Democracy vs. A “Democratic Republic”

These are two totally different approaches to achieving a government.

In his article “The Case Against Democracy: Ten Red Pills,” by pen name Mencius Moldbug (Curtis Yarvin), April 24, 2007, states “how hard it is to explain that democracy is bunk…to just consider the possibility of it…” and offers ten cases of “red” and “blue” pills (because they worked for Luther) as choices for the reader to pick from. However heavy the sarcasm is in his arguments. The premise of all of it is false.

“Democracy” is a generic term originally derived from the Greek meaning “rule by the people,” the word in itself leaves a lot of interpretation to the user and the receiver of the concept. For example, the Democratic Socialists of America has 92,000 members across all 50 states — “A system where ordinary people have a real voice in all workplaces, neighborhoods, and society.” The extreme left side of that interpretation is communism.

For the United States, it was interpreted in the “Articles of Confederation” as the “rule of the Majority.” The Founders of our Nation saw this approach did not work at all in the two years of the Articles of Confederation union of the colonies. As Randy Barnett explains it:

“A Democracy is the idea of pure majority rule. That was the idea that originated the concept of Republicanism. The states at that point were majoritarian governments.

What had happened was the abuse of individual rights.

Many of the framers saw this and stated, “The ills we face are due to an excess of democracy.” Meaning majority rule. And it didn’t mean democracies in the sense of town halls, or referenda, they were representative governments. If you go the dictionary and look up “Republic,” it will say words equivalent to “a representative democracy,” that is wrong. The framers needed checks on the Democratic process. In other words, majority rule is not the solution to the problem of legitimacy. It is the problem for which the Constitution and republicanism is the solution. Checks on power. So, the meaning of the word republicanism changed with the Constitution. After that, all the states copied it, and they put that kind of Republican form of government into action in each state.”

We are, by definition, a “Democratic Republic.” It gives meaning to our definition of our rule of law — nobody is left behind. We ALL Vote, AND every individual counts (not the majority).

Randy Barnett —

“Madison said put three thousand people in a room have two thousand have opinions adverse to the third, will the remaining one thousand be secure? Republicanism at that point was the protection of individual rights. The “next” sentence of the declaration is the one we forget about, it says, “to secure these rights;” to secure these preexisting individual rights, “governments are instituted among men, deriving the just powers from the consent of the governed.” Not all powers, not unlimited powers, but only their just powers, which powers? The powers necessary to secure the rights retained by the people. That is what the Constitution was set up to do. There are all these structural constraints, they get in the way of what? They get in the way of majority rule. Montesquieu was very influential in the separation of powers. The simple way to put it is, “government does not get to act on the individual, us, the people, we are the bosses, we are the sovereigns.” They don’t get to act on us unless all three branches concur. If any of those branches says no, by and large, it doesn’t happen. We have a three-part check. We call that redundancy.

The Ninth Amendment says, “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” What is “rights retained by the people?” That’s part of the problem, they don’t know what they are. Rights retained by the people are rights the people had before the government was formed, that’s retained. They retained them. And those are natural rights. The very same rights the Declaration refers to as inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One of the dangers that the federalists pointed out was that adding a bill of rights to the Constitution was that, if you enumerate rights, later on, people are going to say, well, that’s all the rights you have. So, Madison said, I’ve got a solution, and was the precursor of what became the ninth amendment. The problem is that, in some sense, the Federalists were right. By enumerating those rights, those are kind of all the rights we have. The solution, which was the Ninth Amendment, has been blown out of the water by the courts. Because the ninth amendment was about federal power, not state power.”

This is why the “Declaration of Independence” became our “Moral Law.” It states in black and white What we are.

This is why the “Constitution” became the “Law of the Land” by giving the Federal Government the limits of its rule.

Randy Barnett —

“the Constitution is not the law that governs us. The Constitution is the law that governs those who govern us. They should not be able to change the meaning of the laws that governs them without going through the Amendment process, any more than you or I can change the laws they make to govern us without going through the legislative process.”

We Have a Shameless Government Today

However, as we have noted in stories before, this is no longer true. The Federal Government has seen fit to ignore the “Amendment Process totally.” There are many examples of this. The most recent and egregious being ironically called “The Patriot Act.” It was enacted following the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks. It gave the government TOTALITARIAN POWERS without our consent — the Amendment process has not been used to ratify this “law.”

So far, 33 Constitutional Amendments have been adopted and sent to the states for ratification since 1789. Of those, only 27 have been ratified by the requisite number of states and became valid as part of the United States Constitution. The 27th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1992.

From History.com — The 27th Amendment was passed because:

“…Gregory Watson, a college student in Texas, read about it in a class on American government. Watson later rallied enough popular support (and resentment of Congress) to get the requisite three-quarters of U.S. states to ratify the 27 Amendment by 1992, nearly 200 years after Madison first proposed it.”

ONLY BECAUSE A CITIZEN DID IT!!!

The GOVERNMENT has not taken the initiative to “forward” “Acts of Congress” to the OWNERS of the government for ratification unless a citizen does it, or they are put in an embarrassing situation like they were for the 26th Amendment (ratified 1971).

From History.com — The 26th Amendment was passed because:

“The long-running debate over whether young Americans should be asked to risk their lives fighting for their country before they were given the right to vote intensified during the Vietnam War…”

And, so it goes…

THE END.