Before we get to the true meanings of democracy and republic, we’re going to take a moment and look at our nation’s history with a little common sense. Historical context will give us a better understanding of their differences. Then, after examining both definitions in detail in the next chapter, I’ll give you some thoughts in Chapter Four about why the distinction between the two is CRITICALLY important for our nation’s survival. I remind you, that as a student of history and mathematics, who also happens to be a Republican, I’m not a neutral, arms-length observer who’s merely presenting both sides for your consideration. That decision was made long ago and it’s all there in plain English. In this chapter and the next, I’ll support it with facts, truth, and logic, plus, in Chapter Four, state an end-game beginning with the first three political atomic bombs.
It took almost eight years for Professor Gagnon to narrow down his 260,000-plus descriptors of democracy to what he considers a workable 2,234. Frankly speaking, that’s 2,233 too many. To avoid confusion and seek clarity about the true meaning and definition of democracy, we’re going in another direction. We’re going to turn away from academic dogma (meaning, “established opinion without adequate grounds”) and seek an objective perspective by diving headfirst into TRUTH, FACT, and REALITY, letting the chips fall where they may. (As you’ll see in the next chapter, calling us a democracy is a perfect example of academic dogma and make-believe.)
Perhaps the first American to really grasp the importance of proper definitions and understand the difficulty of learning American English was Noah Webster. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Noah Webster (1758-1843) was a lawyer, schoolmaster, author, newspaper editor, essayist, lecturer, politician, Revolutionary War veteran, lexicographer, and a language reformer. As a teacher, he became dissatisfied with textbooks that ignored the American culture which led him to write “The American Spelling Book” in 1783, also known as the Blue-Backed Speller. This book is still in print with total sales to date estimated at more than 100,000,000 copies. In 1807, he started work on “An American Dictionary of the English Language,” the first unabridged dictionary that would be known as Webster’s Dictionary. It took him twenty-one years to complete his work before it was issued on April 14, 1828.1
Upon Webster’s death in 1843, the rights to his dictionary were purchased by the G. & C. Merriam Company and subsequently purchased by Encyclopedia Britannica in 1964. In 1982, it was incorporated as Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary.2 Today, Noah Webster is considered both “Schoolmaster to a Nation” and the “Father of American Scholarship and Education.”3
As explained on the Home Page, Merriam Webster’s Dictionary is our nation’s oldest and most trusted dictionary and the same dictionary that’s used by Supreme Court Justices.4 It defines hoax as: “to trick into believing or accepting as genuine something false and often preposterous.” The word preposterous is defined as: “contrary to nature, reason, or common sense: ABSURD!”
What’s happening today between Republicans and Democrats is absurd and akin to what happened in France during World War I. In that conflict, both sides were bogged down in trenches for more than three years, maintaining defensive positions while picking away at each other in an attempt to gain an advantage. When America finally entered the war, in the summer of 1917, Republican General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing was dead set against trench warfare which, thus far, had resulted only in a staggering number of casualties. He said Americans came to win and in order to win our force needed to be mobile and AGGRESSIVE.5
History shows Pershing was right. With a distinctly American attitude, he succeeded in pushing large breakouts from the stagnant trench warfare and dividing the German Army, pursuing each part until they ran low on ammunition and supplies and were forced to surrender. His brilliant leadership mirrored that of Republican General Ulysses S. Grant – WARS AREN’T WON BY MAINTAINING THE STATUS QUO. His aggressive and successful approach also served as a blueprint for another Republican general in World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who used the exact same tactics on D-Day.6
Merriam-Webster’s defines con as: “something, such as a ruse, used deceptively to gain another’s confidence,” a “SWINDLE.” Ruse is defined as: “subterfuge” or “deception.” Swindle is further defined as: “FRAUD” which is defined as: “INTENTIONAL PERVERSION OF TRUTH in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right,” and, “a person who is not what he or she PRETENDS to be.”
