Are you anti-democracy?
“A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy – A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.” - James McHenry. Diary, September 18, 1787
It seems the left has trotted out a new trope: if you are an election-denier, you are anti-democracy. For instance, the title of an article in The Atlantic reads: Election deniers are a threat to democracy. The midterms could be the last chance to stop them. In an interview this week on Meet the Press, Liz Cheney mirrored this malapropism, stating, “I think that, as people go in to vote, they need to recognize that there are certain candidates who are anti-democracy. They need to recognize that election deniers are anti-democracy, and they should not vote for those people," Cheney claimed.
So what exactly is an “election denier”? Do they deny elections exist? Do they refuse to vote? This phrase is another one of the left’s malapropisms like homophobe that they use to bludgeon those with whom they disagree, those who do not believe the results of the 2020 election are legitimate. Never mind that they themselves were in a similar position in 2000 with Gore v. Bush, or the “election-denying tour” on which Hilary Clinton embarked after losing the 2016 election to Donald Trump. They behave as if believing there was funny business with the results of a vote is uncharted territory, as though it is a novel concept. Others have already documented the many times Democrats have done this themselves, so I won’t go there. Dinesh D’Souza has an interesting take on the left’s linguistic ineptitude. In discussing this aspersion, D’Souza rightly points out that when they say we are “anti-democracy,” they really mean we refuse to vote for their candidates. He goes on further to explain the Democrat’s position:
…it’s a nonsensical view of democracy. It's kind of like saying that the rules of tennis are only valid if if I win, uh if I win the tournament. If I lose the tournament, then obviously the rules of tennis are being rejected by the other side. This is an attack on tennis itself. No it isn’t; you lost the game.
As I’ve been hearing these arguments, it got me thinking about the founding of our country, and even about the names of the parties: Democrat and Republican. When the Constitution was written, it established the union between the States as a Constitutional Republic, with each state having a “Republican Form of Government” - not a Democratic one. Specifically in the Constitution, we read:
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…
U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Section 4
Asked when emerging from the Constitutional Convention what sort of government we have, Benjamin Franklin replied, “A republic…if you can keep it.” Many have been duped, through our educational system and through the pronouncements of politicians, that we live in a democracy. A true democracy is one in which all of the citizens participate directly in governmental affairs. All legislation is voted on directly by the people. It is a literal system of majority rule. In contemplating different forms of government, Aristotle wrote:
For tyranny is a kind of monarchy which has in view the interest of the monarch only; oligarchy has in view the interest of the wealthy; democracy, of the needy: none of them the common good of all….oligarchy is when men of property have the government in their hands; democracy, the opposite, when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers…
Aristotle - The Politics: Book III
Aristotle saw democracy as a rule by “the needy,” a system in which the interests of the needy prevailed over the “general welfare.” They rapidly devolve into mob rule, and they do not have mechanisms by which to keep factions in check. James Madison, one of our founding fathers, wrote of democracies:
From this view of the subject, it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society, consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.
The Federalist 10 -
https://founders.archives.gov/?q=%20Author%3A%22Madison%2C%20James%22&s=1111311112&r=1089
This is the picture, as has been proffered many times, of the two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. When Democrats refer to our Democracy™, they really mean their power. In a way, I believe they would like to see a simple system of majority rule, and I suspect it is part of the reason they do not wish to remedy issues at the southern border. The more illegals who flood into the country and start hearing all the Democrats plan to give them, the more (illegitimate?) voters they have to help solidify our Democracy™. This is why they oppose the electoral college, why they want to pack the Supreme Court, why they were fine with violent, destructive BLM/Antifa rioting while putting on a huge Kabuki theater performance over January 6.
This, however, is why the founding fathers created a Constitutional republic, to avoid the ability of such power-hungry politicians creating a dictatorial disaster. So, what is a republic or a “republican form of government”? According to the Bill of Rights Institute:
A republican government is one in which the people—directly or indirectly—are the ultimate source of authority, electing representatives to make laws that serve their interests and advance the common good. A constitutional republic, however, also limits the power of the majority through a framework that promotes competent government and affords protections for fundamental rights.
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/republican-government
We, the people, are the source of the government’s authority; corollary to that, we also may rescind that power, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence. Nonetheless, so long as the government exists as defined in our Constitution, it does so based on our grant of authority, and that grant is limited. This is far different from a pure democracy. Being influenced by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the founders sought to build a better government, a balanced representative system. This is why Madison, also in The Federalist 10, wrote of the benefits of a republic over a democracy:
The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic, are first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.
The Federalist 10 -
https://founders.archives.gov/?q=%20Author%3A%22Madison%2C%20James%22&s=1111311112&r=1089
A republic made sense, from a practical standpoint, in not having all citizens participate directly in government affairs, and in so doing, also allowing the government to extend to an even larger body of citizens and land.
Knowing this, do you not find it interesting that the Democrat party uses anti-democracy as invective? Is it not also curious that those so accused are generally Republican? With this in mind, perhaps we should actually be anti-democracy as the Democrats allege. Instead, we should fight hard, as Franklin averred, to keep our republic.