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by Miles H. Hodges – The Spiritual Pilgrim It is easy to interchange the words democracy and republic
as if they were the same thing. They
definitely are not. Sadly, most Americans
tend not to know this.
The Law versus the Popular Will. A republic is a realm of unshakable and well-understood Law that guides a society in a particular direction, sets boundaries to shape needed social action, and lays out clearly the rewards to be consequently shared among society’s members. The Law can be quite good, and thus forms the foundations of a strongly united society. It can be quite evil and divisive, such as the laws of slavery. A democracy is a society run by the people themselves in accordance with the reasoning of the people (the Popular Will) in the face of particular challenges. But the popular will is always shaped greatly by a small group of leaders who direct the thoughts, feelings and commitments of the people at that point. The ever-developing popular will can be quite good ... if led by those truly seeking to do the best for society. But the popular will can also be quite evil if led by politically greedy individuals who simply exploit the vulnerability of the people in order to glorify themselves ... and succeed even in getting the people to believe that all this is for their own good. America is both a democracy and a republic. A representative democracy was the political system that the Constitutional Fathers set up in 1787 ... a quite familiar system that the 13 colonies had themselves lived under since their founding in the 1600s. But that democracy was most unsurprisingly put under the strict rule of law – typical of a republic − not only in the setup of the three governing institutions (Congress, the presidency and the judiciary) but also in their operation in accordance with a Bill of Rights that clearly protected the rights and powers of the states and the people under the new system. The question was therefore not one of democracy. That was assumed. It was a question of the durability of the new republic and its laws. But power can be a very corrupting thing, especially when clever legal minds get set on "progressing" the Law along more agreeable lines ... agreeable anyway to a particular group of people. When that happens, the republic of laws becomes meaningless. Rome loses its Republic. Rome gives us a very clear example − an example well-known to the American Fathers of our 1787 Constitution. For centuries Romans had lived under a strict rule of law ... well-known to all because its basic laws were posted in the Forum on twelve bronze tablets. These laws were very precise, but also quite generous in the way they extended equally to all Romans regardless of their particular social status. They even most generously applied to Rome's former enemies who, once conquered, were brought under the same Roman law ... soon even to be considered Roman citizens themselves. Indeed, their Republic of law was awesome ... and key to Rome's incredible expansion. But economic and social problems finally began to develop (roughly the first century BC) when Rome reached what was its easiest and most natural realm of domination. The population increased, but not with an equivalent expansion of Rome's collective wealth. Also, the lower social classes were finding citizenship to be much more burdensome ... as young men were required to continue to perform military service, year after year. So, reformers stepped into the political picture to try to improve on matters, attempting this and that social change ... each step opposed by this or that group who saw themselves coming up short on the new social benefits. Soon the idea that there was any certain realm of law in place just died away. Politics now became simply a matter of this group struggling against that group to find a better place in the political scheme of things. The situation grew so bad that finally a group of military generals (imperators or emperors) stepped into the picture to use their troops to bring things back under order ... supposedly only temporarily. But once this new system of military rule was in place, Rome found itself locked into the new system. Thus the Roman Empire (rule by emperators) was born. It worked for a while. But nonetheless Rome now depended entirely on the political designs of a military dictator ... some of them quite capable leaders, others quite bad. But in any case, the Roman Republic was dead. The rule of law had been replaced by the rule of an ever-changing will of a single individual. A warning to America. Please Americans. Understand the importance of a popular democracy resting on the foundations of a republic of deeply planted laws. To lose sight of those laws, to be swayed into this or that ideological trend by ever-eager social-political "reformers," is to destroy what is very, very good about American society. The pattern is invariable: social division as reformers fight over who and how benefits and responsibilities are to be shared under the new system ... then the "rescue" of society from this social chaos by a small group of well-intended social elite − even by a single individual. And the results will be the same as power then swings in favor of those most supportive of this ruling group or individual: the vast enrichment of a tiny group who rule − and the increasing social and material impoverishment of the rest of society. Please America, Wake Up! We do not want the American Republic to turn into the American imperium or Empire. Miles Hodges is a writer, historian and political analyst who explores the question of why societies behave
as they do ... especially in this matter of their rise and fall. |
