America Is a Republic, Not a Democracy
America is a republic and not a pure democracy.
The contemporary efforts to weaken our republican customs and institutions in the name of greater e******y thus run against the efforts by America’s Founders to defend our country from the potential excesses of democratic majorities.
American republicanism and the ordered liberty it makes possible are grounded in the Federalists’ recognition that non-majoritarian parts of the community make legitimate contributions to the community’s welfare, and that preserving these contributions is the hallmark of political justice.
But, the careful balance produced by our mixed republic is threatened by an egalitarianism that undermines the social, familial, religious, and economic distinctions and inequalities that undergird our political liberty.
Preserving the republican freedoms we cherish requires tempering egalitarian zeal and moderating the hope for a perfectly just democracy.

Contrary to popular belief, America is not, nor was it meant to be a pure democracy.
America is a republic.
Nevertheless, more and more voices today are calling for America to become a direct democracy.
Given the contemporary decline of the humanities in the American academy, where the serious study of such literature used to be found, pessimism about the prospects of recovering a healthy respect for the intellectual ine******y so necessary to republican freedom might well be justified.
But given what is at stake—“a republic, if we can keep it,” to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin’s legendary quip—the fight must go on.

Bernard Dobski is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Assumption College and Visiting Fellow in the B. Kenneth Simon Center, of the Edwin J. Feulner Institute, at The Heritage Foundation.
https://www.heritage.org/american-founders/report/america-republic-not-democracy

I have posted this multiple times, classified as a Constitutional Republic rather than a Democracy.
When Benjamin Franklin was asked about what form of government he had helped to create, he responded, “A Republic, if you can keep it”.

Is the United States a Constitutional Republic?
The Origins of the Democratic System
The creation of democracy dates back to 6th century BCE Athens and it has since become one of the primary forms of government throughout the modern world, at least in a sense since no major government has adopted direct democracy as its primary way of governing the populace. What many now call democracy is actually a subsect of the democratic system known as indirect democracy where the populace elects individuals to v**e for them and, as such, do not directly participate in government. The ancient philosopher Plato, who had severe objections to the direct democratic government of Ancient Athens, would surely agree that this form of democracy is indeed more beneficial to the people and to the state. He argued in his work The Republic that any democracy is doomed to fail as the state would be subject to the wills of uneducated and uninformed peoples. Plato stated that direct democracy can often devolve into tyranny as a result of this problematic nature.


The Roman Republic rectified the erroneous nature of the direct democratic system and established the first ever representative government. This government allowed for people to have a direct say in Roman assemblies but separated the Senate and Cursus Honorum from the people. Most modern governments which utilise the democratic system cite this Roman governmental system as the inspiration for their own Constitutions.


The American Founding Fathers
James Madison, oftentimes called the Father of the Constitution, helped to draft and establish the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
He determined that after the failure of the Articles of Confederation, the United States could only function with a strong federal government.
This led delegates from all 13 colonies to meet and begin to draft what would become the Constitution, establishing the three fundamental branches of the United States government.

Madison realized the problems that plagued direct democracies and instead sought to establish a Constitutional Republic.
In a Constitutional Republic, rather than the legal power of the government stemming from the people, it is instead derived from the Constitution itself.
The term Constitutional Republic can be clearly understood when analyzing each word separately. The “Constitutional” aspect of the Republic means that the Constitution is the supreme law of the United States while the term “Republic” means that the power of the government is held by the people but is exercised by elected representatives.
This differentiation in power helps to protect the Republic from being subject to “mob rule”, as originally described by Plato.
This difference makes it so that, although by definition the United States is a democracy, every v**e is not always equal.
In P**********l e******ns, this ine******y is addressed in the E*******l College where states gain a specified number of v**es based on their census.
The E*******l College allows for v**es throughout the country to matter, rather than being reliant upon a small number of urban centers.


Madison and other Founding Fathers realized the complex nature of democracy and sought to separate the Executive and Judicial branches of power from the people. The Heritage Foundation states that the Founding Fathers saw that, “because ancient democracies lacked any social or institutional forces that could check, refine, or moderate the will of the majority, they were prone to great instability”. This instability left democracy vulnerable to tyranny and abuse.


