America Is NOT a Democracy - it is a REPUBLIC

Article IV, Section 4 of the United States Constitution:

"The United States shall guarantee to every State i this Union a REPUBLICAN FORM of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence."

America is not a democracy - it is a Constitutional Republic. And there is a very real difference, which was clearly stated when the framers of the Constitution specifically declined for America to be a democracy.

The government began calling itself a democracy with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.With the help of other Democrats and a complicit press, he pushed constantly for the people to accept it, for reasons only the politicians seemed to understand. Even school textbooks were published that named America a Democracy - oh, it sounded so good! Being a Progressive Liberal Democrat, FDR realized that his agenda could only succeed if the people were to accept America as a democracy, and not the Republic that it was. Like today, most ordinary people were just too busy with their own lives to be concerned - or even notice - that their Constitutional Republic was slowly being dismantled.


Calling it a constitutional republic is not just semantics. There are significant differences. I would like to cover those differences by using quotes from the founders in no particular order of time with comments about each. I have studied the Federalist papers for many years as well as the Constitution. I have also studied the debates of the federal convention. We have all the information we need to know what kind of government we were given and how it functions, or I should say how it should function.

In 1823, in a letter to Judge William Johnson, Thomas Jefferson praised that the form of government we had was a Republic. It should be noted that in a democracy there is no purpose in distributing powers because a democracy or a representative democracy enacts legislation simply by a majority approving it. In a Republic, the majority cannot over-ride the rights of individuals, such as in passing laws that are not equally applied to every citizen, or "carving out" supposed "rights" to benefit only certain people or groups.

“If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws — the first growing out of the last. … A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.” –Alexander Hamilton, Essay in the American Daily Advertiser, 1794

In recent years we have seen a very clear and distinct disrespect of the Constitution being fomented by a certain political group and party. They call to eliminate the Electoral College, because they want  a simple majority rule. They  ignore freedom of speech when they do not agree with that speeech, and the freedom to worship unfettered is curtaied, and often insulted. The right to keep and bear arms is under direct assault, and they have no use for due process if it gets in their way. They have said so on the floor of the House and the Senate.

In the days of the Framers, such persons would have been tried for sedition.

In Federalist 39 Madison states the definition of a Republic as the constitutional convention held it: 

“If we resort for a criterion to the different principles on which different forms of government are established, we may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people

One of the founders, in one of his commentaries noted the internal inclinations of a democracy, as opposed to a Republic:

“The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty.” –Fisher Ames


And John Adams: “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”  

"A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot (i.e. D.C). A republic may be extended over a large region (i.e. the entire country). James Madison Federalist 14 

But perhaps the most specific dissertation was by Madison:

"From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of the citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such 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. - James Madison Federalist 10

At one point or another ALL of the founders decried a democracy in favor of a Republic. Since FDR, democrats and progressives have been determined to change that so they can wrest control from the people ad unto themselves. And if they have to dismember the Constitution piece by piece - which they are doing - then so be it. And with it will go our power, and subsequently our liberties and freedoms.

The short take - in a democracy a small number of elitists and politicians can make all decisions by a majority rule amongst themselves, to grow government and their own power. In a Republic, the majority cannot trample over the rights of individuals, and the role of government is limited to the 8 powers listed in Article 1 Section 8.  That all stopped with FDR.

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