How many people today understand that the founders of this nation structured it as a Republic. How cares right? You better care, because the differences between a democracy and republic are important.
You can read the words of our founders and you will see quote after quote from people like Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson espousing the weakness of a “democracy”. It would sound odd to the the laymen unaware of the founders intent to hear a John Adams say:
However, The founders understood that democracy has weaknesses, and these weaknesses is why they structured our Constitution to form a republic.
It may not seem as important as the score of the Steelers, Browns game, or who Simon Cowell is critiquing on Idol, but it is. Its deadly important. This lack of concern regarding our government is what has us in the position we are now. And it long past time for the people to do as Thomas Paine said:
The fact that our government was designed to operate as a republic is very important. A republic seeks to preserve the rights, liberty, and freedom against the masses. A notion has crept into our national consciousness that the masses wants are always correct and majority should always rule. That entire premise is flawed and no more true than saying that the chosen few or one in power knows what is best. Each has there dangers of destroying liberty, and each leave out the foundational principles needed to govern… rule of law.A republic is founded upon rule of law and serves to protect liberty by deliberately making it difficult to modify that law.
In the last hundred years this nation has legislated away many of those protections. The 17th amendment turned election of Senators over to the electorate, that man sound like a good idea but it isn't. The founders purposely left the election of Senators with the States legislatures to ensure that they would be representatives of the State. Unlike what it has degraded to, Senators now receive campaign donations from across the US and they are now de facto representatives of the entire nation and no longer champions of the their own state’s issues and people.
The Senate is a powerful legislative body because they are the smallest and because they provide equal numeric representation to every state. When the member no longer serve for the interest of their own states populations the republic system is degraded if not destroyed.
If we do not return our system of government to its original form the United States will move further from its republic design and closer to the “suicide” that John Adams spoke of.
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