JW

The USA was founded as a Republic; a republic is by definition, an oligarchy. it is not a democracy. The USA is in fact a serial oligarchy. A republic is subject to a constitution.

An oligarchy is a government by an elite group of citizens. We are governed by three 'groups' of elite citizens. The Constitution decrees that they must share power. An example of the genius of the Founders. The three groups fight among themselves and we don't have to worry about what they do until they all agree on an action. It is deliberately inefficient and remarkably stable. The Congress is the only one that can make the rules, the Courts must agree that it meets constitutional muster and the President must agree to sign it or risk being overridden.

A democracy is defined as government by a direct vote of all eligible citizens. A democracy has no constitution. No constitution can survive in a democracy because the citizens can demand to do away with part or all of it at any time. Try doing away with ours. It won't happen, which is why the Democrats are forced to try to make it as irrelevant as possible by inventing rights that were never envisioned by any sane human being.

The suggestion that we are a representative anything (republic or democracy) is ridiculous. We have constitutionally set times when we have the opportunity to have our voices heard in the selection of our temporary oligarchs. They are called elections. They style themselves as "representatives of the people" but once elected, they have no legal requirement to do anything that serves the people. They can, and do, make whatever rules please themselves. The people's only recourse is not to re-elect them.

We are a Republic! The voting exercise we are granted is extremely limited in what it can do. In a democracy, the vote has absolute power. Our votes have minimal power.

PeterS

And, as I said before, if a Republic isn't a form of Democracy then don't bother to vote in the next election...

RandyBrian Loc: Texas

Agreed to all. It is not efficient, but it works to provide maximum protection for the personal freedom of citizens.
Not all people everywhere. CITIZENS. Unfortunately, the government itself has gotten very creative about ignoring or circumventing the Constitution. And despite all the silliness claiming that white supremacy or DJT or Biden or fascism or communism or whatever is the "greatest" threat to our country, the greatest threat is the citizenries lack of faith in the system of elections. Unfortunately, one party has made it standard practice to circumvent the Constitution, tamper with election fraud, to corrupt and weaponize the media, and to weaponize the entrenched bureaucracy to maintain their power.
It's like the arsonists 'coming to the rescue', claiming to be firefighters.

Weewillynobeerspilly Loc: North central Texas

Democracy is a byproduct of the Republic..... now go to sleep.

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Republic vs Democracy

REPEAL THE 17TH AMENDMENT!

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

Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.
James Madison

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.
Alexander Hamilton

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

If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.
Samuel Adams

When the representative body have lost the confidence of their constituents, when they have notoriously made sale of their most valuable rights, when they have assumed to themselves powers which the people never put into their hands, then indeed their continuing in office becomes dangerous to the state.
Thomas Jefferson

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston Churchill



James Madison, Property
29 Mar. 1792 Papers

This term in its particular application means "that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual."

In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.

In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.

In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.

He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.

He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.

In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho' from an opposite cause.

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.

According to this standard of merit, the praise of affording a just securing to property, should be sparingly bestowed on a government which, however scrupulously guarding the possessions of individuals, does not protect them in the enjoyment and communication of their opinions, in which they have an equal, and in the estimation of some, a more valuable property.

More sparingly should this praise be allowed to a government, where a man's religious rights are violated by penalties, or fettered by tests, or taxed by a hierarchy. Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right. To guard a man's house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man's conscience which is more sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection, for which the public faith is pledged, by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest. A magistrate issuing his warrants to a press gang, would be in his proper functions in Turkey or Indostan, under appellations proverbial of the most compleat despotism.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property strictly so called. What must be the spirit of legislation where a manufacturer of linen cloth is forbidden to bury his own child in a linen shroud, in order to favour his neighbour who manufactures woolen cloth; where the manufacturer and wearer of woolen cloth are again forbidden the oeconomical use of buttons of that material, in favor of the manufacturer of buttons of other materials!

A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species: where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied, by an unfeeling policy, as another spur; in violation of that sacred property, which Heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him, in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities.

