Many Americans labor under the idea that we live in a democracy.
People seem to love democracy, until they find themselves in the minority on an issue! That's because a democracy is governed by the will of the majority, sometimes to the point where people talk about "the tyranny of the majority." By contrast, a republic is governed by the law, to protect the rights of all.
Our Founding Fathers believed that governments are instituted to secure our rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Governments are not instituted to allow protection of those rights to be voted away by brutal usurpers of power.
That made me wonder, "Is there any mention of democracy in the Declaration of Independence?" I checked, and there isn't.
What about the U.S. Constitution? Nope, no mention of democracy there, either. In fact, Article IV, Section 4 states, "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government," not "a Democratic Form of Government."
James Madison, credited as the father of the Constitution, wrote in The Federalist Papers: "... 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." Madison once described democracy as the "most vile form of government."
And when Ben Franklin was asked, after the Constitutional Convention, what kind of government they had created, he replied, "A republic, if you can keep it."
In fact, the Founding Fathers hated and feared democracy, because, in a democracy, the majority rules and individual rights are irrelevant. As one pundit once put it, "In a democracy, two wolves and a sheep take a majority vote on what's for supper."
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that when we recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, we say, "to the Republic for which it stands," not "to the Democracy."
What is surprising is that there are a lot of people out there who are eager to promote the notion of "America's democracy," that we live in a democracy, etc.
That begs the obvious question: Why are they doing this?