A con man, then, is someone who uses deception to perpetrate a fraud. Not unlike educators who preach academic dogma over and over until students believe it’s proven fact. It’s called brainwashing, defined as: “persuasion by propaganda or salesmanship.”
It’s time, once again, for Republicans to shed their impartial demeanor and GET AGGRESSIVE. In order to break out of our trench warfare with democracy con men, we need to create a hole in the Democratic Party line by destroying their BIGGEST fraud of all – our nation is a democracy. This PREPOSTEROUS HOAX was created by Democrats because of their concern over maintaining enough votes to continue SLAVERY and WHITE SUPREMACY. According to historian Frank Towers, the Democratic Party was all about majority rule at the expense of minority rights.
“Democrats stood for the ‘sovereignty of the people’ as expressed in popular demonstrations (what quickly became violent riots), constitutional conventions, and majority rule (getting the most votes by any means necessary) as a general principle of governing, whereas Whigs (forerunners of the Republican Party) advocated the rule of law, written and unchanging constitutions, and PROTECTIONS FOR MINORITY INTERESTS against majority tyranny.”7
COMMENTS: This means that prior to the Civil War, both political parties had already staked out their positions – it was the Republican Party, founded in 1854, who cared about minority rights, NOT the Democratic Party.
Towers states that the Democratic Party’s idea of “popular demonstrations” quickly morphed into VIOLENT BLOODY RIOTS that “gave expression to democracy’s rough edges (a very polite description), self-declared bodies of ‘the people’ taking sovereignty INTO THEIR OWN HANDS to pursue goals that went well beyond a formal politics of elections and government.”7
COMMENTS: Tower’s words are spot-on. “Taking sovereignty into their own hands” accurately describes the actions of a LYNCH MOB, meaning people who get caught up in a herd mentality that becomes VIOLENT RIOTS. What believers in democracy can’t obtain by debate, voting, and the peaceful means of government, they have every intention of obtaining BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY including the use of lies, voting fraud, intimidation, and CRIMINAL VIOLENCE. This type of consistently vile behavior becomes an integral part of who the Democratic Party has been THROUGHOUT ITS HISTORY, including the hundreds upon hundreds of violent race riots we’ve had since the end of the Civil War and recently experienced in Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Baltimore, and other Democrat-run cities. Following the law matters to Democrats only when it works in their favor, otherwise, it’s fraud, violence, and whatever it takes.
History shows that Democrats haven’t been the least bit concerned about how they obtain their votes or what their brutal violence has done to millions of American families. Subsequently, almost all of the terrible things they’ve done, including slavery, documented election fraud, starting a treasonous civil war that left upwards of one million Americans either dead or missing in action, Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, segregation, the Ku Klux Klan and a dozen other well-known terrorist organizations, more documented election fraud, disenfranchising millions, lynching thousands, murdering many thousands more in cold blood, looting and burning entire communities, violently enforced white supremacy, and their current malevolent War on Poverty have been a direct offshoot of their DEMOCRACY FRAUD and GREED FOR POWER, including their HATRED, INTOLERANCE, and NEVER-ENDING VIOLENCE that’s left hundreds of thousands of dead bodies strewn along the way. (See casualties from a Civil War they started followed by 156 years of using terrorist tactics against men, women, and children that include, but are not limited to, physical intimidation, verbal threats, armed threats, chasing them, slapping them, punching them, kicking them, clubbing them, knocking them down, dragging them behind horses and vehicles, nailing them to buildings, shooting them for sport, having picnic hangings, burning them alive, burning crosses on lawns, kidnappings, beatings, whippings, maimings, public floggings, more burnings – including crops, vehicles, inhabitants, and entire communities like Rosewood, Florida; Greenwood, Oklahoma; Wilmington, North Carolina; and others, tarring and feathering, ballot box stuffing, other forms of election fraud committed at gunpoint hundreds of times, inciting riots, bombings, lootings, violent coup d’états, rapes, stabbings, ambushes, mass shootings, sexual mutilations, assassinations, lynching thousands, massacring many thousands more, and other savage forms of harassment, torture, and mob violence directed mostly toward black people and white Republicans, and ALL IN THE NAME OF “DEMOCRACY.” )
Any individual who repeatedly did the things I just described would be declared a mentally-ill PSYCHOPATH and locked away forever, or, on the receiving end of a lethal injection. What are we to think of an ENTIRE POLITICAL ORGANIZATION that not only contains more than a coincidental number of such violent people, but also includes the rest of the Democratic Party who have aided, abetted, enabled, supported, and celebrated them EVERY STEP OF THE WAY?
