Setting the record Straight
Having missed the beginning of this latest United States v. Canada squabble, I don’t want to get mired down in the details.
I did however want to offer a correction… The United States is not a Democracy. While all of our major network newsreaders, most people on the street, and the very Politicians that swear an oath seem not to know the difference, the United States in in fact a Republic.
The two could not be more different… In fact, the differences were so important that in older Army Training Manuals, under the Citizenship Chapter, the manual offerred these descriptions of the two:
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 is be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Results in demogogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.
Republic: Authority is derived through the election by the people of public officials best fitted to represent them. Attitude toward law is the administration of justice in accord with fixed principles and established evidence, with a strict regard to consequences. A greater number of citizens and extent of territory may be brought within its compass. Avoids the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or mobocracy. Results in statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice, contentment, and progress. Is the “standard form” of government throughout the world.
Interestingly, FDR had this removed from all manuals printed after 1934… He knew that implementing his progressive (translation: socialistic) agenda would be more difficult if he continued to educate millions of young men on the distinction between the two. But that’s not the issue…
The issue is that we are a Republic, a nation of laws, not of men. There are limits to what our Government is supposed to be able to do, regardless of the will of the majority. Emerging from the Continental Congress, Benjamin Franklin was asked what form of Government they had given the new nation. His reply:
“A Republic, if you can keep it.”
- Pii