The Constitution is a form of higher law that: (1) specifies the fundamental rights of citizens’ life, liberty, and property, (2) establishes the government’s responsibility to protect these rights, (3) imposes limitations on how those in government can use their power, (4) establishes the principle of private domain, and (5) cannot be altered without widespread consent among the citizens.
The deliberations at the 1787 Constitutional Convention took place from May 14 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Concerned citizens gathered outside Independence Hall when the deliberations had concluded to learn what had been produced behind closed doors. The answer was promptly provided. A certain Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, ”Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Without any hesitation, Franklin replied, ”A republic, if you can keep it.” This exchange is preserved in a diary entry by James McHenry, one of the signers of the Constitution. It was later reproduced in the American Historical Review of 1906.
The nation’s founders believed that (as stated in the Declaration of Independence), ”Man… has been endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” They determined that these rights should not be violated by an unchecked majority, any more than they should be violated by an unchecked king or monarch. They understood that majority rule would quickly deteriorate into mob rule and then into tyranny. They had studied the history of Greek democracies and the Roman Republic. They clearly understood the relative freedom and stability that had characterized the latter, and the conflicts and upheavals – which quickly led to despotism – that had characterized the former. When they formulated the Constitution, they created a government based on laws and not on individuals, a republic and not a democracy.
• Edmund Randolph from Virginia participated in the 1787 convention. He demonstrated a clear understanding of the inherent dangers of democracy; during the first weeks of the Constitutional Convention, he reminded his colleagues that they had gathered to ”remedy the defects of the United States; that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and trials of democracy…”
• Samuel Adams, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, advocated for the new constitution in his state precisely because it would not lead to the creation of a democracy. ”Democracy never lasts long,” he remarked. ”It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself,” he asserted, ”There has never been a democracy that did not ’commit suicide.'”
• Alexander Hamilton from New York thundered in a speech on June 21, 1788, urging his state to ratify the constitution: ”It has been observed 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.” Earlier, at the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton had stated, ”We are a republican government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of democracy.”
• James Madison, rightfully known as the ”Father of the Constitution,” wrote in The Federalist, No. 10: ”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.” ”The Federalist Papers” were written to encourage the citizens of New York to support the new constitution during the ratification debate.
• George Washington, who chaired the Constitutional Convention and later accepted the honor of being elected as the United States’ first president under its new constitution, declared in his inaugural address on April 30, 1789, that he would strive to ”preserve… the republican model of government.”
• Fisher Ames served in the American Congress during the eight years George Washington was president. He was a prominent member of the Massachusetts convention and ratified the constitution for that state; he referred to democracy as ”a government of the passions of the multitude, or, no less properly, of their leaders’ passions and vices.” At another time, he called democratic majority rule ”the intermediate stage on the way to… tyranny.” He later stated, ”Democracy, in its best state, is nothing more than the diktat of mass’s whims, which are usually held in check, but when they break free, they kill their caretaker, set the building on fire, and then die.” In an essay titled ”The Democratic Slough,” he wrote that the Constitution’s founders ”intended our government should be a republic, which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism.”
Given the founders’ views on republics and democracies, it is not surprising that the Constitution does not contain the word ”democracy” and mandates: ”The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government.”
Changes during the 20th century
These principles were previously widely understood. During the 19th century, many of the great leaders, both in the USA and in other countries, agreed with the nation’s founders. John Marshall, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835, shared Fisher Ames’ views. He wrote, ”There is no difference between a balanced republic and a democracy. The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.” The American poet James Russell Lowell warned, ”Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.” Lowell’s disdain for democracy was shared by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who remarked, ”Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.” On the other side of the Atlantic, the British statesman Thomas Babington Macaulay said, ”I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty and civilization or both. Benjamin Disraeli and Herbert Spencer, both British, would undoubtedly agree with their countryman. Lord Acton wrote, ”The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather, that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.”
By the beginning of the 20th century, the myth that democracy symbolized good governance and that the nation’s founders had created such a system in the USA had become more widespread. This misconception was reinforced by President Woodrow Wilson’s famous appeal for the United States to enter World War I ”to make the world safe for democracy” and by President Franklin Roosevelt’s declarations in 1940 that America ”must be the great arsenal of democracy” by coming to England’s aid in World War II.
An indication of the radical change that occurred is the difference between the War Department’s ”Training Manual No. 2000-25” from 1928, which was intended for citizenship education, and what followed. The 1928 American government document provided the correct definition of democracy:
”A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of ’direct’ expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic—negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.”
This manual also abundantly noted that the nation’s founders ”made a very marked distinction between a republic and a democracy… and said explicitly at several points that they had established a republic.”
