We love to refer to the U.S. as a shining example of a democracy. But is it really?
The U.S is more accurately defined as a constitutional federal republic, according to a U.S. embassy site. It is “constitutional” because the government is based on a Constitution which is the supreme law of the country. The Constitution provides the framework for how the federal and state governments are structured. It also explains the limits on their powers.
Since there is both a national government and governments of the 50 states of the U.S., it is “federal.” A “republic” is a form of government in which the people hold power but elect representatives to exercise that power.
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a republic is defined as “a political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them.” The definition of “democracy” is “government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.” So one basic argument is that we are both — a republic and a democracy.
Because of this, the government isn’t as simple as one might think. “Indeed, the United States might be labeled a constitutional federal representative democracy. But where one word is used, with all the oversimplification that this necessary entails, ‘democracy’ and ‘republic’ both work,” The Washington Post reported. The U.S. is not a direct democracy — a government in which all or most laws are made by direct popular vote.
While the U.S. is not and never was meant to be a pure democracy, “more and more voices today are calling for America to become a direct democracy,” The Washington Post reported. Those pushing in this direction want the electoral college to be dismantled and elections to be based on “one man, one vote.”
Still, the U.S. is a democracy — of sorts. There is “no basis for saying that the United States is somehow ‘not a democracy, but a republic,’” The Washington Post reported. “‘Democracy’ and ‘republic’ aren’t just words that a speaker can arbitrarily define to mean something. And both today and in the Framing era, ‘democracy’ has been generally understood to include representative democracy as well as direct democracy.”
The Founding Fathers, however, were clear on the fact that the U.S. is a republic. “Our system is republican in that the founders understood that the public is the only legitimate sovereign of government,” wrote Jay Cost, a 2018 fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the Center for Faith and Freedom at Grove City College. “But it is not wholly democratic, in that they feared the abuse of that authority by the people and designed an instrument of government intended to keep temporary, imprudent, and intemperate outbursts of public opinion from dominating the body politic,” Cost wrote for The National Review.
Why did the Founding Fathers choose a republic? The purpose of “republican government to be distinct from that of democratic government in that it offers special protections for the rights of minorities and demands a broader understanding of the public interest,” according to The National Review report.
This can be a precious balancing act. And oftentimes, “the careful balance produced by our mixed republic is threatened by an egalitarianism that undermines the social, familial, religious, and economic distinctions and inequalities that undergird our political liberty. Preserving the republican freedoms we cherish requires tempering egalitarian zeal and moderating the hope for a perfectly just democracy,” The Heritage Foundation reported.
So why didn’t the Founders opt for a direct democracy? Direct democracies can be fraught with problems. Looking at ancient democracies the Founders saw they “lacked any social or institutional forces that could check, refine, or moderate the will of the majority, they were prone to great instability, riven by factionalism, and subject to the passions and short-sightedness of the public. Direct democracies were thus vulnerable to tyranny,” The Heritage Foundation reported.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 73: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin makes the case for why this is a multi-factor rebellion vs. just protests about George Floyd. He discusses the Democratic Party’s sneaky relationship with the police in cities and states under Dem control, and why Joe Biden is a cop and the Steve Jobs of mass incarceration.
American republicanism, on the other hand, has built-in protections from the instability as well as social and political tyranny since it realizes that the “majority does not equal the whole of the community. Republicanism recognizes the valid contributions to the welfare of the community by non- and even counter-majoritarian parts of the community…In this way, republicanism protects the minority from unjust majorities and secures the conditions for the political and social freedoms that are the true goal of the American revolution,” The Heritage Foundation reported.
Most don’t realize that the word “democracy” can not be found in either the Declaration of Independence or in our Constitution. But “republic” can be found in the Constitution.
