will correct me when I call the USA a democracy. "No", they say, "this country is not a democracy, it is a republic!"
The first person who told me this was Henry R. Hall, an old man from Colorado, who kept a supply of booklets containing the Bill of Rights to hand out to everyone he met. He and his wife were tenants in HUD apartments that I managed after I retired from US Customs. When he was young Henry drove a motor stagecoach on a route through the Raton Pass. If I remember correctly, he drove from Trinidad, CO, to Raton, NM. He had also been an authentic old-time cowboy.
Henry was the epitome of a patriot, proud to be an American. Not only did he hand out booklets on citizenship and the Bill of Rights, he and his wife had a life sized cardboard cutout of John Wayne set up in their livingroom. Right beside the Duke, he displayed his old, well-oiled, silver trimmed, western saddle. They meant the world to him, right up there with his reverence for the Constitution.
Recently, I again heard someone protest that we are a republic not a democracy, so I decided to look it up. In my Webster's dictionary, democracy is defined 'government in which the supreme power is held by the people'. In Roget's Thesaurus the definition is 'government through representation'.
Those were not good enough definitions for me. I turned to the WEB, and I will settle for a definition I found at USINFO.STATE.GOV that says "democracy is government by the people in which supreme power is vested by the people and exercised directly by their elected agents under a free electoral system. Lincoln said it best, - "of the people, by the people, and for the people"
The same source adds:
THE PILLARS OF DEMOCRACY
- Sovereignty of the people.
- Government based upon consent of the governed.
- Majority rule.
- Minority rights.
- Guarantee of basic human rights.
- Free and fair elections.
- Equality before the law.
- Due process of law.
- Constitutional limits on government.
- Social, economic, and political pluralism.
- Values of tolerance, pragmatism, cooperation, and compromise.
Those 'pillars' should be standards to measure our government administrations by.
OK, so what is a republic? The definition as derived from Latin is 'res publica', public thing. There is a great deal written about republics, from the republics of the ancient Greeks, the Romans, Switzerland, Ireland, France and a great deal more than I care to consider. Much of it is contradictory. Some republics were supposed to prevent the rule of a monarch or dynastic ruler, yet others had republics that specifically included a monarch. Some insisted on freedom of religion, while others were based on one national religion.
The closest to a concise definition that I found is from The Free Dictionary that states: A political order whose head of state is not a monarch. The second definition given there is: A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for representatives responsible to them.
But the understanding of what a republic is, and as I think Henry Hall understood it, is this: 'Republic sometimes is used to describe representative government as opposed to direct democracy'.
All these years I thought the difference between a republic and a democracy lay in the fact that the USA is formed of originally sovereign states that wished to retain their sovereignty. As I understand it, under a republican order we vote for electoral delegates who do the actual voting for us, and the votes are counted in state totals. In a pure democracy I understood that we vote individually and the votes are counted as one man, one vote, and no representatives involved, so that a simple majority wins elections. And the republican order as we have it in the USA brings into play the three systems that give us protection by the checks and balances of the judicial system, legislation system, and executive power. I still think I am right, or almost right.
Have I cleared anything up on this subject, or have I just muddied the waters? I feel as if I am drowning in the muddy waters of rivers of differing information the meaning of which is changing all the time.
Help!
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 24
If you want to really muddy things up, read "Negro President" by Garry Wills which details how Jefferson won the 1800 election over Adams because the South (including Jef's beloved Virginia) voted for Jefferson WITH their 12 Electoral College votes that they were apportioned because they held 500,000 slaves. Jefferson won the election by 8 Electoral College votes. If the South hadn't had those 12 votes to exercise for their slaves, Adams would have been reelected.
Sorry. Didn't mean to hijack your article.
Our forefathers…clearly understood the drawbacks of pure democracy. They had the forethought to create a republican system of laws." Jim Marrs
"Democracies have ever been the spectacles of turbulence and contention, have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property, and have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." James Madison
Simply put, a democracy equals direct vote of the people and majority rule. There's an old definition that I don't know who originated: "Two wolves and a sheep sitting down and taking a vote on what to have for dinner". That's why the Founders rejected pure democracy and set up a Constitutional Republic.
Yeah my Friend life would be easier but I wouldn't be sitting here caring or looking forward to your articles and the fun of thinking about how I am going to respond. Its growth and I still love it.
So for me, the big question is: did we have this "winner-take-all" policy in the EC from the get-go or did we invent it along the way? Whatever, this needs to be amended to prevent the fiasco of the past eight years -- or to ratify it and make it legitimate, as the case may be.
We're getting some great comments. I'm surprised. I didn't think the article would get much attention.
I'm with Debra. I intend to read Madison's Federal Papers. I think the American people are becoming too complacent through lack of a real understanding of what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the laws that formed the basis of modern law. Maybe it is time to refresh out acquaintance with those early writings. Common Sense by Thomas Paine would be appropriate as well.
I think mankind in terms of social evolution is no where remotely near a place where a true democracy would be possible.
New laws are struck down by the Courts all the time that majorities voted on... what are thought good ideas at the moment, don't always make good law.
But I don't like it that the votes are totaled by each district in my state of California. In my district, my vote won't count, because Democrats are in the minority here.
Excellent article! I see you have been plagued by the same uncertainties I was when I wrote my article on the same exact subject some time back. However, I take the definitions from, not one, but several different dictionaries as they are the entities charged with defining.
Whether we use an electoral college or not is not a factor in the definition. The electoral college made sense when communications were lacking radio, television and internet. The voters could not possibly know the various candidates or what they represented so they elected persons whom they could know to do the voting for them. It was assumed that the electors could know the actual candidates.
This situation is obsolete today and the college serves little to no purpose. Few elections have been effected by it. And those in elections that were incredibly close. To do away with this system would make a big difference in the turnout for elections as people would feel, for the first time ever, that their vote counted!
"Protections" supposedly offered by this college are really non-existent as no president can formulate even one law, that is the prerogative of the congress. The election of a given president cannot cause mischief in the process because the congress must do it, not the president.
Ours is a representative democracy or a representative, constitutional republic. Pays your money, take your choice. A direct democracy couldn't work in a nation of three hundred million people.
And while we have, and should have, a majority rule, the majority can become oppressive to the minority if that minority is not protected by a constitution. Even very popular legislation that infringes on these rights cannot prevail, thank God!
Under our current system, the only vote one can cast for a president is in the nomination process and in a caucus state. Your vote there goes to the person in the majority at the level involved. All other votes for president lack true authenticity because today, most electors to be voted upon, are not people whom we know. And the pledged delegates are pledged only for the first ballot in the convention! After that, the elector for whom you voted may change his or her vote for a person you would consider the worst person possible!
The college has served its purpose well and is now obsolete and should be given a decent burial. That will happen, whether in my lifetime or not is questionable, but it will happen. The people, who ostensibly manage this country, will see to that in time.
My research for my article, like yours, discovered a lot of differing opinions and definitions. A common refrain was that the definitions were shat the person offering the opinion defined them to be, and that any authoritative opinion to the contrary was absolutely wrong. We must go by some authoritative source and we should use the same source for both terms, so I'll take the dictionary when several of them concur.
If you'd care to read my article on the subject, and the rather interesting comment thread, it is under my profile page.
Again, good article and representative of good homework!