The Democratic Party was founded in 1828.8 In 1832, at their national convention, Democrats officially introduced the cause of democracy and adopted their present party name.9,10 In 1844, they began describing our nation as a democracy in their Democratic Party Platform and have continued to do so.11
“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth,” is a law of propaganda often attributed to Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Nazi Joseph Goebbels.12 According to psychologist Dr. Thomas Stafford, this psychological weapon is known as “the illusion of truth.”12 It works best when the lie is so preposterously big that people think to themselves: “Surely, no one would say something that outrageous unless it was true.”
COMMENTS: In other words, it’s accepted by sick people of like minds who look for scapegoats for their own MISERY, like Nazis blamed Jews and Democrats have blamed Republicans.
Belief in democracy is like poison ivy in that a single plant can produce thousands upon thousands of poisonous branches and leaves until it takes over acre after acre. Poison ivy can survive above or below ground, in wet or dry conditions, and is toxic to humans.13 Trust me, I grew up in the country and I know what I’m talking about. The only way poison ivy can be permanently eradicated is by destroying its root. Democracy is TOXIC TO OUR COUNTRY and the only way it can be permanently eradicated is by destroying its root – the DEMOCRACY FRAUD.
In questions of logic, a subject that many of today’s teachers, students, and politicians misunderstand, or outright avoid, philosophy describes absolute truth as: “inflexible reality: fixed, invariable, unalterable facts.” It’s a bit redundant, but you get the idea. For example, it is a fixed, invariable, unalterable fact that there are absolutely no square circles and there are absolutely no round squares.14 How do we know that? By comparing their written definitions and scientific observation, meaning, beyond any shadow of a doubt.
According to Article IV, Section 4, of our United States Constitution, we have a “Republican Form of Government,” NOT a democracy or democratic form. This ABSOLUTE TRUTH is the basis for everything that’s good in our country and is something that Republicans need to repeat daily – not only to themselves, but to our citizens. Republicanism is defined as: “adherence to a republican form of government” and, “the principles, policy, or practices of the Republican Party of the United States.” This means the Republican Party practices republicanism, NOT democracy, because republicanism upholds the principles of our Constitution which limits governmental power, ensures due process of law, and protects minority rights, i.e., REPUBLICAN rights.
Democracy’s poisonous “mob rule-of-the-majority mentality” carries the belief that getting the most votes BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY is the only thing that matters, even if it’s accomplished with lies, intimidation, fraud, violence, and the law be damned. This DEMOCRATIC ATTITUDE has been laid bare throughout history by the way Democrats have treated those who disagreed with them. While they profess understanding, compassion, and inclusion for those who follow, they have a long, documented history of resorting to lies, anger, racism, bigotry, hate, and untold violence against those who don’t. Their despicable conduct, directed mostly toward black people and Republicans, CONTINUES TO THIS DAY with only cursory acknowledgement by a complicit media.
Our Founding Fathers, like them or not, were intelligent men and well aware of the poisonous nature of democracy. These are some of the many quotes you can find that show exactly how they felt about democracy as a form of government and why they wanted nothing to do with it.
