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bartermania

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bartermania

Re: bartermania post# 938

Sunday, 03/05/2006 7:23:51 AM

Sunday, March 05, 2006 7:23:51 AM

Post# of 10217
(An excerpt) A Republic, If You Can Keep It

At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18, 1787, a Mrs. Powell, anxiously awaiting the results, pressed Benjamin Franklin as he emerged from Independence Hall. She asked, “Well doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin quickly replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

From anti-federalist John Taylor to federalist Fisher Ames; from James Madison of Virginia to Noah Webster of Massachusetts, Americans believed that they had founded a republic, thereby charting a middle course between the Scylla of a monarchy and the Charybdis of a democracy.

John Taylor, the preeminent theorist of Jeffersonian Old Republicanism, proclaimed that “[a] federal republic is the best for maintaining a republican form of government over a country so extensive as the United States,” dividing power “between Federal and State departments to restrain ambitious men in both.” (J. Taylor, Tyranny Unmasked 263 (Liberty Fund: 1992)) In a series of essays on “Monarchical versus Republican Government,” federalist Fisher Ames warned against appeals to “the will of the people,” claiming them to be mere camouflage for demagogues to seize tyrannical power without regard for the rule of law. (I Works of Fisher Ames 116-186 (Liberty Fund: 1983))

In Federalist numbers 10, 14, and 48, Madison insisted that the new Constitution established a republic, not a democracy, emphasizing in Federalist No. 10
that a “Republican” form of government protected the people from the dangers of tyranny of the majority. In his “Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution,” Noah Webster, writing as an American citizen, extolled the virtues of the American republic’s bicameral legislature; the very design of which was to protect the people from rash and hasty laws passed by a transient, passionate majority.

This unity among America’s founding statesmen remained unbroken as late as 1945, 158 years after the ratification of the Constitution, when the 79th Congress of the United States unhesitatingly approved, by joint resolution, the official pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States, containing the phrase “and to the Republic for which it stands.” Yet 60 years later, on the cusp of the 21st century, this affirmation that America is a republic, like the pledge itself, has fallen from favor. In its place is a new declaration that America is, and always has been, a democracy.

Indeed, there is hardly a voice left in Congress, much less in the White House, Republican or Democrat, who refers to our nation’s government as a republic. Even President Bush declared that his election to the presidency was a vindication of the integrity of “American democracy.” In doing so, the new president was simply following suit. For several decades, America’s political leaders have been promoting the virtues of America’s “democratic ideal” within, by shaping public policy according to the latest opinion polls, and at the same time, exporting democracy abroad, by employing American military power to reshape other nations’ governments to conform more closely to “the will of the people.” Both goals stand, however, in direct contradiction to America’s founding principles.

America Is Not A Democracy

Those who insist that the United States of America is a democracy rest their claim on the foundational principle in the nation’s charter, the Declaration of Independence, “[t]hat governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” To support this claim, they point to the preamble of the Constitution of the United States which begins “We, the people of the United States…do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States.” Additionally, they rely upon statements such as the one that appears in Article I, Section1 of the Florida constitution that “[a]ll political power is inherent in the people,” a phrase that appears in one form or another in every one of the 50 state constitutions.

Such statements do not, however, support the proposition that the civil governments in America are democracies – quite the contrary. Read in context, all of these statements support the proposition that America’s governments are republican in form, not democratic.

First, although the Declaration of Independence does affirm that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, it does not, however, declare that governments derive their purposes from the consent of the governed. Rather the Declaration of Independence avers that those purposes are derived from the nature of a created order, an order in which all mankind are endowed with certain “inalienable rights,” namely life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Therefore, the Declaration of Independence concludes that governments are instituted to secure these rights, not to enforce the will of the governed.

Second, although the Constitution of the United States does affirm that the people ordained and established the government of the United States, they did so, not to promote the will of the people, but to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity….” Likewise, although the state constitutions affirm that all power is inherent in the people, they did not establish state governments to obey the will of the people, but to ensure that all individuals enjoy their pre-existing rights of life, liberty, and property with which they have been naturally endowed.

To achieve these purposes, the people of the United States and of the several states well knew that a government under the direct control of the people was downright dangerous, because, as James Madison put it in Federalist No. 10, “there is nothing to check the inducements [of a majority] to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual.” Thus, Madison contended, that a major task for any people seeking a government to protect life, liberty, and property was to “prevent” the majority from imposing “injustice and violence” on individuals who did not share the majority’s “passion or interest.”

To that end, Madison and his constitutional colleagues chose a republican, not a democratic form of government.


Link: http://www.thelibertycommittee.org/repdem.htm

- I will not be a slave to or of death cults - n/b/k - NO QUARTER FOR CORRUPTION http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=3319

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