Text: Republic vs. Democracy by Marvin Gardner All people who call our country a democracy are either uneducated as to the truth or are trying to convince you of something that is not true to achieve their own selfish ends. Not once is democracy mentioned in our Constitution and every time it is mentioned in the writings left behind by the Framers of our Constitutional Republic it is to warn us of the historically proven social, political and economic dangers of democracy. Read the following; educate yourself and realize that every time "our" president calls our country a "democracy" he is shouting unconscionable profanity to all of the American people who wish to have the freedom to live a decent life. -(DWH) It was long ago speculated that the reason why so many Americans, especially new "naturalized" and working class Americans, register and vote as Democrats instead of Republicans is that they think this nation is a democracy. After all, that¹s what they¹ve been told all their lives, and, wanting to be "good Americans," they opt to call themselves Democrats. As a person who has never been able to understand how so many people with common sense would identify with and slavishly support the very party that bleeds their pocketbooks dry while enacting interminable tax loopholes for their very rich campaign contributors, the theory of just wanting to be good Americans makes better sense than anything I have been able to come up with. The redefining of "democracy" is one of the most disastrous and potentially fatal blows America has ever suffered and the most frustrating thing about it is that it is such a blatant lie. The simple truth is that America is not now, never was and has never been intended to be a "democracy." The political systems known as "democracy" and "republic" were created and named concurrently about 3,000 years ago in ancient Greece in what are known as city-states; cities that were in bare-knuckle competition with each other even though their citizens were all of the same Greek heritage. The one thing both systems had in common was the idea of self rule; that is, the absence of a "king" by any name. The distinction between them was that in democracies the qualified voters, which included every "free" citizen--yes, the ancient Greeks had their lower "serf" class people--met together and enacted all laws and made all decisions directly for the state. In the republics, the qualified voters elected representatives who, in turn, met together and enacted all laws and made all decisions for the state. Obviously, any political unit that got too large for all its qualified voters to meet together at one time in one place could not be a democracy, even if it wanted to be. Also keep in mind the fact that, contrary to what every 20th Century "liberal" tells you, democracies have never been classless societies and have never been governments "of all the people." Even 2,500 to 3,000 years ago the dangers and failures of democracy had revealed themselves as shown by writers of the times. About 370 BC Plato wrote: "A democracy is a state in which the poor, gaining the upper hand, kill some and banish others and then divide the offices among the remaining citizens equally." About 126 BC Polybius wrote: "The common people feel themselves oppressed by the grasping of some, and their vanity is flattered by others. Fired with evil passions, they are no longer willing to submit to control, but demand that everything be subject to their authority. The invariable result is that the government assumes the noble names of free and popular, but becomes, in fact, the most execrable thing: Mob rule." And about 63 BC Seneca, a Roman, wrote: "Democracy is more cruel than wars or tyrants." More than 2,000 years before the United States of America was founded, democracy had been recognized by its creators for the political and economic failure it is. Colonial American Experience Subsequent to declaring their independence from Britain, the American colonies established their own individual governments and, apparently caught up in the enthusiasm of independence, most of them incorporated ³democratic² standards for qualifying voters in their systems. According to some of the framers of the Constitution and to many 20th century historians, this act very nearly caused the political death of the newborn nation. Specifically, most of the colonies voted themselves all manner of benefits without any apparent reflection on the ramifications of their acts. As a result, the colonies as well as the confederation which later became The United States, was confronted with massive debts and zero funds with which to pay them off. The Americans had established no credit anywhere in the world and were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. The fledgling nation was faced with the very real threat of being taken over by a European nation. This crisis, created by the financial and social irresponsibility of "democracy," is what compelled our Founding Fathers to gather for a series of debates we have since termed the Constitutional Convention. During those often heated and divisive debates, the inherent dangers and inevitable failures of democracy as a political system were argued at length. Edmund Jennings Randolph stated: "Our chief danger arises from the democratic parts of our Constitutions." Alexander Hamilton in debate said, "Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate government." Elbridge Geny in debate said, "The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots." And after the Constitution had been adopted, Alexander Hamilton in Senate said, "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 feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny: Their figure deformity." John Adams, in a letter to John Taylor, wrote, "Remember, democracy never lasts long; it soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." James Madison said: "...democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." Thomas Jefferson, in the drafts of the Kentucky Resolutions, wrote: "In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." (Yes, Democratic Party propagandists and their dupes insist that Thomas Jefferson was a Democrat. And he did, in a response to a European correspondent, say, "...we are all democrats; we are democratic Republicans and democratic Federalists..." and explained that, to him, "democratic" was not a political system but a political condition; specifically, a condition in which the government recognizes no social classes and creates no social classes. Where, as far as laws go, "all men are created equal." Jefferson, of course, acknowledged that all humans are not equal, in hardly any way--he was just adamant that the laws should make no acknowledgment of these differences, should bestow no benefit or civil advantage to a part of the citizenry because of differences. That was as far as his "democratism" went, which, obviously, is the exact opposite of what Democrats of today believe). John Adams, in a letter to William Cunningham in March, 1804, wrote, "Democracy is Lovelace and the people is Clarissa" (an allegoric reference