Front Page     Archives   Great links  

Marie Lozito	March 25, 2011 Marie Lozito is a Registered Nurse, Licensed Massage Therapist, wife, mother, grandmother and life-long conservative. She wrote a text on medical massage and taught at New York College of Health Professions.  Interested in, and observing politics since 1960, she ran for elected office in 2010.

They Want Democracy?

The Mideast is in turmoil as various groups are rebelling against their governments and trying to establish democracies. Many Americans are hopeful that these people will win their freedom and have liberty and democracy like America. The problem is that America is not a democracy and democracies don't work! Americans used to know that we are a republic. “I pledge allegiance to the United States of America and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands...” Somewhere, somehow this knowledge about our country got lost in the shuffle.

Madison warned us of the dangers of democracies with these words, “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.”-James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787. 

“Democracy is the most vile form of government.”- James Madison. 

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49.” -Thomas Jefferson.

“Democracy, never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” -John Adams.

John Winthrop, the Pilgrim father whose vision of a “city on a hill” so inspired Ronald Reagan, “A democracy is ... accounted the meanest and worst form of government.”

The Founding Fathers knew a direct democracy would not protect the liberty of the people and could not survive. They knew this because they knew history. They had studied and understood why previous democracies had failed. They also understood human nature.

Democracies establish a tyranny of the majority and have no filter for the passions of the people to work through before there is action. Direct democracy can only work in a small group. Even at the start of our country, the Founders knew that the United States was too populated and too large to have a workable democracy. 

“Thomas Jefferson knew what he was talking about when he declared that the REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM was the ONLY DEVICE by which the rights of man could be assured.”- James Boyle, 1912. 

"The framers of the Constitution were entirely familiar with the failure of direct democracy in the government of numerous populations and they were influenced by their knowledge of that failure in devising our own structure of republican government.” Hon Samuel W McCall, 1911.

Article IV Section 4, of the Constitution, guarantees to every state in this union a Republican form of government.... Conversely, the word democracy is not mentioned even once in the Constitution.

In the early part of the last century the political theories about socialism were very popular. They certainly sounded good. People wanted to believe that humans had evolved and their nature had changed enough that these ideologies would work in a society. (20th century history certainly proved that to be wrong!) There was an effort to change America from a republic to a democracy. 

Representative McCall spoke against this effort. “It is now proposed to abandon the discovery of modern times to which Jefferson referred (a republic) and which he declared to be the only method by which rights can be secured and to put in its stead the discarded device of the ancients (a democracy)....” Referring to those wanting to make America a democracy, he said that they …“advocate the return to the reactionary policies which thousands of years ago demonstrated their destructive effect upon the government of any considerable populations."

“We may define a republic to be ... a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior. It is essential to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.” James Madison, Federalist No. 10, (1787)

In other words: the persons in office are there at the “pleasure” of the people (by voting them into office), and only during good behavior (they can be removed from office by the people if the people disapprove of the their conduct), and that no section of the “body of the people” should have special standing or influence lest a small group take control and act as a tyranny while falsely claiming to still be a republic.

The more the citizens of America learn our history and what the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights actually mean, the better our republic will fare. “We the people” can still reclaim our country. 

On April 16, you can participate, from the comfort of your home, in a free, live, online, town hall with Congressman Mike Pence and Dr. Larry Arnn and Dr. Paul Moreno of Hillsdale College. "Economic Liberty and the Constitution" starts at 10:00 a.m. EDT. You’ll learn how our economic liberty has diminished and how we can get it back under the U.S. Constitution.