Although citizens of the United States have the ability to elect Senators and Congressmen, they do not participate in the e******n of Presidents for a very important reason. A majority of the United States population is in a relatively small number of urban centers. If the President of the United States was elected directly by the people, the only v**es that would matter would be those in urban areas, singling out the rural population. This would make it so that states such as New York and California have more of a say over what happens in the Midwest than the people living in the Midwest themselves. Although the E*******l College may seem antiquated to many, it serves the purpose to an equal footing to every state in the e******n of the next President. This is one of the clearest examples that separates the United States from being a democracy as it relies on a representative E*******l College originally created by the United States Constitution.

Modern Criticisms of the Term "Constitutional Republic"
I would be remiss not to adequately describe both sides of the argument whether the United States is better classified as a democracy or as a Constitutional Republic.
An article in The Atlantic mentions how President Abraham Lincoln attempted to unite both terms into one form of government.
He did so in the Gettysburg Address where he stated that the United States is a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people”.
This seems to argue that although the United States is, by definition, a Constitutional Republic, it could be considered a democracy that serves the people.
This article, however, seems to move away from their original argument and side-step into a discussion about the hypocrisy of the modern Republican Party.
One of the major arguments they mention is the disparity in senatorial representation compared to each state’s population.
his argument demonstrates one of the most important details of the Constitution: that all states are equally represented.
This senatorial e******y is a key fundamental necessity for the United States government as it allows for all states to have a say in how the government is run.
The author is remiss in not mentioning how the number of representatives in the House is reliant on each state’s census and that, as a result, there are significantly more Californian representatives than Delawareans.


By refusing to accurately assess what is meant by the term “Constitutional Republic”, many authors misrepresent the idea to mean that the people have no true say in the government.
This could not be further from the t***h, as it allows for the government to help separate the true will of the majority of the country from a type of mob rule.
This idea is furthered through the Constitution which begins with "We the People", clearly defining that the power of the Federal government derives from its populace.

Conclusions
The United States Constitution is one of the most important legal documents in modern history.
It has allowed each state to remain equal when discussing matters on the floor of Congress and has allowed people throughout the United States to be heard in matters of government.
The US falls under governmental classifications for both Indirect Democracy and Constitutional Republic but could be more accurately classified as the latter.
The true power of the United States Federal Government derives from the populace that it protects and governs but ultimately its rule of law comes from the Constitution.

Therefore, since the US government is representative in nature and derives its laws from the Constitution, it should be classified as a Constitutional Republic rather than a Democracy.

When Benjamin Franklin was asked about what form of government he had helped to create, he responded,
“A Republic, if you can keep it”.
https://www.standrewslawreview.com/post/is-the-united-states-a-constitutional-republic

Why Biden Lies
He’s a classic bulls**tter.

Joe Biden’s tale last week about being at Ground Zero the day after September 11 put an understandable focus on his endless false and exaggerated stories about himself.
The best piece I’ve seen on Biden’s lies is this excellent Noah Rothman piece on how to know Biden is lying.
But I wanted to take a different tack.
I was on Megyn Kelly’s podcast the other day, and we discussed briefly the question of why Joe Biden lies so much, which got me considering the question more carefully.

First, as a technical matter, he’s not a liar so much as a bulls**tter, at least in much of what he says about himself. For most purposes, this is a distinction without a difference. Still, to understand the source of Biden’s f**grant departures from reality, it’s worth reverting to the late philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt’s analysis in his classic short book On Bulls**t.
“It is impossible,” Frankfurt writes, for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the t***h.
Producing bulls**t requires no such conviction.
A person who lies is thereby responding to the t***h, and he is to that extent respectful of it.
When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false.

