Democracy or Republic?

In many ways we have confounded the framers' beliefs when they debated and framed the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. We have moved moved far from the original intent of government which was to be always by the consent of the governed. With many issues, particularly the push by some for universal health care, we heap upon government tasks they are ill equipped to perform well. We continue to push every conceivable 'do it for me' service under the umbrella of the Constitution's preamble to 'promote the general welfare.', so much so that we threaten to bankrupt government or raise income or property taxes so high as to be burdensome on the diminishing few who pay them.

Thoughts to ponder as this election season is upon us...

"A contemporary of our Founders, Scottish jurist and historian Sir Alexander Fraser Tytler, wrote 'A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.'"

The concept of self-government presupposes several things, most notably the ability of citizens to think for themselves, and their willingness to do so. The Founders of this nation knew that government always tends to expand its power at the expense of individual rights, and they understood that individuals would often act from personal motives at the expense of the national good. They also believed that individual motivations, even when massed together in what they called "factions", could be counteracted by other individuals and other factions, and that when the will of the whole population was expressed it would represent a balance that would tend toward the best interests of the nation as a whole. This also presupposed that people would be reasonably well informed about the issues of the day. For this, the Founders depended on a free and independent press. But despite what most people think today, our Founders did not establish a democracy in which the majority was the ultimate arbiter of what is in the best interests of the nation. The Founders distrusted democracies, because down that road lay tyranny.

In Federalist # 10 James Madison wrote, " ...democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have even 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."