James Madison was Secretary of State under Thomas Jefferson, our third president, and secretary to the 100-day Constitutional Convention of 1787 that took place in Philadelphia from May to September, where Convention delegates constructed and adopted our Constitution. He wrote the Constitution and is considered to be the Father of our Constitution. As such, no man on earth knew and understood that document better than he did. Federalist Paper Number 10, one of twenty-nine written by Madison in support of republicanism and ratifying our new United States Constitution, is considered to be “among the most highly regarded of all American political writings.” 15 Charles Beard and other historians consider Number 10 to be an EXPLICIT REJECTION, by the Founding Fathers, of democracy as a form of government and why a republic would be better for our country. 16,17 Madison wasn’t alone in considering democracy to be “the most vile form of government.” In Federalist Paper Number 10 he described democracy plainly and clearly when he said:
“Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.” 18
John Adams, our first Vice President and second President, said:
“Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”19,20
Fisher Ames, a Massachusetts member of Congress during the Washington administration and author of the First Amendment to the Constitution, was a gifted orator and one of the fiercest opponents of democracy. He said:
“A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way.”21 In 1805, he penned an essay titled, “The Dangers of American Liberty,” in which he said: “The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness (lacking legal or moral restraints), which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be, liberty.” His essay blasted democracy as a form of government by calling it “despotism,” and an “inbred malady,” and, “though the least durable, is the most violent.” He described believers in democracy as “democrats” who become “corrupt,” lacking “manners” and “morals.” He said the “ignorant will join” with “demagogues” and “the vicious” will be “armed with power,” leaving the country to be run by “hypocrites and cowards” who are “uncontrolled” and seek to “destroy” liberty. As a group they would promote a “spirit of turbulence and insubordination” along with “a state of agitation, that is justly terrible to all, and instability.” He described democracy as “horrid,” “cruelty,” “wickedness,” and, “an illuminated hell, that in the midst of remorse, horror, and torture, rings with festivity (licentiousness); for experience shows, that one joy remains to this most malignant description of the damned, the power to make others wretched.”22
COMMENTS: It’s interesting that Ames described believers in democracy as “democrats.” Obviously, it wasn’t a complimentary term. Also, his comment about democracy having the “power to make others wretched” is in line with Churchill’s quote about socialism’s “inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” The descriptions used by Ames also mirror those I mentioned on the Home Page that describe believers on the political left, a term agreed upon by Democrats, Republicans, and the Media, meaning all three groups agree with those awful descriptions of today’s Democrats. In total, Ames’ description of democracy and today’s Democrats was prophetic.
Merriam-Webster’s defines democrat as: “an adherent of democracy.” Adherent means: “a believer.” Republican is defined as: “one that favors or supports a republican form of government.”
Noah Webster said:
“A pure democracy is generally a very bad government. It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude, it is often rash, and will not hear reason.”23
Merriam-Webster’s defines pure democracy as “direct” democracy, meaning there are no elected representatives because the people vote on everything.
John Witherspoon, a Founding Father, President of Princeton University, a delegate from New Jersey, and the only clergyman to attend the Constitutional Convention, said:
Democracy “has very little advantage for wisdom or union, and none at all for secrecy and expedition. Besides, the multitude are exceeding apt to be deceived by demagogues and ambitious persons.” Also, “Pure (direct) democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state – it is very subject to caprice (whims of the day) and the madness of popular rage.” And, “If the true notion of liberty is the prevalence of law and order, and the security of individuals, none of the simple forms (democracy, monarchy, or aristocracy) are favorable to it.”24
Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a Massachusetts delegate to the Convention, and Vice President under James Madison, said this in a speech to the Convention delegates on May 31, 1787:
“The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy.”25 Author Catherine Drinker Bowen, whose book Gerry’s quotes come from, said: “to the members of the Federal Convention (of 1787),” the word “democracy signified anarchy.”26
Merriam-Webster’s defines anarchy as: “a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority.”
COMMENTS: Anarchy is exactly the kind of behavior we witnessed last summer in cities like Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and others where Democrat Mayors and Governors not only refused to honor their sworn oaths to protect and defend their citizens, some actually joined in rioting, looting, and burning against the very people they swore to protect. Given the Democratic Party’s longstanding use of violence, it’s no wonder they like anarchy.
