The other day Rachel Lucas asked her readers if someone had a good explanation of the difference between a democracy and a republic. Many people replied in her comments section and many of them said what I would say so I didn't comment and thought this would be a good topic for an entire blog, so here goes.
Democracy comes from Greek. Demos is people and cracy is a stupid way to spell crazy. Therefore, democracy is a system of gummint run by crazy people.
Ooops! Sorry. I was channeling Dave Barry there.
Democracy is actually one man, one vote and majority rules. Some of the commentors said democracy is two foxes and a chicken deciding what to have for dinner. Or, another variant is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner. In other words, democracy is mob rule. In spite of what you hear politicians say the United states is NOT a democracy!
Our founding fathers were terrified of a democracy and they put all sorts of checks and balances in the constitution to try and prevent a democracy.
Many people think the ancient Greek city states were democracies. Wrong. Athens, for example was an oligarchy. An oligarchy is rule by a select few. The outward manifestations were that of a democracy, but the democracy consisted of the upper class.
Now Rome, on the other hand, was a republic. Well, kinda. The populace was divided into centuries like the army. Which century a person was in was determined by how rich he was and how he was able to fit himself out as a soldier. A person who could afford a horse was in a higher century than someone who could just afford a sword, helmet, and shield. Each century had one vote and the centuries voted by class. The upper classes voted first. By the time the lower centuries voted, the outcome had already been decided.
Rome also had a Senate which consisted of the upper classes. One had to have a certain amount of wealth to get in the Senate.
There were also two consuls elected every year who were the leaders, somewhat like our president. They commanded the army.
When our founding fathers set up our gummint, I'm sure they looked at the Roman republic model.
We have a president, who is the executive and is also commander-in-chief of the army and is essentially the CEO of the country. But, we didn't want a dictator.
The design of the legislative branch is really a work of art and came about as a compromise.
The House of Representatives is the part of Congress that is closest to a democracy. Since the representatives have to run every two years, they are closer to the people and should follow the general mood and opinions of the populace. At least that was the intent of the founders. Unfortunately, the incumbent has a lot of advantages during an election campaign, and they have to really be out of touch with their constituencies (Cynthia McKinney comes to mind) to lose an election. The House of Representatives, because of its makeup, is a noisy democratic institution. To get laws passed, there has to be a lot of wheeling and dealing.
The small states balked at the makeup of the House since states with larger populations had more representatives. You gotta remember, at this time there were thirteen individual states and many states did not want a strong federal gummint. (This argument went on for many years and culminated with the Civil
War). So, the compromise was the Senate.
The Senate is made up of two senators from each state. This means that a small state, like West Virginia has just as much say as a large state, like California. This is also how Robert (Grand Kleagle of the KKK) manages to divert so much money to West Virginia.
Since the senators only have to run for their seats every six years, they are more independent. Also, the senators used to be elected by the state legislatures, but are now directly elected by the people. The Senate was designed to be a moderating influence on the House of Representatives.
Congress controls the purse strings. This of course, brings up the straw dog of the Reagan deficits. Only Congress can appropriate money. The president can veto spending bills and Congress can override with a two thirds majority in each house. The tax cuts Reagan pushed through Congress actually doubled gummint revenue. Unfortunately, the Dimocrats tripled spending. Reagan was to blame only because he didn't veto enough bills. Since he needed the military buildup to win the Cold War, he had to compromise with Congress and sign bills increasing social spending, with the requisite amount of money flowing to West Virginia.
So, during the time of the Reagan deficits, the Dimocrats controlled Congress. During the Clinton surpluses, which party controlled Congress (and spending)?
Hmmmm? Unfortunately, now that the Republicans have been in power a while, they have started spending just like Dimocrats.
Oh, and another thing. Remember the 2000 election? The bullshit about Gore winning the popular vote is irrelevant. Whoever wins in the electoral college wins the election. The Dims ran by the same rules. They campaigned to win the majority of electoral college votes, just like the Republicans. They lost.
Now that I've given a short description of our republic and how it is not a democracy, I hope this helps to explain the difference between them.
When I was in the Webster Groves, Missouri public school system over forty years ago (Holy shit! It's been that long?), we had to study the United States Constitution twice: once in Civics class, in the eighth grade and once in American History in high school. Since the Dimocrats have succeeded in dumbing down the public school system, it's understandable that many people do not understand how our gummint works.
That's a shame.