We are not a democracy, we are a democratic republic

As we slog through the final 10 weeks of the midterm election campaigns touting candidates for national, state, and local offices, there is much braying of hot-button words throughout the political media: democracy, freedom, climate change disasters, water and air quality, socialism, communism, voter suppression, K-shaped economy, foreign wars, medical care, national debt, and the “pocketbook” issues of inflation, jobs, wages, fuel prices, grocery prices, credit card debt, affordable housing, childcare, taxes, and social security.

I do not pretend to have solutions for those problems. I have suggestions and opinions, and although mine are based on objective investigation and fact-finding there is little chance that my list of corrective actions will ever gain the attention of the people who have the power to implement any of them. In our capitalist economy, we have no choice but to abide by the Golden Rule: Those who have the gold make the rules.

However, in this November election cycle I will try to try to correct a common rhetorical misconception. The United States of America’s government is not a democracy, it is a republic. A democratic republic, yes, but a system of governance that is decidedly not a pure democracy.

The Constitution of the United States, adopted in 1787 and fully ratified in 1790, is a stunningly radical document, especially for the 18th century when countries were governed by the principle of “divine right of monarchies” and the power of aristocrats, dictators, and militarists. That a nation could function with a constitution that stipulated government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” was considered absurd. Even more preposterous was The Bill of Rights, the first 10 of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, that secured the rights of the individual and also required all three branches and institutions of the federal government to abide by the due process of law.

Our Constitution is not a set-in-stone and unalterable document, as evidenced by the fact that 17 additional amendments have so far been required to adapt it to the unforeseeable changes that occurred in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Unimaginable scientific, economic, industrial, social, political, military, technological, and ecological transformations have swept across the country and the entire Earth in the last 235 years.

Our nation has struggled through an industrial revolution, civil war, international entanglements, racial animus, immigration waves, urbanization, several economic depressions and recessions, ecological calamities, two world wars, civil rights and voting rights movements, world superpower status, and the current attempt to make the executive branch a dictatorship. That the U.S. Constitution has endured is amazing.

For all its timeless merits, the Constitution did not and does not establish a pure democracy. As Benjamin Frankilin stated from the day of our nation’s creation, we are a democratic republic, a government that grants ultimate power to it citizens but with the provision that we are a representative democracy, a system in which citizens elect representatives to govern on their behalf, adhering to the rule of law and respecting constitutional protections.

In a pure democracy, we the people would be required to vote on virtually every issue that confronts the nation. In a nation of 174 million registered voters, many of whom are inordinately influenced by social media rants and seldom informed by an objective study of issues, this pure democracy system would be calamitous. For example, I do not understand the workings of the Federal Reserve Board, and expecting me to cast an informed ballot in regard to its operations or its members would be extremely unwise.

Most importantly, the rights of minority citizens, including due process of law, could be erased by the voting majority in a pure democracy. At various times in our history, the rights granted by our Constitution would have been denied to people whose race or nationality was Irish, Italian, German, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Pakistani, Russian, Middle Eastern, eastern European, Black, Hispanic, Caribbean, and dozens of other minority cultures that make up the American mosaic. Also at high risk of disenfranchisement would be people of any religious denomination disapproved by the majority of voters.

As a democratic republic, we defend the rights of all people. A grace of America’s Constitutional representative democracy is that we must all abide by governmental and institutional principles and tolerate one another. At least for now.

The goading of President Orange to assault and even kill one another, his granting of pardons to criminals who violate the law, his own lawlessness, and his tacit encouragement of MAGA followers to disobey and destroy institutional norms (including but not limited to courts orders and department of health regulations) is perhaps the greatest threat to our nation’s survival, a threat that will continue long after their cult leader is dead and gone.

The Constitution has never been more imperiled than it is today. President Orange, the Supreme Court, and the Republican Party majorities currently dominating the Senate and the House of Representatives clearly have no respect for our Constitution and believe they have the power to violate the letter and spirit of its language. We the People must vote to restore its rightful place in the laws and operations of our democratic republic on November 3.