Edmund Randolph, a Virginia delegate to the Convention and our first United States Attorney General, said this in a speech to the Convention delegates on May 31, 1787:
They desired “to restrain the fury of democracy” and “the democratic licentiousness (excess referred to by Gerry and Ames caused by lacking legal or MORAL restraints) of the State legislatures.”27
Benjamin Rush, a physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, said:
“A simple democracy is the devil’s own government.”28
George Washington, General of our Continental Army, President of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and our first President, said:
“You could as soon as scrub the blackamore (a colonial term for a dark-skinned person) white, as to change the principles of a profest (professed) Democrat; and that he will leave nothing unattempted to OVERTURN THE GOVERNMENT of this Country.”29
COMMENTS: It’s a safe bet that Washington’s use of the word Democrat wasn’t a complimentary term either. Anarchists try to overturn governments. Also, his words, “will leave nothing unattempted,” mean the same as, “BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.”
John Marshall, our fourth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, said:
“Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”30
John Jay, author of five Federalist Papers in support of republicanism and ratifying our Constitution and also our first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, said in 1809:
“Too many in your State (Pennsylvania), as in this (New York), love pure democracy dearly. They seem not to consider that pure democracy, like pure rum, easily produces intoxication, and with it a thousand mad pranks and fooleries.”31
Alexander Hamilton, a New York delegate to the Convention, founder of the United States Department of the Treasury, and author of fifty-one Federalist Papers written in support of republicanism and our Constitution, said:
“We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. As long as offices are open to all men, and no constitutional rank is established, it is pure republicanism. But if we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy.”32 He also said: “The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.”33 In the last letter Hamilton wrote the day before he was killed in a duel, he called democracy “poison,” “virulent,” and a “disease.”34
Just look at the uncomplimentary words our Founding Fathers used to describe what they thought of democracy as a form of government– “most vile, turbulence, contention, incompatible, violent, death, never lasts, wastes, exhausts, murders itself, commit suicide, volcano, fiery, destruction, eruption, desolation, licentiousness, ignorant, despotism, inbred malady, least durable, most violent, corrupt, lacking manners” and “morals, demagogues, vicious, hypocrites, cowards, uncontrolled, destroy, insubordination, agitation, terrible, instability, horrid, cruelty, wickedness, hell, remorse, horror, torture, most malignant, damned, wretched, very bad, most tyrannical, rash, will not hear reason, deceived, cannot subsist, caprice, madness, evils, excess, anarchy, fury, devil’s own, chaos, intoxication, mad pranks, fooleries, extremes, tyranny, deformity, poison, virulent,” and “disease.”
Our Founding Fathers risked everything they had to fight a war for independence. Had they failed, each of them would have faced certain execution along with the loss of their property and fortunes, thereby condemning their wives and children to a life of poverty and public shame. Can anyone, with even a lick of common sense, honestly believe they took that risk only to spend 100 days cooped up in a packed room, during the heat of summer, intentionally designing a form of government they would describe with the words you just read? The obvious answer to anyone who’s honest and can read should be HELL NO! There is absolutely NO WAY they ever envisioned the word REPUBLIC being twisted, tortured, and manipulated until it meant democracy.
I’m willing to bet that 99 percent of our graduating high school seniors, and their teachers, KNOW NOTHING of what you’ve just read. How can students be taught our nation’s history, of which our government is such a big part, or civics, without learning what our Founding Fathers thought about democracy? If you want an interesting exercise in enlightenment, compare the words our Founders used to describe democracy to the words on the Home Page that describe the “political left.” Coincidence? I think not.
In fact, our Founding Fathers were so determined to prevent our country from ever becoming a democracy, that they intentionally installed many undemocratic safety features, i.e., republican features, to protect our “republican” system. The Electoral College is a perfect example. Smaller states are represented in national elections with greater electoral power than their populations would warrant in a democratic system. Similarly, sparsely populated Wyoming has the same number of senators as heavily populated California, because “senators” were to represent the state government and “representatives” were to represent the citizens of those states. The results of both republican features are intentionally undemocratic, because the Founders knew that smaller states and the citizens of those states had to be protected against overreaching federal power and the tyranny of the larger states. In other words, our “Republican form of government” protects the minority rights of the smaller states by preventing them from being taken advantage of and ignored. As we covered in the Home Page, the creation of the Electoral College was the ONLY WAY all thirteen independent States would sign the Constitution. Without the Electoral College, there would be no Constitution.
