According to a diary entry of Constitution signer James McHenry, following proceedings at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, a Pennsylvania woman reportedly asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government the convention was giving to the people -- "a republic or a monarchy?" Franklin is said to have told her, "A republic, if you can keep it." But keeping it seems to be a problem for us because most Americans, including politicians, don't even seem to understand what kind of government our founders gave to us.
Why do I say this? Think about it. We pledge allegiance "to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands"; yet our outgoing president, our political leaders, the media, our teachers, etc., keep calling our form of government a democracy, which is a government based on the will and rule of the majority of the people. But our founders did not give us a democracy; they gave us a republic -- a government based on laws, with the U.S. Constitution being the founding law of our nation.
There is a big difference between a democracy and a republic. While a republic rules in accord with a specific set of laws, a democracy rules by enforcing the will of the majority of the people upon all the people. A republic (at least if it remains a republic) follows a set of laws and procedures to give equal protection to all under the law whether the majority favors it or not. A democracy follows the will of the majority and tramples the will and the rights of the minority whenever the majority considers it expedient to do so. While a republic, with laws, protects the rights of the minority, there is no such protection in a pure democracy because the majority (whether it be right or wrong) rules.
America's founders understood the weaknesses of men and saw and experienced what can happen when too much power is given to men. For that reason, the government given to us is a government which divided and limited powers. Most people see the division of power between the three branches of federal government, the legislative, executive and judicial branches -- a form of checks and balances to protect the rights of the people and of the member states. But most do not realize that the founders also divided power between the member states and the federal government, giving the federal government specific and limited governing duties and reserving the rest to the states and to the people.
The founding articles of the Constitution spell out the specific duties and realms of each branch of the federal government, and the 10th Amendment makes clear that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
For this reason, the states and the people should cry out against the federal government when it oversteps its Constitutional bounds and usurps powers which rightfully are reserved to the states or to the people. The Constitution gives the federal government no power to regulate education, to set minimum wages, to buy up land or take it from the states, to overrule state laws regarding marriage and abortion, etc. And, states have every right to nullify federal usurpations of power by refusing to acknowledge their legitimacy and refusing to enforce or abide by those federal laws and regulations which exceed Constitutional limits placed on the federal government.
And, did you know that the Constitution made no provision for a popular vote for the offices of president and vice president? Qualified electors (equal in number to the state's total number of senators and representatives in Congress) were selected for each state in a manner specified by the state legislatures, and the electors chose the president and vice president. That would sure cut down on the endless campaigning for the high office but, gradually, more and more states began selecting the state's electors by means of popular vote and even locked in their votes. And so, here we are with people talking about the 2020 elections before the new president elect is even sworn in.
In regard to Congress, the people elected their representatives by popular vote and the state legislatures selected the two senators to represent the states in Congress. This division of power was ended with the passage of the 17th Amendment, which changed the way U.S. senators were elected, shifting their election from the state legislatures to the common vote of the people in 1913.
Both the electoral college and the election of U.S. senators by their respective state legislatures were designed to balance powers and to protect against the dangers of a pure democracy, in which the will of the majority is imposed on the minority regardless of previous protections granted to all under the law. But this balance of power and the protections it affords is slipping away. Senators are elected by majority vote of the people and the president and vice president could soon be elected in the same way if the push toward doing away with the electoral college succeeds. The next change on the agenda may be to allow the people to elect or appoint federal judges and Supreme Court justices.
Incidentally, if the electoral college is ever replaced by popular vote, it will mean that presidential elections will be determined by the vote of the people in large-population states like California and New York. It won't matter what the people of Arkansas want in a president. It will always be what the majority desires in a president.
The end result in America's shift from being a republic to a democracy will be a form of mob rule in which whatever the majority desires it will have, and the wishes and the rights of the minority will matter little. It won't matter what is right and what is wrong. All that will matter is what the majority of the people desire to be considered right and considered wrong. There will be no rule of law, only a rule based on the ever-changing whims of the majority.
When that happens -- and it's already happening -- those who hold to Biblical and traditional values will become an obstacle to the people's will and a menace to be purged from society. And, to be fully honest, no one will be safe. What is popular or acceptable one day might not be tomorrow.
Randy Moll is the managing editor of the Westside Eagle Observer. He may be contacted by email at [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author.
Editorial on 01/18/2017