If there be a government then which prides itself in maintaining the inviolability of property; which provides that none shall be taken directly even for public use without indemnification to the owner, and yet directly violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their persons, and their faculties; nay more, which indirectly violates their property, in their actual possessions, in the labor that acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of time which ought to relieve their fatigues and soothe their cares, the influence [inference?] will have been anticipated, that such a government is not a pattern for the United States.

If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter, will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments.

PeterS

Where did you come up with that? As JW said, a Republic is an oligarchy. An Oligarchy doesn't need voting to exist, in fact, they are generally run by strongmen who treat voting with disdain. So if a democracy is a byproduct of a Republic then explain how!

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

All nations have constitutions...
They are alterable to varying degrees of difficulty...
America's Constitution can be altered as well...

Could you give me a single example of a nation where everything is subject to a majority vote????

PeterS

And as I said, if we aren't a democracy then there is no need for you to vote in the next election. And read what JW said, a Republic is an Oligarchy. Oligarachys don't have elections and if they do they are just for show as with Putin and Russia.

And I have to ask you Blade, do you never think about anything or is your life nothing but cut and paste? The mistake that you conservatives are making is that you fail to understand that a Republic can utilize the principles of a Democracy without being one. If you look at our elections they are settled by the majority. That's a democratic principle not a principle of a Republic. Read the back of a dollar bill. Ours was intended to be a participatory Republic and that can only happen through the principles of a Democracy. Without it we are nothing but an Oligaracy ruled by strongmen with the Populus trampled underfoot. You won't understand that with your cut and paste Blade--you will only get that by thinking for yourself...

JW

You place far too much emphasis on the vote. Try to understand how a government functions. The vote in a republic is almost exclusively for the selection of people to operate the government. It has remarkably little to do with actual governing. In a democracy, the vote is the government.

JW

That may be true today but government didn't start today.
Yes, but lawful alteration of the US Constitution is almost impossible. Look into the amendment process and what that involves. We've had many attempts to change the Constitution but only 27 have ever made it. Ask any supporter of the ERA amendment. It took 200 years to get the 27 th passed by the states. It'll take longer for the ERA.

There are no functioning democracies because they don't work. Just because the people vote doesn't make a democracy. Ask Maduro of Venezuela.

oligarchy
[ ol-i-gahr-kee ]SHOW IPA


See synonyms for oligarchy on Thesaurus.com
🎓 College Level
noun, plural ol·i·gar·chies.
a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few.
a state or organization so ruled.
the persons or class so ruling

JW

<<<"A Republic, if you can keep it." Response attributed to Benjamin Franklin at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation, in the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland's delegates to the Convention.>>> If we can keep it....

JW

You clearly don't understand what an oligarchy is. they are NEVER ruled by one person, never!

meridianlesilie Loc: mars

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lpnmajor Loc: Arkansas

The words "of, by and for the people" leave little room for doubt or confusion - however - it leaves a monstrous gap for apathetic people to fall into and drown.

RandyBrian Loc: Texas

Your logic is severely flawed.
You are taking the statement "a republic is an oligarchy" and then trying to imply that our republic has all the usual characteristics of an oligarchy. It does not. Our republic can, arguably, be called an oligarchy because our leaders ARE an elite group. The difference is that our elite group is elected from among the citizenry, and BY the citizenry. While it does occasionally happen, it is unusual for power to be handed from parent to child, or even from mentor to apprentice. We have had, many times, effective leaders who rose from the most poor and humble backgrounds.
Our "oligarchs" are, for the most part, a position that is worked hard for, and earned by convincing enough people to vote for them. It is an expensive, dirty, and often nasty proposition that can be used by the corrupt as well as the honest. But it is better than any other system ever proposed. The biggest problem, overall, is the normalization of our elected leaders immediately handing their legislative power to unelected bureaucrats.
Nevertheless, whatever term you choose to call our system, it IS first and foremost a republic. It is also an indirect democracy with various aspects of "common good" thrown it here and there. You can call that socialism, and we can argue how much is too much and when and where it should be utilized, but it does not change the fact that we are a republic.
That isn't preventing the left from trying, though.