(Reprinted from UTT Newsletter, July 16, 2020)
With all the turmoil going on in the world today I worry greatly about the future of America, your future, my kid’s future, my grandkids’ future. How did we get to where we are today? Such a lawless nation? Where did the rule of law go? Why is our nation in such a moral decline? Why is our constitution being ignored and our rights being infringed upon? Is it my fault? Your fault? Your teacher’s fault? Society’s fault? Is it a failing form of government?
We should expect to see the kind of turmoil in a Democracy, right? But wait! Aren’t we supposed to be a Constitutional Republic? If we don’t know what we are, how can we fight for it? Most people today have no clue what form of government we have or are supposed to have according to our Founders. Can you tell me what form of government we have in America? Is it a Democracy or a Constitutional Republic? Most of the Patriots who read these articles are probably screaming “Constitutional Republic!” However, most if not all kids, and a lot of adults will say we live in a Democracy. Can you blame them? They have been mis-educated from infancy. I even hear Fox News call the U.S. a ‘Democracy’ on a very frequent basis. So, which is it? Let us dive into this seemingly confusing quandary.
The chief characteristic and distinguishing feature of a Democracy is: Rule by Supreme Majority. In a Democracy, the individual, and any group of individuals composing any minority have no protection against the unlimited power of the majority. It is a case of ‘majority-over-man’. In a Democracy, the majority’s power is absolute and unlimited. A Republic, on the other hand, has a very different purpose and an entirely different form, or system, of government. Its purpose is to control the majority strictly, as well as all others among the people, primarily to protect the individual’s God-given, unalienable rights and therefore for the protection of the rights of the minority, of all minorities, and the liberties of people in general.
The definition of a Republic is: a constitutionally limited government of the representative type, created by a written Constitution—adopted by the people and changeable (from its original meaning) by them only by its amendment—with its powers divided between three separate branches: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. Here the term “the people” means, of course, the electorate. The people adopt the Constitution as their fundamental law by utilizing a Constitutional Convention—specially or by their representatives in a Ratifying Convention, similarly chosen.
What is the United States’ form of government? It is a Constitutional Republic! As a matter of fact, as recorded in the 1787 journal kept by one of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention (in Philadelphia), James McHenry of Maryland wrote: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin, well Doctor what have we got—a republic or a monarchy? A republic replied the Doctor, if you can keep it”. (Ed. Note: see picture of that actual journal entry below).
Unfortunately, we have grown accustomed to hearing that we are a Democracy. Our children are indoctrinated from kindergarten through university level schools with the propaganda that we are a Democracy; they hear their teachers, parents, the media, and politicians on both sides of the aisle, spew out incorrectly that we are a Democracy. Such was never the intent of our Founders! The form of government entrusted to us by our Founders was a Republic, not a Democracy. Our Founders had an opportunity to establish a Democracy in America and chose not to. In fact, the Founders made clear that we were not, and were never to become, a Democracy!
Let us see what the Founders had to say about it:
“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 deaths”. (James Madison).
“Remember, Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a Democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” (John Adams).
“The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, Democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating, and short lived.” (John Quincy Adams).
“In Democracy…there are commonly tumults and disorders…. Therefore a pure Democracy is generally a very bad government. It is often the most tyrannical government on earth.” (Noah Webster).
“It may generally be remarked that the more a government resembles a pure Democracy the more they abound with disorder and confusion.” (Zephaniah Swift, Author of America’s First Legal Text).
Many Americans today seem to be unable to define the difference between a Republic and a Democracy, but there is a difference, a big difference. That difference rests in the source of authority. A pure Democracy operates by direct majority vote of the people. When an issue is to be decided, the entire population votes on it; the majority wins and rules. A Republic differs in that the general population elects representatives who then pass laws to govern the nation. A Democracy is the rule by majority feeling (what the Founders described as a “mobocracy”); a Republic is rule by law. It the source of law for a Democracy is the popular feeling of the people, then what is the source of law for the American Republic?
According to Founder Noah Webster: “Our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct Republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion. The transcendent values of Biblical natural law were the foundation of the American Republic. Consider the stability this provides: in our Republic, murder will always be a crime, for it is always a crime according to the Word of God. However, in a Democracy, if the majority of the people decide that murder is no longer a crime, murder will no longer be a crime.”
America’s immutable principles of right and wrong were not based on the rapidly fluctuating feelings and emotions of the people but rather on what Montesquieu identified as the “principles that do not change”.
(Founder) Benjamin Rush similarly observed: “Where there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community.”
In the American Republic, the “principles which did not change” and which were “certain and universal in their operation upon all the members of the community” were the principles of Biblical natural law. In fact, so firmly were these principles ensconced in the American Republic that early law books taught that government was free to set its own policy only if God had not ruled in an area. The Founders understood that Biblical values formed the basis of the Republic and that the Republic would be destroyed if the people’s knowledge of those values should ever be lost.
We must ask ourselves today, are we guilty of straying away from the Constitutional Republic our Founders, through Divine intervention, gave us? If we want the riots to stop, peace to prevail, and become a God-blessed Nation once again, then we must get back to Biblical Values that formed the basis of our Constitutional Republic. As Dr. Benjamin Franklin told Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia when she asked him outside the Constitutional Convention in 1787 “what have we got?” We have a Republic—IF we can keep it.
(Understanding The Threat is a registered corporation in the State of Texas that focuses on “Strategic and operational training and consulting on the threat of the global Islamic movement). To contact its President, John Guandolo, or its Vice President, John Bennett, email www.UnderstandingtheThreat.com.