But by 1932, protests over its use resulted in its withdrawal. By 1936, Senator Homer Truett Bone, a Democrat representing Washington state, was demanding in the Senate that the document be completely discarded. Finding a copy of the manual had by this time become nearly impossible. Decades later, in an article in the October 1973 Military Review, Lieutenant Colonel Paul B. Parham explained that the Army had ceased to use the manual after protest letters ”by individual citizens.” Notably, Parham also noted that the word democracy ”appears to be of peculiar significance to, and to have a special meaning for, the communists.”
By 1952, the U.S. Army had begun to extol democracy rather than warn against it in Field Manual 21-13, which was titled ”Soldier’s Guide.” This new manual falsely claimed, ”Because the United States is a democracy, the majority determines how our Government will be organized and run…” (original emphasis).
Yet important voices continued to warn against the praise of democracy. In 1931, the English Duke of Northumberland published a pamphlet titled ”The History of World Revolutions,” in which he asserted, ”The introduction of democracy into all European nations is disastrous for good government, for freedom, for law and order, for respect for authority, and for religion, and in the end it will produce a state of chaos from which a new world tyranny will arise.”
In 1939, historians Charles and Mary Beard entered the fray, demanding historical accuracy and vigorously asserting in their book ”America in Midpassage”: ”At no time, at no place, in solemn convention assembled, through duly chosen representatives, had the American people officially proclaimed the United States to be a democracy. The Constitution contains no mention of that word, because the Founders were not such fools as to bequeath to us a democracy.” The Beards also accurately noted that the nation’s founders ”used the word ’democracy’ only as a synonym for ’anarchy’.”
In the 1950s, Clarence Manion, dean of Notre Dame Law School, voiced the same opinion and reinforced what the Beards had correctly observed. He said: ”Anyone who has studied American history honestly and seriously knows that the Founders wrote both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution without using the word ’democracy’ even once. There is no mention of the word in any of the state constitutions then in existence. [The men] most influential at the creation and framing of our national government used the word ’democracy’ only in a very scornful sense to distinguish it sharply from the American republican form of our American constitutional system.”
On September 17 (Constitution Day), 1961, Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society, delivered an important speech titled ”Republics and Democracies,” in which he proclaimed, ”This is a Republic, not a democracy. Let’s keep it that way!” The speech, which was later published and distributed as a pamphlet, provided a rude awakening for many Americans. In his comments, Welch not only provided evidence of how the nation’s founders had established a republic and had condemned democracy, but he also warned that the definitions had been distorted and that powerful forces were working to transform the American republic into a democracy in order to bring about a dictatorship.
Some dictionary definitions
Form of Government; Republican Form of Government. In which the powers of sovereignty are vested in the people and are exercised by the people, either directly, or through representatives chosen by the people, to whom those powers are specially delegated. In re Duncan, 139 U.S. 449, 11 S.Ct. 573, 35 L.Ed. 219; Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 162, 22 L.Ed. 627. [Black’s Law Dictionary, 5th edition, p. 626]
Democracy. A form of government in which the sovereign power is vested in and exercised by all of the people directly or indirectly through a system of representation, as distinguished from a monarchy, aristocracy, or oligarchy. [Black’s Law Dictionary, 5th edition, p. 388-389]
Note: Black’s Law Dictionary, 5th edition, can be found in almost all legal libraries and in most law offices.
Please note that in a democracy, the ultimate power resides in all free citizens. The ultimate power is not divided into smaller entities, such as individual citizens. To address an issue, it is only the entire political assembly that has the right to act. Additionally, individuals who are citizens have duties and obligations to the government. The government’s only duties towards citizens are those predefined by the law of the entire state.
In a republic, the power rests with the people themselves, whether it is one or many. In a republic, it is possible to act independently or through representatives to address an issue. Furthermore, the people have no obligations to the government; instead, the government hired by the people is obliged to its owner, the people.
Means to an End
As the British author G.K. Chesterton said in the 20th century, ”You can never have a revolution to establish democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.”
The communist revolutionary Karl Marx understood this principle well. That’s why this enemy of freedom stated in The Communist Manifesto that ”the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.” For what purpose? To ”abolish private property,” to ”gradually wrest capital from the bourgeoisie’s hands,” to ”centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state,” and more.
Another advocate of democracy was the communist Mao Tse-tung, who in 1939 (a decade before he consolidated control over mainland China) said, ”On the whole, the Chinese revolutionary movement, led by the Communist Party, encompasses two stages, i.e., the democratic and the socialist revolutions, which are fundamentally different revolutionary processes, and the second stage can be carried through only after the first has been completed. The democratic revolution is a necessary preparation for the socialist revolution, and the socialist revolution is the inevitable sequel to the democratic revolution. The ultimate aim for which all communists strive is to bring about a socialist and communist society.”
