Headline Surfer snapshot graphic / The United States of America is a federal republic as shown in this snapshot graphic taken from Wikipedia. It has three distinct branches of government: Legislative through two houses of Congress in the Senate and House of Representatives; executive through the presidency and judicial through the Supreme Court and lower federal courts. The next layer is the states with its three branches in the legislature, governor and courts.
NEW SMRNA BEACH -- “If we are to survive as a democratic nation . . .” These words, taken directly from a letter to the Editor of the Daytona Beach News Journal published on May 7, 2013, was the proverbial straw that broke this camel’s back.
I am so tired of hearing how our:
• “Democracy” is being undermined;
• “Democracy” is not being served;
• Such and such flies in the face of our nation’s “democratic traditions;”
• How can Congress not pass something that 90% of the people in our “democracy” are demanding?
I am driven to protest these ignorant misrepresentations as they are undermining the foundations upon which our country was built and contributing to mass stupidity.
Even our current president of the United States of America talks about our nation as a democracy.
The USA is not a democracy and has never has been a democracy.
In case any reader dropped out of school prior to eighth or ninth grade, forgot or slept through what they were supposed to learn in civics and government class in junior or senior high school, or is of the age group (most of the last generation) whose school curriculum was rewritten by those who felt that teaching young people civics, American history and Western Civilization was not important and better used by some of the questionable content they are presented with today, it is time to set the record straight.
As a former teacher, let me give any and all of the above uninformed a quick lesson or refresher: Our nation is a "federal republic" based on a written and very specific constitution. Let’s take the descriptors/nouns "federal," "republic" and "constitution" one at a time.
Contrary to the misunderstanding of or willful misrepresentation by some in our society, federal (or federalism) is not defined as a huge central government that is overlord to the 50 states that comprise our union. It means the very opposite.
Federalism is the individual willingness of the states to unite as a nation (federation), for certain limited and enumerated purposes that provide strength, power and superior protection to the people, their rights and their property. (See U.S. Constitution, Amendment 10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.)
More importantly, we were, as a nation, created as a republic, not a democracy.
A democracy means everyone gets a say on everything and the majority rules. Our nation was founded on the principle of representative democracy, i.e. a republic.
Within such a government construct, legally entitled citizens (who must be living, breathing adults as opposed to the deceased, imagined persons, persons whose rights are limited because of proven crimes or those illegally in our country who somehow get to cast “votes” in some elections) elect representatives from amongst themselves to represent them at every level of government.
These “citizen” representatives are entrusted with establishing, guarding , modifying or repealing, if necessary, the laws of their municipalities, states and nation – depending on the powers allotted to them – then live under them.
If you are displeased with your representative, work to elect a new one. And then there is the Constitution, a document revered by many and denigrated by some as out-of-date who don’t care to live under its principles and dictates.
As stated before, its purpose is to enumerate the powers designated to the central government of the United States.
More importantly, it exists to state very specifically the natural or God-given rights (you choose which based on your beliefs) of individual human beings.
Free speech, press, religion, right to assemble, right to bear arms – these are not freedoms granted to us by government. According to the Constitution, they are rights that cannot be infringed upon by our government.
Free speech, press, religion, right to assemble, right to bear arms – these are not freedoms granted to us by government. According to the Constitution, they are rights that cannot be infringed upon by our government.
We have them whether government likes it or not. Those who founded our nation, drafted our Constitution and horse traded with a bunch of resistant states who wanted to be independent countries into federating did so for valid reasons.
They’d just successfully fought – as complete underdogs – the greatest colonial power on Earth at the time – Britain -- for the right to separate and form a nation where the value and rights of the individual would be paramount.
Well-read and learned in history, the Founding Fathers recognized the easy and slippery slope from democracy to tyranny.
They knew that our new country must protect the rights of the minority from tyranny of the majority. Thus they determined to form our government as a republic rather than a democracy. They understood the power and common sense of uniting for very specific functions.
Working together in certain key areas, such as defense against our enemies, would result in strength rather than the weakness inherent of a bunch of squabbling nation-states trying to make it on their own or take each other down.
Yes, most of the crafters of our constitution were European immigrants or of European descent, and they recognized or had experienced the dysfunction and brutality caused by despots, entitled elites, and the inherited rights to govern and accumulate wealth irrespective of ability, intellect or effort.
They were shy of tyrants, of kings and class systems based on birth; they recognized the need for people, as individuals, to have the ability to rise in life based on character and merit.
It was by design that three separate branches of government were created, none of which could act unilaterally.
It was by design that those pesky separations of power that presidents or governors are often carping about exist.
It was by design that the central government was to be limited in its powers over the state and the people.
They wanted it to be hard to make laws, especially those that might infringe upon the people’s freedom or allow the mighty to steamroll the little guy.
The Electoral College, same thing.
Equal senate representation for each state regardless of land mass or population, same thing.
Did they get everything just right on the first pass? Those who pay attention know that the answer is no. And some of that is a result of the aforementioned horse trading necessary to get buy-in from the individual states to federate as a nation.
But the beauty of our Constitution is that it can be amended when a wrong must be righted, when we recognize practices that are not addressed in the original document or we, the people, are not living up to, in practice, what we say we believe.
But the beauty of our Constitution is that it can be amended when a wrong must be righted, when we recognize practices that are not addressed in the original document or we, the people, are not living up to, in practice, what we say we believe.
The horror of slavery – human bondage – and dehumanization of black people is long gone, thanks to a bloody civil war and the subsequent 13th, 14th and 15th amendments.
Women (19th amendment) are full citizens and have the right to vote.
Our governing document has been amended 27 times to redress mistakes or omissions, the first 10 amendments being the Bill of Rights that acknowledged and prohibited government from infringing upon natural rights of any individual citizen.
I’m aware that there are those in our population who believe the Constitution is irrelevant or outdated in our modern world and wish to negate it.
Some think that direct rather than representative democracy is better, and that the majority should have the right to impose its will upon the minority without impunity.
Some even dream of a world where the central state is in charge of all: a collective model of society such as Marxism, socialism or communism.
They dream of a world where the rights of the individual are subordinate to the “best interests” of the collective body of the people as dictated by big government.
How little do these people understand the blessings of our Federal Republic with its Constitution that affords us all the greatest amount of freedom and opportunity ever experienced by any humans or any nation in the known history of this world.
It even affords these dissenters a megaphone to project their beliefs without harm to themselves.
How foolish are they to think that there is no chance that in the United States, without our constitution and citizen oversight of the government, that we could shift from “democracy” to tyranny?
How little do they recognize the many millions of people murdered by those who have put the collective state above the freedoms of individuals (e.g. in recent memory Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Che, Pol Pot, Kaddafi, Chavez, Assad and others.)
How unaware are they that ditching our Constitutional Federal Republic could put them personally in danger — sent to reeducation camps or to death?
But I digress.
I am very passionate, although not blind, about my country and its remarkable foundation and history.
We can continue to work towards full realization of our beliefs. But, back to the initial point: We are not a democracy. No one with a scintilla of knowledge of history and government constructs with their proven denigrating and anti-individual policy outcomes would wish us to be anything but what we are.
Please burn this into your brain: If you are a citizen of the United States of America, you are a citizen of a constitutional federal republic.
Please burn this into your brain: If you are a citizen of the United States of America, you are a citizen of a constitutional federal republic.