I started thinking about democracy and a republic and realized that I really didnt know the difference between the two. I am posting this because maybe you dont know either. Take a little time and do some investigation on your own... This is what I am sharing... America is a Constitutional Republic....How often have you heard people refer to America as a Democracy? When was the last time that you heard America referred to as a Republic? There is a very good reason that our Pledge of Allegiance refers to our country as a Republic and there is a very good reason that our Declaration of Independence and our constitution do not even mentioned the word democracy. Many people are under the false impression our form of government is a democracy, or representative democracy. This is completely untrue. The Founders were extremely knowledgeable about the issue of democracy and feared a democracy as much as a monarchy. They understood that the only entity that can take away the peoples freedom is their own government, either by being too weak to protect them from external threats or by becoming too powerful and taking over every aspect of life....In a Republic, the sovereignty resides with the people themselves. In a Republic, one may act on his own or through his representatives when he chooses to solve a problem. The people have no obligation to the government; instead, the government is a servant of the people, and obliged to its owner, We the People....A Constitutional Republic has some similarities to democracy in that it uses democratic processes to elect representatives and pass new laws, etc. The critical difference lies in the fact that a Constitutional Republic has a Constitution that limits the powers of the government. It also spells out how the government is structured, creating checks on its power and balancing power between the different branches....The goal of a Constitutional Republic was to avoid the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or mobocracy (mob rule). - Daneen G. Peterson, Ph.D.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 06:31:56 +0000
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