Yet another democracy advocate is Mikhail Gorbachev, who in his 1987 book ”Perestroika” wrote, ”According to Lenin, socialism and democracy are indivisible…. The essence of perestroika lies in the fact that it unites socialism with democracy [emphasis in the original] and revives the Leninist concept… We want more socialism, and, therefore, more democracy.”
The pursuit of democracy has only been possible because the Constitution has been ignored, violated, and circumvented. The Constitution defines and limits the powers of the federal government. These powers, all enumerated, do not include agricultural support programs, housing, education assistance, food stamps, etc. According to the Constitution, Congress does not have the right to pass any laws it wishes; it only has the right to enact laws that are constitutional. Anyone who doubts the founders’ intent to limit federal power, and thereby protect individual rights, should examine the language of the Bill of Rights, including the introductory sentence of the First Amendment (”Congress shall make no law…”).
In Congressman Ron Paul’s speech before Congress on January 29, 2010, he said, among other things:
”The difference between a democracy and a republic was simple. Would we live under the ancient concept of rule by human power or the Enlightenment concept of the rule of law? A constitution in and of itself does not guarantee liberty in a republican form of government. Not even a perfect constitution, with this goal in mind, is better than the moral character and the will of the people. Although the United States Constitution was the best ever written to protect liberty, and included protections against the dangers of democracy, it was still flawed from the beginning. Rather than guaranteeing freedom to all people, the authors yielded to the democratic majority’s demand for compromise on the issue of slavery. This mistake, compounded by others along the way, culminated in a civil war that certainly could have been avoided by a better understanding of, and a greater commitment to, the establishment of a constitutional republic.
Proponents of democracy are always quick to point out one of the advantages they believe this system offers, that is, the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. This is true to a limited extent, but the proponents of this system never concern themselves with the sacrifices being made by those who are forced to give up their wealth. The so-called advantages are short-lived, as democracy consumes wealth without consideration of those who produce it. Eventually, the programs cannot be financed, and the dependency that has been developed prompts angry demands for even more fairness.
Because it is so difficult to stem the tide toward liberty, the system ultimately results in various forms of tyranny. As our Republic deteriorates, the chorus of protest grows. The central government becomes more authoritarian with each crisis. As equality and uniformity in education deteriorate, the federal government’s role is greatly expanded. As quality health care fails, the role of government in medicine is greatly enhanced. Foreign policy blunders prompt calls for more interventions overseas and a bigger empire. Calls for enhanced security become more strident, and concern for liberty dwindles. Taxes on our homeland represent a major escalation of bureaucracy, as the government attempts to protect us from all the real or imaginary dangers that it identifies. The single most important priority of our Founders, protecting freedom, is totally ignored. Those expressing a serious concern for personal liberty are condemned as selfish and unpatriotic.
It was no accident that the Federal Reserve was established in 1913 when the dramatic shift toward democracy was clearly understood. An income tax was also introduced. At the time, elected senators were introduced and our foreign policy became aggressively interventionist. Even with the income tax, welfare, and war planning, the planners knew they would need to eliminate the restraints on printing money. Counterfeiting is a heinous crime, but counterfeiting by government and a banking system based on fractional reserves was required to seductively pay for the demands of the majority.
This is why democracies always lead to debasement of the currency by the inflation of the money supply. Some of today’s planners understand this process well. Others, through ignorance, believe that the money-creation powers of central banking are a convenience with few associated risks. This is where they err. Even with bankers and the wealthy endorsing paper money, believing they can protect themselves against its insidious nature, many are entrapped by the economic downturns that always come. They do not create a new era for us today; countless other nations have suffered the same fate throughout history.
The belief that democratic demands can be financed by debt, taxation, and credit creation is based on false hope and a failure to understand how it contributes to the turbulence when democracies fail. As a country becomes a democracy, the very purpose of government is transformed. Instead of the state’s goal being the guarantee of liberty, justice, property rights, and voluntary exchange, the state becomes involved in the impossible task of achieving economic fairness, detailed economic planning, and protection from ourselves in all our activities.”
Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995) was an American pioneer in the field of PR (public relations) and propaganda along with Ivy Lee, referred to in his obituary as the ”father of PR.” In ”Propaganda” (1928), Bernays claimed that the manipulation of public opinion was a necessary part of democracy and explained how an invisible government using such manipulation ruled the country from behind the scenes:
”The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses.”
Constitutional Republic vs. Democracy Part 1: Democracy Leads to Tyranny
