The United States–Republic or Democracy?

I am short on time this week, I'm attending a conference on sound money (aka "hard currency," meaning gold and silver).  So, in lieu of a lengthy discourse, I present a few quick talking points for the next time some ignorant liberal calls the Great Republic a "democracy." (Sources are included where I know them.):

George Washington (1732–99):

Republicanism is not the phantom of a deluded imagination. On the contrary, under no form of government will laws be better supported, liberty and property better secured, or happiness be more effectually dispensed to mankind.

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), 2 statements made on separate occasions:

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

The Constitution was meant to be republican, and we believe it to be republican according to every candid interpretation

Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747–1813), British author,  in The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.  From that moment 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 average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.  These nations have progressed through this sequence:

John Marshall (1755–1835), 4th Chief Justice of the United States:

Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.

Alexander Hamilton (c.1756–1804), 2 statements made on separate occasions:

It has been observed that a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government.  Experience has proved that no position is more false than this.  The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one good feature of government.  Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.

We are now forming a Republican form of government.  Real Liberty is not found in the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.  If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy, or some other form of dictatorship.

John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (1834-1902), British historian:

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994), Secretary of Agriculture to Pres. Eisenhower, in An Enemy Hath Done This:

Ours is a representative republic with a Constitution in which is recognized the natural law and the natural rights of man.  It is a republic with a spiritual foundation characterized by freedom – freedom for the individual and for his society.

Henry Percy, 9th Duke of Northumberland (1912–40), British historian, in The History of World Revolution:

The adoption of democracy as a form of government by all European nations is fatal to good government, to liberty, to law and order, to respect for authority, and to religion, and must eventually produce a state of chaos from which a new world tyranny will arise.

Robert Welch, Jr., founder of the John Birch Society (1899–1985) in a speech at a Constitution Day luncheon, 17 September 1961:

And for well over a hundred years our politicians, statesmen, and people remembered that this was a republic, not a democracy, and knew what they meant when they made that distinction. . . . And it was under Wilson that the first great propaganda slogan was coined and emblazoned everywhere, to make Americans start thinking favorably of democracies and forget that we had a republic.

And, finally, from The United States Army Manual (1928), under "Citizenship Training, Definitions":

 
Democracy:  A government of the masses.  Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of direct expression.  Results in mobocracy.  Attitude toward property is communistic – negating property rights.  Attitude of the law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.  Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy . . . [the Constitution] made a very marked distinction between a republic and a democracy . . . and said repeatedly and emphatically that they had formed a republic.

Feel free to use these often and to the utter dismay of the liberal wing of America.

Thanks for listening, tune in next week for another rant.

A Judicial Affront to Settled Law and Custom

By now, most of you have heard of the dispute between Bradley Johnson (calculus teacher at Westview HS in Rancho Penasquitos, California) and the Poway Unified School District. The District ordered Johnson to remove two "religious banners" from his classroom.  Johnson refused, lawsuits ensued and, according to the San Diego Union Tribune:

A lower federal court had ruled that this infringed on Johnson’s First Amendment speech rights.  But the appellate panel cited a list of U.S. Supreme Court rulings establishing that the government had the right to limit speech of public employees on the job in ways that would be unconstitutional outside the employer-employee context.

This doesn’t strike us as controversial at all.  Johnson remains free to advocate whatever religious views he wants – just outside his calculus classroom.  We hope this distinction is acknowledged even by those who see this ruling as an affront to their faith.

In other words, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (seated in San Francisco, CA) says Johnson can't post a sign in his classroom that advocates his Christian faith.  This sounds entirely reasonable; it is a public school, not a mission home.  However, as the ancient sage observed, "context is everything."  What exactly did those unconstitutional signs say?

Here they are:

 

Oh, the horror of it all!

Such rank, flagrant and shameless Christian sentiment polluting the minds of our impressionable youth cannot be tolerated!  The manifest unconstitutionality of mentioning God in the public arena!  I am appalled!  I am aghast!  I am disgusted!  I am revolted!  I am shocked, shocked, I tell you!

Oh, wait a second . . .

In God We Trust first appeared on US coins in 1864.  It was adopted as the National Motto of the United States of America in 1956.  Legal challenges have three times reached the US Supreme Court – twice in the 1970s and again in 1996 – where the High Court found the Motto constitutional. In two later cases, during the last decade, the Justices declined to review lower court decisions, stating that the matter was settled law.

One Nation Under God is part of the Pledge of Allegiance.  First written in 1892, the Pledge and other standards of conduct were compiled by representatives of 68 patriotic groups (including the US Army and Navy) into the Flag Code in 1923. The Flag Code became part of US law in 1942 ("4 USC § 1 et seq" in legal terms).  It has been modified four times, most recently in 1954, when Congress added the phrase "under God."  In 2010, the Courts of Appeals for the Ninth and First Circuits upheld the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. The United States Supreme Court denied review of the later decision, which is a tacit affirmation of the decision.

"God Bless America" is the title of a song, also part of the song's chorus. Written by Irving Berlin in 1918, while Berlin was serving in the US Army, he rewrote it and debuted it on Armistice Day (now called Veteran's Day), November 11, 1938, sung by the great Kate Smith. She followed up with a performance in the Warner Brothers' film, This Is the Army (1943). The song became her signature piece and an immediate American classic.  Some (including this pundit and the Library of Congress) honor it as "America's unofficial national anthem."  Shortly after publication, Irvin Berlin established the God Bless America Fund, dedicating the royalties to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America.

"God Shed His Grace on Thee" is part of the chorus of "America the Beautiful."  The lyrics were written by Katharine Lee Bates as a poem called "Pikes Peak"; inspired by a visit to that mountain top, it was first published in the July 4, 1895 edition of a church periodical and retitled, "America." The music was composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward, for another song, in 1882. Lyric and score were combined as "America, the Beautiful" and published in 1910.  It has often been proposed as a national hymn for the United States, or a new national anthem. Among patriotic music fans, few performances surpass that of Ray Charles.

"All men are created equal," etc. . . . do we even need to mention that this is one of the great phrases of the Declaration of Independence?  Penned by Thomas Jefferson, on behalf of the Second Continental Congress, it further declared, "We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions . . . declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States . . . And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." [emphasis added.]

By the way, Bradley Johnson put up the pair of 7-foot by 2-foot banners in 1982. No one complained until 2006.  That's 24 years (and thousands of students) without a single objection!

Those are the facts and the context.

It is appalling to this pundit – as it should be to every American – that a federal appeals court should (on the eve of Constitution Day) hand down a decision that limits the rights of Americans to express their patriotism, especially when the "questionable" phrases are:

• Official symbols of the Union (prominently displayed in many courtrooms, and by law, on every one of the billions of coins and currencies issued by the federal government) or part of the legal code of the Union (which is recited by both chambers of Congress at the beginning of every daily session).
• Among the most beloved and popular musical compositions in American culture, performed in official, government-sponsored and government-sanctioned patriotic events all across the Union and at US military bases around the world every single year.
• An excerpt from the founding document of the United States.

Just when you think liberal political theory cannot sink lower, they hand us a new reason to fight them at every opportunity.

Thanks for listening, tune in next week for another rant.