The Bill of Rights is another undemocratic safety measure, i.e., republican feature, that provides individual citizens with similar protections against a tyrannical majority that would infringe on minority rights, i.e., republican rights. For instance, the First Amendment is another intentional republican feature that is completely undemocratic. It was designed to protect unpopular speech from being outlawed by democratic fervor or the whim of the day. Do you think Democrats would be so infatuated with democracy if they had to give up their freedom of speech, just because the majority said so?
Make no mistake about it, our Founding Fathers had ZERO ILLUSIONS about being a democracy. They felt our unalienable individual liberties, i.e., republican liberties, as enshrined in our republican Bill of Rights, would eventually be threatened by the increasing excesses (“licentiousness – lacking legal and moral restraints”) of those who believe in democracy. Therefore, after serious deliberations and REJECTING DEMOCRACY OUTRIGHT, along with other potential forms of government, they unanimously agreed upon and created a “Republican Form of Government.” They did so for two important reasons. The first was to give our country the greatest chance for long-term survival. The second was to ensure that chance by protecting our citizens from the excesses (“licentiousness”) of their own federal government. You read that right…to protect us from our OWN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT!
As Madison so eloquently said in defense of republicanism in Federalist Paper Number 51:
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”35
Thomas Jefferson concurred when he said:
“In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”36 In the event that didn’t work, he also said: “What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.”37 Meaning, remind them of our Second Amendment, another republican feature that was intentionally undemocratic.
Based on ALL HISTORICAL EVIDENCE which is easily accessible and overwhelming, including both written documents and direct quotes, some of which you’ve just read, there can be ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT of the contempt our Founding Fathers had for democracy as a form of government. How can any intelligent person, or honest person, seriously believe that they chose to create, what they considered to be, “the most vile form of government” for their new nation? To believe that, to even say that, would be preposterous which means: “contrary to nature, reason, or common sense: ABSURD!”
Words. Are. Important. As I said before, if you don’t believe that, just ask any attorney, any judge, any English teacher, or anyone who’s ever signed a contract. Using correct words is even MORE important in order to be factually accurate and communicate effectively. For instance, making something mandatory or voluntary may end up with the same result, but, they have entirely different meanings. Mandatory gives you no choice, whereas voluntary does. The same is true for the words democracy and republic. While both are forms of government, they have ENTIRELY DIFFERENT MEANINGS.
To understand the stark differences between democracy and republic, and why our Founding Fathers were unanimous in choosing the latter over the former, we’ll again heed the words of Thomas Jefferson:
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and what never will be.”38 Also: “On every question of construction (interpretation or explanation of our Constitution) carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, CONFORM TO THE PROBABLE ONE in which it was passed.”39
Jefferson was WARNING us about swindlers who bend, twist, torture, manipulate, and invent new meanings for words that are OPPOSITE TO THEIR ORIGINAL INTENT. He was telling us to BEWARE of unscrupulous politicians, con men, demagogues, dogmatic educators, and psychopathic manipulators who LIE TO GAIN POWER. He was WARNING us about IGNORANT people who call us a democracy, or say that democracy and republic mean the same thing WHEN THEY DON’T. In other words, he was warning us about the kind of people who Fisher Ames and George Washington described as “Democrats.”
The good news is we don’t have to guess how our Founding Fathers felt about democracy versus a republic. They were explicit (defined as: “leaving no question as to meaning or intent”) and unanimous in their disdain for democracy, just as they were explicit and unanimous in why they created a Republic. To explain the true differences between democracy and republic, and why they will NEVER BE THE SAME, we’ll again turn to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. If it’s good enough for our United States Supreme Court, who has the final say about what our laws and constitutional rights mean, it should be good enough for the rest of us.
