republic: "a form of government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law."
Websters Unabridged Dictionary
democracy: "a government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meetings or any other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude towards property is communistic-negative property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. It results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy."
U.S. Army Training Manual
Our Republic was founded upon the principles of Liberty (the right to do whatever one wishes so long as those actions do not infringe upon the equal rights of others) and limited government, not democracy. In fact, seldom if ever will one see reference to democracy in the founding documents of our nation, at least in a positive context. Peculiar, don't you think if we are suppose to live in a democracy as our politicians tell us?
Chapter 3 of The Unseen Hand by A. Ralph Epperson:
"It is generally conceded that even a monarchy or a dictatorship is an oligarchy, or a government run by a small, ruling minority."
"Such is also the case with a democracy, for this form of government is traditionally controlled at the top by a small ruling oligarchy. The people in a democracy are conditioned to believe that they are indeed the decision-making power of government, but in truth there is almost always a small circle at the top making the decisions for the entirety."
In the Republican form of government, the power rests in a written Constitution, wherein the powers of our government is limited so that the people retain the maximum amount of power themselves. In addition to limiting the power of government, care is also taken to limit the power of the people to restrict the rights of both the majority and the minority.
Alexander Hamilton was aware of this tendency of a democratic form of government to be torn apart by itself, and he has been quoted as writing:
"We are now forming a Republican form of government. Real Liberty is not found in the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy, or some other form of dictatorship."
James Madison who wrote:
"In all cases where a majority are united by a common interest or passion, the rights of the minority are in danger!"
Another was John Adams who wrote:
"Unbridled passions produce the same effects, whether in a king, nobility, or a mob. The experience of all mankind has proved the prevalence of a disposition to use power wantonly. It is therefore as necessary to defend an individual against the majority (in a democracy) as against the king in a monarchy."
a British professor named Alexander Fraser Tyler wrote:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can exist only until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess (defined as a liberal gift) out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship."
Fisher Ames stated: 'Liberty has never lasted long in a democracy, nor has it
ever ended in anything better than despotism.'
Samuel Adams stated: 'Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes itself,
exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not
commit suicide.'
As Benjamin Franklin emerged from Independence Hall in Philadelphia, he was
asked by an onlooker what form of government he and his countrymen had created
during the first and to date, only constitutional convention. His answer: 'A
Republic, if you can keep it.'
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It seems ironic that those who protest what they preceive as a loss of rights (which has not happened) seem all too happy to strip people of their right to representation because a couple elections don't turn out how they want them to.