A Republic, Not a Democracy
Thursday, March 3, 2005
By Steve Farrell
Independent American Party
Those who delude themselves into believing our public schools and universities
are telling the truth about the foundations of American government,
or for that matter, teaching our youth how to think ― ought
to read through the stack of emails I regularly receive from educated
individuals who passionately defend that which is absolutely false
and totally nonsensical.
The latest came from a female New Yorker, responding to my article,
“Blessed Tolerance: The ‘Virtue’ of a Republic in Decline,” who
worked herself into a lather over my suggestion that a “me first
… anything goes” democracy is a shortcut to tyranny, and that
a return to “liberty under the law,” as per a republic, is what
America needs if America expects to remain free.
I noted, summarizing Plato, that the ‘democratic man,’ overly fixed
on his beloved self interest, first becomes tyrannized by his
own lusts, and next tyrannizes everyone else in an unending attempt
to satisfy his ever growing list of lusts ― which can never
be fully satisfied.
The point being, a society dominated by weak and undisciplined, brutish
and unprincipled individuals is ripe for tyranny because slavery
and tyranny is already their lot.
Welcome to human nature 101. When self-love and self-indulgence are ranked
as the greatest of rights, and toleration
for every sort of extreme as the highest of virtues, trouble follows.
Morality, law, stability take a hit. Turbulence, anarchy, political
opportunism come in their wake.
Why is that so hard to understand? This is why the founding father
of modern communism, Karl Marx, initiated the battle cry of the
Communist Manifesto, “We must win the battle of democracy!” And
this is why the Father of the US Constitution, James Madison,
opposed democracy, in these words:
“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.” [1]
“A republic”, by contrast, … “opens
a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking.”
[2]
Get it? Communist Founder Marx wanted democracy, and American Founder
Madison did not, for the very same reasons: democracies are unstable,
violent, short lived political systems whose chief aim is the
overthrow of private property.
James Madison
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But that is not all. Democracies have other problems, as well, especially
in their outlook on equality. They seek to “reduce mankind,” Madison
warned, “[until they are] equalized and assimilated in their possessions,
their opinions, and their passions.” [3]
That is, they preach and practice a false equality that, in the end,
impoverishes and enslaves mankind economically, intellectually,
and morally into one common miserable lot.
This is the exact opposite of the sort of equality the American Founders
promoted. St. George Tucker, the author of the 1803, “View of
the Constitution of the United States” (the first commentary on the US Constitution), explained what our founders meant by “all men are created equal”:
By equality … is to be understood, equality of civil rights and not
of condition. Equality of rights necessarily produces inequality
of possessions; because, by the laws of nature and of equality,
every man has a right to use his faculties in an honest way, and
the fruits of his labor, thus acquired, are his own. But some
men have more strength than others; some more health; some more
industry; and some more skill and ingenuity, than others; and
according to these, and other circumstances the products of their
labors must be various, and their property must become unequal.
The rights of property are sacred, and must be protected; otherwise
there would be no exertion of either ingenuity or industry, and
consequently nothing but extreme poverty, misery, and brutal ignorance.
[4]
St. George Tucker
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Indeed, the American Founders rejected the equal ends approach to equality
because such an equality, the equality of a pure democracy, produces
precisely what communism has always produced: “nothing but extreme
poverty, misery, and brutal ignorance, ” even as it undermines
the best in men.
The Republic our Founders gave us, by embracing true equality ―
meaning equality under the law, and equality of God given rights
― produced the most ingenious, industrious, prosperous,
happy, and enlightened people in history.
And so let’s not pussyfoot around here. What, then, is the real object
of a national educational establishment that has rewritten our
history books, and imposed curriculum mandates that teach the
rising generation that the American Founders gave us a democracy?
And, what, then, is this educational establishment’s real object when
they use democracy as justification for a “me first, anything
goes” agenda, that bans Capitalism and Christianity from their
“anything goes” list?
Are we really naive enough to believe that this fraud was perpetrated
by men of pure motives, men and women who love American liberty
so much that they feel compelled to lie about her foundations?
My ‘educated’ reader accused me of writing “an article supporting
the end of our democracy.” If she had been truly educated she
might have said with Jefferson, “In questions of power, then,
let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from
mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” [5]
She might have said, “you are right, Steve. We are ‘a government of
laws, not of men,’ [6] that is, a republic, not a democracy ―
and since ‘the best republics will be virtuous, and have been
so’ [7] it is incumbent upon all of us to say ‘No!’ to false definitions
of equality, and “No!’ to moral extremes that aim to undermine
‘liberty under law,’ in favor of ‘anything goes,’ on the way to
absolute tyranny.”
She might have said something like that, but she didn’t; and neither
will millions of others similarly educated in this country. And
so our work is cut out for us, isn’t it?
1. Madison, James. Federalist 10
2.
Ibid.
3.
Ibid.
4.
Tucker, St. George.
View of the Constitution of the United
States: With Selected Writings,Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, 1999, pgs. 40-41.
5.
Elliot. The Debates in the Several State Conventions On
the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Volume 4, p. 543. As quoted from the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, 1799 (authored by Jefferson)
6.
Adams, John, Novanglus Papers, no. 7., Adams published articles in 1774 in the Boston, Massachusetts, Gazette using the pseudonym "Novanglus." In this paper he credited James Harrington with expressing the idea this way. Harrington described a republic as "the empire of laws and not of men" in his 1656 work, The Commonwealth of Oceana, p. 35 (1771). The phrase gained wider currency when Adams used it in the Massachusetts Constitution,
Bill of Rights, article 30 (1780).
Steve Farrell, Author/writer is a contributing columnist at America’s News Page, NewsMax.com, the former managing editor at Right Magazine, a graduate of the University of the State of New York’s Regents College, and a former Air Force communications manager.
His credits include two books: Missing the Mark With Religion, the first in a multi-volume series focused on religion in public life, to be released this winter; “Dark Rose,”
an inspirational fiction novel in its final edit; and several other books in various stages of production. His work, besides appearing in NewsMax.com, has appeared in such respected venues as World Net Daily, the World Tribune, and Mises.org (home of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute).
A convert to the Church, Brother Farrell currently serves as the ward mission leader of the River Mountain Ward, in the Henderson, Lake Mead, Nevada Stake; where he is married to the former Jeanette Stebbing. They are the parents of seven children.
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