Understanding the difference between democracy and Republicanism is the key to preserving the Republic of the United States. So many want to believe and push the idea that America is a democracy. They continue to put polls out to write laws and think they can govern us under popular opinion. So, if we look to our founding fathers for the answer and some other great leaders of history, maybe we can see why the United States of America was not established as a democracy, but rather a republic. Benjamin Franklin: When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers: We are a Republican Government, Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of democracy…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. John Adams: Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. Thomas Jefferson: A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%. James Madison: 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 death. John Quincy Adams: The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived. Thomas Jefferson: The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. Benjamin Franklin (maybe): Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. James Madison: Democracy was the right of the people to choose their own tyrant. John Adams: That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the world. Thomas Jefferson: All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that through the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression. John Witherspoon: Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state – it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage. James Madison: We may define a republic to be – a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior. It is essential to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion or a favored class of it: otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans and claim for their government the honorable title of republic. John Marshall: Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos. Winston Churchill: The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter. Sydney J Harris: Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be. Karl Marx: Democracy is the road to socialism.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 00:51:04 +0000
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