Footnotes – Chapter Two: Our Founding Fathers’ Disdain for Democracy
1. Raven I. McDavid. Noah Webster. October 12, 2019. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. At (https://www.britannica.com/print/article/638653).
2. Amy Tikkanen – Corrections Manager for the Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. Merriam-Webster dictionary. October 19, 2018. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. at (https://www.britannica.com/print/article/376313).
3. Dr. Madeline Frank. Noah Webster, Jr. “Father of American Scholarship and Education” and “Founding Father”. February 2015. Madeline’s Monthly Article & Musical Tips Blog. At (https://www.madelinefrankviola.com/noah-webster-jr-father-of-american-scholarship-and-education-and-founding-father-madelines-monthly-article-musical-tips-blog-for-february-2015/).
4. Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier and Samuel A. Thumma. Scaling the Lexicon Fortress: The United States Supreme Court’s Use of Dictionaries in the Twenty-First Century. Marquette Law Review. Volume 94, Issue 1, Article 3. Fall 2010. At (https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5051&context=mulr). See Appendixes A through C: Words & Phrases Defined By The U.S. Supreme Court (October 2000 Through June 2010). Pgs. 131-259. (397 references to Webster’s or Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary)
5. Michael S. Neiberg and Harold K. Johnson – Professor of Military History U.S. Army War College. Pershing’s Decision: How the United States Fought its First Coalition War. December 10, 2010. Pg. 3, Paragraph 3. At (https://www.army.mil/article/49291/pershings_decision_how_the_united_states_fought_its_first_modern_coalition_war)
6. Michael S. Neiberg and Harold K. Johnson – Professor of Military History U.S. Army War College. Pershing’s Decision: How the United States Fought its First Coalition War. December 10, 2010. Pg. 4, Paragraph 3. Eisenhower’s strategy. At (https://www.army.mil/article/49291/pershings_decision_how_the_united_states_fought_its_first_modern_coalition_war)
7. Frank Towers. Mobtown’s Impact on the Study of Urban Politics in the Early Republic. Maryland Historical Magazine 107 (Winter 2012) Pages 469-75. First quote on Page 472 citing Robert E. Shalhope. The Baltimore Bank Riot: Political Upheaval in Antebellum Maryland (2009), p. 147. And Towers’ second quote on Page 469 at https://mdhs.org/sites/default/files/MHMWinter2012b.pdf).
8. Donald B. Cole. Jacksonian Democracy in New Hampshire. Harvard University Press. 1970. Page 69. At (https://archive.org/details/jacksoniandemocr0000cole/page/68/mode/2up).
9. Hezekiah Niles, ed. (May 26, 1832). Jackson General Convention. At (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000055571463&view=2up&seq=242). Niles’ Weekly Register. Volime 42. Baltimore, Maryland: H. Niles. Pages 234-236. Retrieved August 21, 2020 – via HathiTrust Digital Library.
10. Library of Congress. Democratic National Political Conventions 1832-2008. At (https://www.loc.gov/rr/main/polcon/democraticindex.html). Retrieved November 22, 2019.
11. 1844 Democrat Platform. May 27, 1844. At (https://patriotpost.us/documents/455).
12. Dr. Thomas Stafford. How Liars Create the Illusion of Truth. Oct. 26, 2016. Dep’t of Psychology – The University of Sheffield. For BBC. At (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20161026-how-liars-create-the-illusion-of-truth).
13. Heather Rhoades. Poison Ivy Control: How To Get Rid Of Poison Ivy. Gardening Know How. April 12, 2019. At (https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/plant-problems/weeds/poison-ivy-control.htm).
14. Absolute Truth, All About Philosophy, at (https://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/absolute-truth.htm)
15. David F. Epstein. The Political Theory of the Federalist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1984. Pg. 59. At (https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo5456115.html).
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