The Difference Between a Democracy and a Republic If you ask…
The Difference Between a Democracy and a Republic
If you ask Americans to name their nation’s type of federal government, the majority of them will specify they live in a democracy. Robert George, Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, discusses.
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Script:.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1789, legend has it that a lady called out to Benjamin Franklin to ask what type of federal government the delegates had actually established. Franklin reacted “… a republic, madam. If you can keep it.”.
A republic?
Should not Franklin have specified “a democracy”?
Isn’t that what we have in the United States?
Many people today would state “yes.”.
If our country isn’t a democracy, what is it? That’s in fact what democracy indicates in the initial Greek– demonstrations kratos– the people (demonstrations) guideline (kratos).
Let’s stop briefly for a minute and think about more deeply what the word suggests in practice and why the delegates in Philadelphia declined it.
That’s right– declined it.
Our federal government was established by a nationwide charter– the Constitution of the United States. We are governed by the institutions, and according to the principles and rules, created and adopted when our forefathers verified that document, making it “the Supreme Law of the land.”.
Are those organizations properly speaking democratic?
The guys who bestowed our form of government to us– those we call our beginning fathers– didn’t see it that method.
They comprehended the organizations developed by the Constitution to be republic.
Though the founders thought in “federal government of the individuals, by the people, for the people” as Abraham Lincoln put it in the Gettysburg Address, they did not think in unlimited or pure democracy. They feared that democracy, strictly speaking, consisted of within it the impulse to mob standard– the suppressing of civil liberty, the trampling by bulks of the rights of minorities.
To put it more openly, pure democracy scared them.
While they constructed into the Constitution significant democratic components, they also built in non-democratic functions to safeguard liberty and avoid tyranny. It wasn’t simply that they favored representative federal government over direct democracy, though they did; it’s that they rejected the concept that “the bulk wins” was by meaning the just result.
Undoubtedly, in what is perhaps the most well-known of the eighty-five Federalist Papers– Federalist 10– James Madison, precisely in identifying a democracy, which he did not prefer, from a republic, which he did, kept in mind that a crucial advantage of republicanism is “to enhance … the general public views by passing them through the medium of a picked body of citizens, whose understanding may best identify the real interests of the nation …”.
And, so, we have representative federal government, and more than that, we have a bicameral (that is, two-tiered) legislature– a Congress with an extremely democratic House of Representatives and a not-very-democratic Senate.
For that reason, California, with its massive population, has fifty-two agents in your house. Wyoming has one.
Yet Wyoming has 2 Senators– the same number as California and every other state.
A pure democrat would specify, “that’s unreasonable!” Each Wyoming person has much more power than every Californian.
A republican would state, well, we aren’t and should not be a pure democracy. If we were large population states like California would overwhelm the requirements and interests of little population states like Wyoming.
That’s why we’re called the United States of America. Each state has its own different identity; holds its own separate elections. Just as we do not desire a single person or small group of individuals to control our federal government, we don’t one state or a number of states to control our government.
A republic is a method of diffusing power– and a dazzling one at that.
For the total script in addition to FACTS & & SOURCES, go to https://www.prageru.com/video/the-difference-between-a-democracy-and-a-republic.
source
If you ask Americans to call their nation’s type of federal government, most of them will state they live in a democracy. That’s in fact what democracy indicates in the initial Greek– demonstrations kratos– the individuals (demonstrations) guideline (kratos).
Simply as we do not want a single person or little group of people to control our federal government, we don’t one state or a few states to manage our government.
If you ask Americans to call their nation’s type of federal government, the majority of them will specify they reside in a democracy. Just as we do not desire a single person or small group of people to control our government, we do not one state or a couple of states to manage our federal government.
If you ask Americans to call their nation’s type of government, most of them will specify they live in a democracy. If our nation isn’t a democracy, what is it? That’s actually what democracy indicates in the original Greek– demonstrations kratos– the people (demos) standard (kratos).
