A Republic, Not A Democracy
It is notable that we pledge our
allegiance to a republic, and not to a democracy.
The original wording of the pledge of allegiance was:
I pledge allegiance
to my flag and to the republic for which it stands: one nation, indivisible, with liberty
and justice for all.
It has been claimed that the pledge of allegiance to the
flag first appeared in a children's magazine called The Youth's Companion. On Columbus Day, October 12, 1892, by
proclamation of President Benjamin Harrison, the pledge was first used by
school children, and it was amended by the substitution of the words the
flag of the United States of America rather than my flag. The pledge was adopted officially on
Flag Day, June 14, 1924 by joint resolution of Congress and was again amended,
this time in 1954, by the addition of the words under God.
How many times a day, listening to the
news on television, or radio, reading the newspaper, or listening to general
conversation, have you heard of our form of government referred to as a democracy? Just what is a democracy anyway?
DEMOCRACY—Government by the people;
a form of government, in which the supreme power is lodged in the hands of the
people collectively, or in which the people exercise the power of legislation. Such
as the government of Athens. [1]
At first glance it seems that this fits exactly what we
learned in a previous lesson, that the sovereign power
of this nation rests with the people, not the government:
In the United States, Sovereignty
resides in the people, who act through the organs established by the
Constitution. [2]
ORGAN, 2] The instrumentation or means of conveyance or communication. A secretary of state is the organ of
communication between the government and a foreign power. [3]
...The Congress cannot invoke the
sovereign power of the people to override their will as thus declared. [4]
Why is it, do you suppose, that we
pledge allegiance to the Republic for which it (the flag) stands and not
the democracy? Is there a
difference between the terms democracy and that of republic?
REPUBLIC, A commonwealth; a state in which the exercise of the sovereign
power is lodged in representatives elected by the people. In modern usage, it differs from a
democracy or democratic state, in which the people exercise the powers of
sovereignty in person. Yet the
democracies of Greece are often called republics. [5]
So we see several things regarding the differences between a
democracy and a republic:
In a democracy the sovereignty of the nation rests
with the people, as it also does in a republic. The primary difference is in the exercise
of that sovereignty. In a democracy
the people exercise the powers of sovereignty in person, while in a republic
they exercise the powers of sovereignty through representatives elected by the
people, or through the organs established by the constitution.
The true distinction between these
forms (democracy and republic) is, that in a
Democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a
republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. [6]
The above definition by Madison of what constitutes a Democracy
has also been termed a 'pure democracy'.
Those who wrote our Constitution, which created our government, never
mentioned a democracy at all in that document. Nowhere in the Constitution does it even
mention a democracy, nowhere at all.
That same Constitution does however guarantee to each State a republican
form of government:
Article IV, Section 4. The United States shall guarantee to
every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect
each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the
Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.
The founders of this nation decided to
establish a republic rather than a democracy:
In Philadelphia, a
Mrs. Powel asked Dr. Franklin, "Well Doctor what have we
got a republic or a monarchy?"
"A republic," replied the
Doctor, "if you can keep it." [7]
Our founders, in establishing our republic, had some very
harsh words regarding a democracy:
... 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.[8]
On May 31, 1787, Edmund Randolph told his fellow members of
the Constitutional Convention that the object for which the delegates had met was ...
to provide a cure for the evils under
which the United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origin
every man had found it in the turbulence and trials of democracy...." [9]
At that Constitutional Convention
another delegate, Elbridge Gerry, said,
The evils we experience flow from the
excess of democracy. The people do
not want [do not lack] virtue; but are the
dupes of pretended patriots. [10]
That a pure
democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved
that no position is more false than this.
The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never
possessed one good feature of government.
Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity. [11]
As we learned earlier, in both a democracy and in a
republic, the sovereign power of the nation rests with the people. The difference is in how they exercise
that sovereign power. In a
democracy the people exercise their power in person,
all is subject to the will of the majority directly. In a republic the people exercise their
sovereign power through the organs created by the constitution, through
the people that they elect to those offices created by the constitution. In the words of the founders,
exercising sovereign power directly in person through a democracy was: the character of tyranny, the figure of
deformity, the evils of excess, turbulence and trials, contention, incompatible
with personal security or the rights of property, and so on.
A moments consideration of a 'pure
democracy' reveals a couple of its primary weaknesses, it would only work with
a very small population, and rights would be subject to the will of the
majority.
The founders worried much about what
they termed 'factions':
[T]he same advantage which a
republic has over a Democracy, in controlling the effects of faction, is
enjoyed by a large over a small republic . . . [12]
By a faction, I understand a number of citizens,
whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and
actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the
rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the
community. [13]
A republican form of government, or properly termed, our
Constitutional Republic, was one of the guards against a segment of society, a
faction, from dictating their whims to the rest of society, this is what
Alexander Hamilton was warning against when he stated regarding democracies,
"Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity." Another guard against factions that was
built into our system of government is our Electoral College.
A very good example of a possible faction in a pure
democracy is the anti-gun movement, united by passion rather than facts, and
adverse to the rights of others. In
a pure democracy, if the anti-gun view became the one held by the majority
(which thankfully it has not), then they could destroy our right to keep and
bear arms by dictate of the majority.
Our Constitutional Republic stands as a guard against this type of
factionalism.
___________________
[1] Websters
1828 Dictionary [back]
[2] Chisholm v Georgia,
2 Dall 419, 471; Penhallow
v Doane's Administrators, 3 Dal
54, 93; McCullock v Maryland, 4 Wheat
316, 404, 405; Yick Yo
Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 370 [back]
[3] Websters
1828 Dictionary [back]
[4] Perry v United
States, 294 U.S. 330. 353 (1935). [back]
[5] Websters
1828 Dictionary [back]
[6] James Madison,
Federalist Paper #14
[back]
[7] September 18, 1787
Recorded by James McHenry, one of Washington's aides, in his diary; published
in the American Historical Review, XI (1906), 618. —Bartlett's Familiar
Quotations, Sixteenth Edition, at 310:26, referenced under "A
republic, if you can keep it."
[back]
[8] James Madison, known
as the father of the U.S. Constitution, in Essay #10 of The Federalist Papers [back]
[9] The People Of The Republic:
Edmund Randolph, 1753-1813.
A lawyer who, in
1774 upon the retirement of Thomas Jefferson, took over his law practice.
Offices Held: Clerk of the Committee on Courts and
Justice, House of Burgesses, May 1774; Deputy Muster Master General of the Continental
Army, Southern District, 1775-1776; Aide-de-camp to General Washington,
August-November 1775; Delegate, representing Williamsburg, to the Fifth
Virginia Convention, 1776; Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia,
1776-1786; Mayor of Williamsburg, 1776-1777; Justice of the Peace for James
City County, 1777; Clerk of the Virginia House of Delegates, 1778-1779;
Delegate to the Continental Congress, 1779, 1781-1786; Governor of Virginia,
1786-1788; Delegate to the Constitutional Convention, 1787; Delegate to the
Virginia Ratification Convention, 1788; United States Attorney General,
1789-1794; United States Secretary of State, 1794-1795. [back]
[10] The People Of The Republic:
Elbridge Gerry, 1744-181
American patriot
and political leader. A signer of the
Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.
Offices Held: Delegate to the Continental Congress in
1776; Delegate to the Constitutional Convention 1787; U.S. Congressman;
Governor of Massachusetts; Representative in the Massachusetts State
Legislature; Vice President Of The United States. [back]
[11] Alexander Hamilton, in
a speech on June 21, 1788 [back]
[12] James Madison,
Federalist #10 [back]
[13] James Madison,
Federalist (as quoted in Websters 1828 Dictionary) [back]
© 1995, 2001
Anthony K. Pritchard
All Rights Reserved
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