to popular literature of the time in which Lovelace did Clarissa wrong). Not only were our Founding Fathers adamantly opposed to creating a democratic system, they were unanimous in giving this nation a republic as its political system. Alexander Hamilton, June 26,1788, stated, "There are few positions more demonstrable than that there should be in every republic some permanent body to correct the prejudices, check the intemperate passions, and regulate the fluctuations of a popular assembly." George Washington, April 30, 1789: "The...destiny of the republican model of government (is) justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people." Thomas Jefferson, March 11, 1790: "The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind." Thomas Jefferson, 1791: "Government in a well constituted republic requires no belief from man beyond what his reason authorizes." Thomas Jefferson, July 30, 1795: "The revolution forced them (the people of America) to consider the subject for themselves, and the result was an universal conversion to republicanism." Thomas Jefferson, March 12, 1799: "The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played upon by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful mannoeuvres, for a moment made willing instruments in forging chains for themselves." Thomas Jefferson, March 4, 1801: "If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form..." Thomas Jefferson, Jan. 18, 1802: "The body of our people...have ever had the same object in view, to wit, the maintenance of a federal, republican government..." Thomas Jefferson, Jan, 13, 1813: "This is my belief of it; it is that on which I have acted...to administer the government according to its genuine republican principles..." Thomas Jefferson, in the Anas (his memoirs): "He (George Washington) was true to the republican charge confided to him..." Thomas Jefferson in the Anas: (John Adams) has since thoroughly seen that his constituents were devoted to republican government..." Thomas Jefferson, in the Anas: "...and I fondly hope...that the motto of the standard to which our country will forever rally, will be Œfederal union, and republican government.¹" As historians Charles Austin Beard and Mary Ritter Beard wrote in 1939: "At no time, at no place, in solemn convention assembled, through no chosen agents, had the American people officially proclaimed the United States to be a democracy. The Constitution did not contain the word or any word lending countenance to it, except possibly the mention of ŒWe, the people,¹ in the preamble...When the Constitution was framed, no respectable person called himself a democrat." Justifiably afraid of Democracy Indisputably, this nation was founded as a republic and its leaders were justifiably afraid of "democracy," lest it destroy the nation they had risked their lives to establish. And thus it officially was for a century and a half. It is stated that Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat president who gave control of this nation¹s money to the Federal Reserve Bank and thus put America¹s economic destiny in the hands of foreign bankers, was the first public figure to proclaim this nation a "democracy." One of the 1993 Merriam-Webster¹s definitions of democracy is: "The absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges." Yet today, "democratic" America is, by class distinction, class envy and class warfare--all of which has been deliberately created and fomented by "liberal" Democrats in order to facilitate their personal possession of political power. Not a single day passes today but some Democrat politician somewhere deliberately agitates the masses in class envy, ethnic envy and/or economic envy--all in the name of democracy which, by their modern definition, forbids the very sociopolitical condition they advocate. While our "democracy" and its accompanying social self destruction are the planned and deliberate handiwork of the "liberal" enemies of free people, so successful has their redefinition of democracy been that the leaders of the opposition (conservatives) aid and abet the liberals by their constant reinforcement of the idea that this nation is a democracy and that there is nothing wrong with that. All of the "conservative" and Republican icons of the past 50 years--William Buckley, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Robert Dole, Newt Gingrich, Phil Gramm, Dick Armey, Rush Limbaugh, and Gordon Liddy, to name just a few--invariably refer to this nation as a "democracy" without hesitation. Today, America is 220 years old, and to call Congress¹ fiscal policy "loose" is an understatement of monumental proportions. Today, America¹s debt is several times as large as its total worth (in fact, America¹s total debt today--over $19 trillion--is equal to 30 to 35 percent of the entire world¹s total worth) while chaos prevails in her streets and, like the cancer it is, chaos is spreading to her countryside. And all largely because of the successful re-definition and sanitization of the word "democracy." "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," wrote George Santayana. It may be too late to save America from its historically mandated fate, but that doesn¹t mean we can¹t try. And one thing we can all do is to quit propagating the "democracy" lie. We who know better can quit calling America a democracy and we can try to educate those who don¹t know any better. Oh, yes. We can also call on those public leaders who keep repeating the lie to cease to do so. When the very people who invented "democracy" learned the error of its ways, what excuse can a modern educated person have for not knowing? The above article appeared in the December, 1995, edition of American Survival Guide magazine (pages 60-62), a publication of McMullen & Yee Publishing Inc., 774 S Placentia Ave., Placentia CA 92670-6832,(714)572-2255. Mr. Gardner is secretary of Sons of Liberty (PO Box 44673, Boise ID 83711-0673; phone: 208-322-7863), a network of activist patriots whose goal is the full and permanent restoration of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as their authors intended them. From the 1928 Army Training Manual: Republic: Authority is derived through the election by the people of public officials best fitted to reptresent them. Attitude toward property is respect for laws and individual rights, and economic procedure. Attitude toward law is the administartion of justice in accord with fixed principles and established evidence, with a strict regard to consequences. A greater number of citizens and extent of territory may be brought within its compass. Avoids the dangerous extreme of tyranny or mobocracy. Results in statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice, contentment and progress. Is the standard form of government. Democracy: A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of "direct" expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic--negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the majority shall regulate whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.

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