“A Republic Not A Democracy”
This is a redaction from a YouTube presentation by Dan Smoot in 1966.
Authored by By Dan Smoot April 18, 1966 — A redaction follows.
“A Constitutional Republic, Not a Democracy.”
The idea of a democracy is universal equality; the idea of a Constitutional Republic is individual Liberty.
A democracy always degenerates into a dictatorship that promises government-guaranteed equality and security but delivers nothing but poverty and serfdom for the people that it robs and rules.
America was founded as a Constitutional Republic to safeguard the liberty of the people against the tyranny of democracy or a one-man dictatorship.
In this Century, great strides have been made towards the goal of subverting our Republic towards a Democracy. The most tactical of subversions is the subversion of “language.”
By calling our nation a democracy until people thoughtlessly accept the use of the term, the totalitarians have obscured the real meaning of our principles of government.
A Democracy is a political system in which the people periodically by majority vote at the polls, select their rulers. The rulers have absolute power to make whatever laws they please by majority vote among themselves.
In a “Constitutional Republic,” The people also, by majority vote at the polls, select rulers who make laws by majority vote among themselves, but the rulers cannot make any laws they please because the Constitution severely restrict their law-making power.
The Ideal of a Democracy is Universal equality, the idea of a Constitutional Republic is individual Liberty.
In this century, great strides have been made towards the goal of subverting our Republic and transforming it into a Democracy. The foremost tactic of the subverters is subversion of language.
By calling America a Democracy until people thoughtlessly accept and use the term, totalitarians have obscured the real meaning of American Principles of government. Note the following passages from a recent article distributed by the New York Times News Service —
“in the United States and other leading democracies, recent years have seen perceptible growth in Executive Authority as society becomes more equalitarian, it tends increasingly to concentrate absolute power in the hands of one single man; this is a voluntary surrender of a free people escaping from freedom to one autocratic master.”
Note the following from Gunnar Myrdal’s “American Dilemma” —
“in America, Liberty often provided an opportunity for the stronger to rob the weaker; against this, the equalitarianism in the American creed has been persistently revolting, and in the conflict between equality and liberty, equality is slowly winning. In America, conservatism has, to a great extent, been perverted into a cult of the Constitution. This is unfortunate since the Constitution is in many respects impractical and ill-suited for modern conditions. The worship of the Constitution is also the most flagrant violation of the American creed; the Constitutional Convention was nearly a plot against the common people.” (3:20)
Gunnar Myrdal, a Swedish socialist, was hired by the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1937 to direct a study of the Negro in the United States, engaged the large staff, some of them Communists and pro-communist, an “American Dilemma,” resulted, first copyrighted in the United States in 1944; in 1954, the Supreme Court handed its school segregation decision, which deliberately violated the Constitution, reversed a previous Supreme Court decision, and lit a fuse touching off explosive violence, which has been shattering our society ever since. The court decision cited an American Dilemma as one of the modern authorities on which it relied in preference to the Constitution for its justification of its decision. An “American Dilemma,” written by Swedish Socialists, provided the basic rationale for the conversion of our Free Republic into an equalitarian Democracy.
Myrdal contends that the American Declaration of Independence 1776, proclaimed the ideal of an equalitarian democracy because it contains the phrase “all men are created equal. Eleven years later, the Constitution created not a democracy founded on the idea of equality but a Republic founded on the ideal of Liberty. This is why Myrdal says, “the Constitutional Convention was nearly a plot against the common people,” but he a those who parrot these ideas are either ignorant or dishonest, the Constitution was ordained specifically to safeguard the principles of Liberty proclaimed by the Declaration of Independence.
The Declarations phrase “all men are created equal,” means all men are created equal before the law and before the Creator regardless of their inequality in human society. The Declaration of Independence says that men are endowed with unalienable rights and that the purpose of government is to secure these rights. The “unalienable right of man,” enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, do not include equality, but they do include Liberty, along with life and the pursuit of happiness.
Equality of all men in the eyes of God and before the law is a condition essential to freedom. No other kind of equality is possible. Government efforts to achieve material equality will produce crushing tyranny but will not make people equal.
The writers of the Constitution were anxious to safeguard Liberty against dictatorship, monarchy they called it. But, their chief anxiety was to protect the country against democracy.
Edmond Randolph, delegate to the Constitutional Convention from Virginia, said — “The general object of the convention was to provide a cure for the follies and fury of democracy.”
Elbridge Gerry and Roger Sherman, delegates from Massachusetts and Connecticut, urged the Constitutional Convention to “create a system to eliminate the evils from the excess of democracy.” (6:20)
Alexander Hamilton, a delegate from New York, said, “We are now founding a Republican Government; real Liberty is not found in Democracy. If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon be a monarchy.”
John Adams, one of the giants of the American Revolution period, said, “Democracy will end the all, content the all, endeavor to pull down all, and when by chance it happens to get the upper hand for a short time, democracy will be revengeful, bloody, and cruel.
Speaking of pure democracy in which the people by majority vote act as their own lawmakers instead of electing representatives to make laws, James Madison said, “Such democracies have ever been incompatible with personal security of the rights of property. A Republic promises the cure for which we are seeking. Madison, known as the father of the Constitution, knew and said that “enlightened men will not always be at the helm of government to serve as the proper guardians of the wheel.” He knew that unlimited political power cannot safely be entrusted to the Nation’s elected representatives to use as a majority sees fit “because a majority of a group is far more likely to be tyrannical than one man is. In a democracy, if a majority develops hatred of all blue-eye babies and orders them to be eliminated, the babies could be legally executed because whatever the majority wants at any given moment is the supreme law of the land, in a democracy. How can liberty be safeguarded against the mindless, soulless tyranny of the majority rule?
When a government is founded on the principle of majority rule, Jefferson answered that one “in questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief the chains of the Constitution.” In short, America was founded NOT as a democracy but as a Constitutional Republic.
“We pledge allegiance to the Republic” for which our flag stands, not a democracy. The Constitution requires a Republican form of government for all states but does not mention democracy, and neither does the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights. (8:30)
“The Constitution is a binding contract, enumerating limited powers which the federal government can legally exercise, prohibiting it from exercising any powers not read in the contract, it denies federal officials to do whatever they claim to be necessary for the general welfare.
Federal action not authorized by the Constitution is illegal, even if approved by an overwhelming majority of the people. Because all the elastic powers of the government are left with the states.
The ultimate power to change the organic structure of government laws is left with the people. But the means of making changes and amending the Constitution are carefully prescribed to militate against hasty, unwise decisions by the people.
As Benjamin Franklin answered to a woman who asked him, “What kind of government had the convention given America?” Benjamin Franklin replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
Very old and wise Benjamin Franklin saw through the mist of time to the day when Americans might trade their freedom in a Constitutional Republic for the promise of government-guaranteed equality and security in a Democracy. And beyond that, to the day when Democracy inevitably degenerates into a dictatorship guaranteeing nothing but poverty and serfdom for the people that it robs and rules.
The American Constitution System, unique in history, enabled Americans to develop a backward Continent into the most magnificent nation of all time.
The System was designed to prevent both tyranny by the government and reckless rebellion by the people.
We must restore it and keep it.
What can you do toward that end?
Your job, you who care and understand, is to help educate others.
Only by these means we can restore our Republic.
