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Democracy or Republic? Enough About The Popular Vote
November 25, 2016
By John Porter

Thank you for your time and attention.

First, please let me be very clear, what I have written here for your consideration is not about the Republican Party, Democrat Party, Independent Party, Libertarian Party, Tea Party or any other Party. It is about an idea conceived over two centuries ago, a country, a people, a document.

Two hundred and twenty nine years ago (1787) a group of men whom we now refer to as the “founding fathers,” following a long and bloody battle for their independence from a dictatorial Monarchy, assembled themselves together in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and did their best to establish a country governed in a God-fearing way by representatives who were selected by the people who were to be governed.

No where in the history of all mankind were there any examples or even political theory in existence that offered them any hope that a republican form of government, based on the new concept of consent of the governed, could succeed on a wilderness continent which was much larger than any European state.

These men met there on the world stage to carry out the first of three acts in this epic political drama, the drafting of the United States Constitution. The final document was the culmination of a fierce political struggle that had been waged for four sweltering summer months in secret behind guarded closed doors. The document sought to reconcile individual personal liberty with the perceived need for a central government with powers to forge a political and economic common market among thirteen separate and sovereign states.

The next two acts to be performed on this world stage were the ratification of the document and the translation from words on parchment paper to institutional form and structure. In 1789 the first congress approved and sent to the states for ratification, a bill of rights of individual liberty, and additional rights reserved to the states. Those ten amendments, ratified on December 15, 1791, became an extremely vital part of the Constitution and crucial to greatly limiting the power of the Federal Government over both that of the people and separate states. The Republic of the United States of America, an experiment in people governing themselves was now a reality for the first time in the history of man. Newcomers from other countries, willing to be governed by it’s Constitution and Bill of Rights, and themselves, came in droves through the established legal immigration process, to this new land of government by the governed.

I here bring to your attention that the United States of America was formed as a Republic and not a Democracy. All our lives you and I have been conditioned to believe we are a Democracy in America. How long has it been since you have heard of America referred to as a Republic? You see, there was purpose behind the words in the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag referring to our country as, “the Republic for which it stands.” Ladies and gentlemen rest assured there is a very good reason the term “democracy” does not exist either in our Constitution or the Declaration of our Independence. A true Democracy is mob rule. Any government set up as a Democracy is the same government we would have if we were set up as a Socialist, Communist, or Marxist government. In these forms the government is a mob ruling over the people with absolutely no rights for individuals or minorities.

It has been written, “The Founders were extremely knowledgeable about the issue of democracy and feared democracy as much as a monarchy. They understood that the only entity that can take away the people’s freedom is their own government, either by being too weak to protect them from external threats or by becoming too powerful and taking over every aspect of life.” Democracy and/or Socialism is mob rule by government. The founders of America were all too familiar with democracies/socialism, and deliberately did everything in their power to prevent a Democracy. It has been written, “In a Republic, the sovereignty resides with the people themselves. In a Republic, one may act on his own or through his representatives when he chooses to solve a problem.” The people have no obligation to the government; the government is a servant of the people, and obliged to them, for they are its owner. Not only have many politicians, Republican and Democrat, lost sight of this fact, but a great many of the American people.

A Constitutional Republic has a Constitution that limits the powers of the government. The goal of our founding fathers in forming a Constitutional Republic was to avoid the disastrous extremes of either tyranny (absolute ruler) or “mobocracy.” (government mob). I borrowed the following from Darrell Huckaby:

“I am tired of hearing about our democracy and the popular vote. We are not a democracy, and a whole lot of people should be really glad about that, too, because in a democracy, mob rule applies. The majority is the boss of everybody, and:


The colors reflect the popular vote winner.

- if we had been a democracy in 1865 slavery would have never been abolished.
- If we had been a democracy in 1920, the women would have never gotten the vote.
- If we had been a democracy in 1964 and 1965, those historic pieces of civil rights legislation would never have been approved.
- In fact, if we had been a democracy in 1776, the Declaration of Independence would never have been adopted because the majority of the colonists were afraid to pursue independence, just like a majority of Americans opposed women’s suffrage and abolition and sweeping civil rights reform.

For the record, Abraham Lincoln did not get a majority of the popular vote in 1860, and Bill Clinton did not get a majority of the popular vote in 1992 or 1996.

“Oh, yes he did!” screamed one of my Facebook friends this week. “I know Lincoln got the most votes and so did Clinton.”

Most means plurality, y’all. A majority is 50 percent plus one. And while we are on the subject, we are not a democratic republic, either, no matter what the revisionist history books might claim. That’s just a term Andrew Jackson coined for political purposes in the 1820s and it stuck with some people. We are a republic. We have a federalist form of government where the power is supposed to be divided between the states and the central government and neither is subservient to the other. Both are supposed to get their powers directly from the people.”

