Democracy Versus Republic

Many of my fellow Republicans and "conservatives" now claim democracy is mobocracy having seen what the Democrats have done.

Democrats are DINOs, "Democratic-In-Name-Only." The passing of the health care law is an example of the ABCs of the totalitarian socialism of Democrats. The Democrats' Arrogance, Budget-Busting, and Crisis Causing in Commerce are evident. This health law went against every poll of likely voters. They believe they know better and more than the American People.


Republicans want to limit national government, but failed without the people engaged. A national referendum would have stopped any deficit, debt limit raise, or attack on our liberty like this law. What we have is 46% who are taxpayers subsidizine those who do not create our nation's wealth.

This is not a democracy. It is a Roman or Greek style republic where slaves provide the hoi palloi their bread and circuses. If we have to cite "Founders" as many do, read the words of Patrick Henry:

Your President may easily become king. Your Senate is so imperfectly constructed that your dearest rights may be sacrificed by what may be a small minority; and a very small minority may continue forever unchangeably this government, although horridly defective.

Where are your checks in this government? Your strongholds will be in the hands of your enemies.

It is on a supposition that your American governors shall be honest, that all the good qualities of this government are founded; but its defective and imperfect construction puts it in their power to perpetrate the worst of mischiefs, should they be bad men; and, sir, would not all the world, from the eastern to the western hemisphere, blame our distracted folly in resting our rights upon the contingency of our rulers being good or bad?

Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt.

Do you really believe the pledges of elected representatives?


Referendums to control spending, recalls to remove those who fail to represent, intitiatives to make laws that we live under, and popular votes on the President, Attorney General, Treasurers, et al have worked in the States. It is not an untried form of democracy.

If you do not believe in democracy, you do not believe in the Declaration of Independence where it claims, "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..." That is the founding document of the US rather than the Constitution. Lincoln said the Constitution had to be interpreted in light of the Declaration of Independence. It would be difficult in deed to deny the principles of the Republican Party do not include democracy when Lincoln makes the case for democracy.

Some say the word "democracy" is not in the Declaration of Independence. It is in the every fiber of it with the declaration that govenment drives its only powers from the consent of the governed.

Maddow: Preventing or PROVOKING another Timothy McVeigh?

Monday marks the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing — a terrorist attack by a racist, antigovernment fanatic that left 168 men, women and children dead. An MSNBC special hosted by Rachel Maddow about the tragedy features extensive interviews with Mark Potok. Given the present attrocities done by Democrats against the will and consent of the people, are they trying to prevent or PROVOKE such an attack? Is Rachel Maddow attempting to provoke criminal actions so the military can be used to put down political activities?

Progressivism Demands The Consent of the People

Note that while composing this I put together a silent film with a separate audio recording. I could have only used a still picture of TR, but I wanted people to see the man as well as hear the words, which are:

The great fundamental issue now before our people can be stated briefly. It is, are the American people fit to govern themselves, to rule themselves, to control themselves? I believe they are. My opponents do not. I believe in the right of the people to rule. I believe that the majority of the plain people of the United States will, day in and day out, make fewer mistakes in governing themselves than any smaller class or body of men, no matter what their training, will make in trying to govern them.

I believe, again, that the American people are, as a whole, capable of self-control, and of learning by their mistakes. Our opponents pay lip-loyalty to this doctrine; but they show their real beliefs by the way in which they champion every device to make the nominal rule of the people a sham.

I am not leading this fight as a matter of aesthetic pleasure. I am leading because somebody must lead, or else the fight would not be made at all. I prefer to work with moderate, with rational, conservatives, provided only that they do in good faith strive forward toward the light.

But when they halt and turn their backs to the light, and sit with the scorners on the seats of reaction, then I must part company with them. We the people cannot turn back. Our aim must be steady, wise progress.

It would be well if our people would study the history of a sister republic. All the woes of France for a century and a quarter have been due to the folly of her people in splitting into the two camps of unreasonable conservatism and unreasonable radicalism.

Had pre-Revolutionary France listened to men like Turgot, and backed them up, all would have gone well. But the beneficiaries of privilege, the Bourbon reactionaries, the shortsighted ultra-conservatives, turned down Turgot; and then found that instead of him they had obtained Robespierre.

They gained twenty years' freedom from all restraint and reform, at the cost of the whirlwind of the red terror; and in their turn the unbridled extremists of the terror induced a blind reaction; and so, with convulsion and oscillation from one extreme to another, with alternations of violent radicalism and violent Bourbonism, the French people went through misery toward a shattered goal.

May we profit by the experiences of our brother republicans across the water, and go forward steadily, avoiding all wild extremes; and may our ultra-conservatives remember that the rule of the Bourbons brought on the Revolution, and may our would-be revolutionaries remember that no Bourbon was ever such a dangerous enemy of the people and of freedom as the professed friend of both, Robespierre.

There is no danger of a revolution in this country; but there is grave discontent and unrest, and in order to remove them there is need of all the wisdom and probity and deep-seated faith in and purpose to uplift humanity we have at our command.

Friends, our task as Americans is to strive for social and industrial justice, achieved through the genuine rule of the people. This is our end, our purpose.

The methods for achieving the end are merely expedients, to be finally accepted or rejected according as actual experience shows that they work well or ill.

But in our hearts we must have this lofty purpose, and we must strive for it in all earnestness and sincerity, or our work will come to nothing.

In order to succeed we need leaders of inspired idealism, leaders to whom are granted great visions, who dream greatly and strive to make their dreams come true; who can kindle the people with the fire from their own burning souls.

The leader for the time being, whoever he may be, is but an instrument, to be used until broken and then to be cast aside; and if he is worth his salt he will care no more when he is broken than a soldier cares when he is sent where his life is forfeit in order that the victory may be won.

In the long fight for righteousness the watchword for all of us is spend and be spent.