Frankfurt continues:
For the bulls**tter, however, all these bets are off: He is neither on the side of the t***h nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says.
He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out or makes them up, to suit his purpose.
He adds that the bulls**tter “does not reject the authority of the t***h, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it.
He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bulls**t is a greater enemy of the t***h than lies are.”
So what is Biden’s purpose? Self-valorization, of course — literally from the moment of his birth.
His stories are almost always supposed to be dramatic, moving, and pointed, with Biden himself the center of the action — overcoming adversity, fighting injustice, righting wrongs, witnessing great events and acts of courage.
The psychologist might have trouble disentangling Biden’s chip-on-his-shoulder and sense of inadequacy from his excessive self-regard, with the latter certainly compensating for, to some extent, the former.
For instance, Biden’s classic, falsehood-laden fusillade at a New Hampshire campaign event in 1987 about his own brilliance and accomplishment as a student was disturbing, hilarious, and, at the end of the day, simply pathetic.
Biden is a talker and of the worst sort.
It’s one thing to be a talented conversationalist, brimming with interesting and funny things to say. Or a gifted speaker, whose after-dinner remarks never leave anyone dissatisfied. Someone like our own John O’Sullivan covers both these bases — he’s not just a brilliant writer, but a brilliant talker.
Biden, on the other hand, is notable only for the amount of his talking, not its quality. This kind of talker tends to be undisciplined — so he’s not particularly careful about anything he says — and tends to be self-obsessed, otherwise, he wouldn’t be so willing to subject people to his verbal barrages.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/09/why-biden-lies/

Biden easily could be that guy who never shuts up at the end of the bar who says that he had tickets on the 50-yard line of the Eagles game when he really was in the upper deck behind one of the end zones and that he’s friends with Jalen Hurts because he saw him from a distance once at the gym.

Biden wasn’t particularly careful when he was in his prime as a U.S. senator, obviously. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have blown himself up in 1987 cribbing from British politician Neil Kinnock to say false things about his own family background.

Now, he’s older. That means some of these stories have been related over and over, and stories never get worse in the retelling, only better.

On top of this, he’s in decline, and certainly more genuinely confused about timelines and facts than he was in his prime as a bulls**tter.

Now, his malarkey, to use his term from his vice-p**********l debate with Paul Ryan, is even more obvious and discrediting than it was 40 years ago, a function of a doddering and weak president most everyone thinks shouldn’t be running for a second term.

If Biden ever does retire, what’s certain is that the stories will be as insufferable as ever, and complete bulls**t.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/09/why-biden-lies/

“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”
— Mark Twain

Maybe she should check on what party is funding wars and open borders.

Robert De Niro Clutches Pearls Over Another Possible Trump Presidency, Says “He’ll Come Looking For Me”
Reduced to a sissy paranoid washup.
Someone may go after the asshole, it won't be Trump.

Yeah, drop Biden a few thousand to help pay the student loans.
If stupidity were a cause for impeachment Biden would have been gone on his first day.

For some added kick:
Add jalapeno to the cornbread.
Cayenne pepper and corn to the limas.

White Cheddar Mac and Cheese
https://cozypeachkitchen.com/white-cheddar-mac-and-cheese/

Or,
https://www.mariecallendersmeals.com/multi-serve-meals/meals-share/vermont-cheddar-mac-and-cheese

Biden goes off the rails as he repeats a false story for the EIGHTH time about a conductor who congratulated him for logging more miles on Amtrak than Air Force Two as Vice President - 20 years after he retired
Biden repeated Monday for the eighth time a made-up Amtrak commuting story
Said a conductor congratulated him for 1M miles after he was dead for a year.
'I was going home as a United States senator – as vice president – and one of the conductors said to me, 'Hey Joe, big deal, a million – wh**ever – 200 –.' He said, 'You've traveled over a million miles on Amtrak,' Biden recalled.
'I said, 'How the hell do you know that?' And they added it up there,' Biden recalled, even though fact-checks have shown this is not true.

Biden, who has been called 'Amtrak Joe' due to his affinity for the train, has told the story several times of his Amtrak conductor friend Angelo Negri, who is at the center of the story.
Negri, however, had been dead for more than a year – and retired for more than two decades – before the earliest moment Biden could have had this conversation as vice president.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11694227/Biden-goes-rails-repeats-false-story-EIGHTH-time.html

What part of "staying up" held your interest?

“A lady came up to me one day and said 'Sir! You are drunk', to which I replied 'I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly.”
― Winston Churchill

Taking showers with him is a plus, and even better when you are three feet tall.
And better with a big mouth.

Being one is crucial, Kevyn is an expert.
You a close second.

It would be with you as usual lapping it up.