A Democratic Republic Not A Democracy

Progressives are always harping about democracy. Me thinks they protest too much. Much of what they propose smacks of authoritarianism mixed with mob rule.

The Founders were suspicious of democracy which often ends up as mob rule. They were concerned with preserving individual liberty. With pure democracy the majority can often violate the rights and trample the individual liberty of the minority. The Greek city states were historical examples of why they were concerned.

This is why they opted for a constitutional democratic republic with the Constitution as the highest law of the land. They viewed this form of government as the best way to allow a democratic process to control the representatives of the people but also maximize the preservation of individual liberty for all citizens. We often refer to it as the rule of law.

In my view calling the U. S. a democracy has subtly shifted the perception of our governmental system away from what the Founders envisioned. They managed to create the best form of government yet devised a classical constitutional democratic republic. It’s not perfect but it beats all the alternatives.

Progressives want you to believe that perfection and utopia are possible. They suffer from what I call philosopher king(s) syndrome. They think they can find a godlike leader or group of leaders to guide them to collectivist utopia. The historical record is that they always lead to dystopia. H. L. Mencken who I think could arguably be thought of as the first modern libertarian made this observation:

"Liberty, at bottom, is a simple thing, whatever its outward forms. It is common faith in man, common good will, common tolerance and charity, common decency, no less and no more. Translated into political terms, it is the doctrine that the normal citizen of a civilized state is actually normal – that the decency which belongs naturally to homo sapiens, as an animal above the brutes, is really in him. It holds that this normal citizen may be trusted, one day with another, to do the decent thing. It relies upon his natural impulses, and assumes them to be sound. Finally, it is the doctrine that if these assumptions are false, then nothing can be done about it – and if human beings are actually so bad, then none is good enough to police the rest.”