Article IV Section 4 of the Constitution states: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government“…If we the American people don’t stop this and start a reversal of the present trend, the free Republic of America will be lost for generations to come to a Socialist, tyrannical government mob. It begs the question, “Do we really care enough?” There seems to be a great awakening of all freedom loving Americans to the fact, that a people can become slaves to the government, as well as a plantation owner. Do you really care enough? I believe we said yes to that question on November 8th by electing Donald Trump to start a reversal of the present trend toward government rule, and returning this country to people rule.

“And now the people have spoken and the message is loud and clear, under the Constitution, that the people want this country to go in a new direction. And no matter how much they hated to do so, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, and President Obama did and said all the right things this week to propel us toward that smooth transition of power.

And yet in many of our nation’s cities, ignorant young people who have no knowledge of how this Republic is supposed to work are dying to get attention by marching in the streets and generally acting the fool — and, no, these are not the peaceful protests guaranteed by the First Amendment. You must have a grievance to protest. These are spoiled brats and attention-seekers and they should be ashamed.”


You have my permission to leave my information below intact as you please forward to all you can in any method you wish.

May God bless America at this critical time in our history.

John Porter
johnporter1939@cox.net



"If you’re a leader, you lead the way. Not just on the easy ones; you take the tough ones too…” – MAJ Richard D. Winters (1918-2011), E Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne

"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil... Therefore, as tongues of fire lick up straw and as dry grass sinks down in the flames, so their roots will decay and their flowers blow away like dust; for they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel." - Isaiah 5:20,24
 
Posts: 11066 | Location: NW Houston | Registered: April 04, 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Lawyers, Guns
and Money
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quote:
I here bring to your attention that the United States of America was formed as a Republic and not a Democracy. All our lives you and I have been conditioned to believe we are a Democracy in America. How long has it been since you have heard of America referred to as a Republic?

This is not an accident.
Through progressive, or socialist, control of education we have conditioned at least two generations of young Americans to believe that the United States is a Democracy. This has had profound effects as we have arguably become a Democracy.



"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible."
-- Justice Janice Rogers Brown

"The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth."
-rduckwor
 
Posts: 24120 | Location: St. Louis, MO | Registered: April 03, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
DeadHead
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"A republic, if you can keep it."

- Benjamin Franklin



"Being miserable and treating other people like dirt is every New Yorker's God-given right!" - GhostBusters II

"You have all the tools you need. Don't blame them. Use them." - Dan Worrall
 
Posts: 1903 | Location: Putnam County, NY | Registered: May 22, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Lawyers, Guns
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America Is a Republic, Not a Democracy

Contrary to popular belief, America is not, nor was it meant to be, a pure democracy. America is a republic. Nevertheless, more and more voices today are calling for America to become a direct democracy.

A 2017 Pew Research survey found that 67 percent of those Americans polled considered a system in which citizens voted directly on “major national issues” to be a good thing.1

The National Citizens Initiative for Democracy, sponsored by former Senator Mike Gravel (D–AK) and endorsed by the likes of Noam Chomsky and the late Howard Zinn, calls for direct democracy through the creation of an independent “Legislature of the People,” which would allow American citizens to amend the Constitution directly and pass laws of their own choosing, bypassing both state and federal legislatures in the process. Tom Steyer, in his bid to become the Democratic presidential nominee, called for something similar. In the spirit of ever more democracy, he advocated the use of national referenda on two major policy debates a year and repeatedly attacked the Electoral College as undemocratic.

Indeed, the calls to abolish or circumvent the Electoral College in the selection of our chief executive represent the most visible sign of this democratic antipathy to our republican institutions. Senator Brian Schatz (D–HI), who introduced a bill to abolish the Electoral College, described it as “undemocratic and radical,” and called eliminating it “an unassailably logical evolution of our Constitution.”

Read more...
https://www.heritage.org/ameri...public-not-democracy



"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible."
-- Justice Janice Rogers Brown

"The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth."
-rduckwor
 
Posts: 24120 | Location: St. Louis, MO | Registered: April 03, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Big Stack
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A large percentage of Americans don't care what the original intent of the Constitution is. They want a much more directly Democratic government. They want everything by popular vote.

This is generating pressure that the government formed under the Constitution is restraining. The election of Trump when he failed to win the popular vote is a sign of this. The question is, how long can this pressure be resisted? IF Trump gets reelected without a popular majority, we may find out.
 
Posts: 21240 | Registered: November 05, 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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The majority of Americans have no idea what a republic is, they really don't understand what a democracy is either. There's no way to contrast and compare them when so many are ignorant of what they are. How many people have read about the democracy of ancient Greece or the Roman republic or even the recent examples of democracy? We've been taught that democracy is fair and just, without any discussion of its failures and the fact that democracy is the opposite of anything fair.


No one's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.- Mark Twain
 
Posts: 3537 | Location: TX | Registered: October 08, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Yeah the whole popular vote compact or whatever that bullshit is that some states are trying where they will throw their electoral votes with the candidate who wins the popular vote regardless of who wins their state - that is how far down the slope we are with this mob rule madness.

All these idiots want direct democracy - until it goes against them.




This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector.
Plato
 
Posts: 1773 | Location: Texas! | Registered: June 13, 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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