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Democracy vs Republic: Which are We?

Is the US a Democracy or a Republic?

  • Democracy

    Votes: 3 3.5%
  • Republic

    Votes: 61 71.8%
  • a stepping stone to socialism

    Votes: 21 24.7%

  • Total voters
    85

jwhoff

Premium Member
Thanks. I'll do so read.

Actually the math adds up. If our government doesn't get off dead center the likelihood is that other answers, much more dark and sinister answers, will be offered up by crazed fringes.

I doubt not that the American population, spoiled, entitled and smug as it is, will follow a more cohesive German population of the 1920s and 30s, right down the tubes to some dictator who offers simple answers and blame on weaker, imagined enemies of the state. This is a much simpler coarse that becoming a responsible, informed citizen who works to solve issues for the good of all.

After all, who really wants to spend time enlightening themselves about the running of the republic? Hell, we can spend our valuable time twittering, on Facebook, and watching the Entertainment Channel, FOX News and MSNBC! After all, WE ARE ENTITLED!

And no! I don't support the Tea Party or wingers of either side. The answers and blame they all aspire to are much too simple minded to run a republic or civilization. Time for everyone to grow up!

fresh horse droppings abound!
 
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jvarnell

Premium Member
Tea party? You mean, like Sharron Angle, who stated that Sharia law has taken hold of Frankford, TX? I used to support the Tea Party movement, when it was about taxation and government excess, but it has been taken over by jingoists and theocrats who harp on issues that have nothing to do with taxation and government excess.

As an answer all the things you answer4ed back to me. I and all the concervetive republicans in office I know none want a monarcy and wwish they did not need to serve to keep it from happening. And yes the Tea Party is the cloest to an anti-monarchists.
 

lsu4life4ever

Registered User
I think America will be ok. We have a huge economic problem, and a failing education but remember, for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. We will be fine. God Bless America. We've been in darker times before.


Humble Lodge No. 979
Initiated on June 4th, 2013.
Geaux Tigers!
So Mote It Be!
 
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ufuze

Registered User
We are suspose to be a republic but crooked politicians would have you think otherwise.

Freemason Connect Mobile
 

dew_time

Registered User
No one has mentioned the shift in the political parties over the last 200 years. I seem to remember that what was once the republic party that is being spoken of here is actually todays democratic party and vice versa. The names may be the same however the agendas have reversed and as I recall it was all based on who could get the votes. So, based on that, if you want to vote for what this country was founded on and what the founding father intended on building for this nation... you would have to vote for the democratic party. Please don't blow a gasket over this as I am a current day replublican who is only putting his 2 cents in.

Sent from my LG-VM696
 

jvarnell

Premium Member
this has nothing to do with the partys. it has to do with how stuff is formed. if it was a pure democricy we would vote on every law but as a democratic republic we vote for those that vote for us or should vote for us.
 

jwhoff

Premium Member
No one has mentioned the shift in the political parties over the last 200 years. I seem to remember that what was once the republic party that is being spoken of here is actually todays democratic party and vice versa. The names may be the same however the agendas have reversed and as I recall it was all based on who could get the votes. So, based on that, if you want to vote for what this country was founded on and what the founding father intended on building for this nation... you would have to vote for the democratic party. Please don't blow a gasket over this as I am a current day replublican who is only putting his 2 cents in.
Sent from my LG-VM696

Very true. Years ago I attended a week-long seminar in Lenox, Massachusetts. While there, after dinner one evening I was talking with a few gentlemen in a smoking room just off the main dining hall. There was a huge fireplace in the room. While watching the fire I looked above the mantle and saw a brass plaque placed there by the historical society of Massachusetts.

The plaque stated that on a certain day in a certain year the Republican Party had been formed following a meeting of political minded people from across the nation. Western Mass is the home of very liberal, very independent minded and resourceful people. It seems odd that today's Republican Party could possibly have organized itself in such a place.

We joked about the paradox for a while but eventually acknowledge the fact that the Republican Party, in its youth, was the party of Abraham Lincoln and the progressives of the day. So, yes brother you are very right in your statement.
 
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dew_time

Registered User
Very true. Years ago I attended a week-long seminar in Lenox, Massachusetts. While there, after dinner one evening I was talking with a few gentlemen in a smoking room just off the main dining hall. There was a huge fireplace in the room. While watching the fire I looked above the mantle and saw a brass plaque placed there by the historical society of Massachusetts.

The plaque stated that on a certain day in a certain year the Republican Party had been formed following a meeting of political minded people from across the nation. Western Mass is the home of very liberal, very independent minded and resourceful people. It seems odd that today's Republican Party could possibly have organized itself in such a place.

We joked about the paradox for a while but eventually acknowledge the fact that the Republican Party, in its youth, was the party of Abraham Lincoln and the progressives of the day. So, yes brother you are very right in your statement.

Thank you for this story brother Hoff. There are two things that I have studied my whole life. Politics(including he history of) and the other is mechanical engineering.

I fully enjoyed reading this topic but was suprised to not find any of these facts brought up.

Sent from my LG-VM696
 

dew_time

Registered User
this has nothing to do with the partys. it has to do with how stuff is formed. if it was a pure democricy we would vote on every law but as a democratic republic we vote for those that vote for us or should vote for us.

And yes... my comment has everything to do with the topic as it was posted and most on the comments added.

Sent from my LG-VM696
 

BryanMaloney

Premium Member
A republic is not the same thing as a representative/indirect democracy. What matters are two things:

Is political power considered "res publica"--something that no person nor group of people, no matter how large, actually can own.
Is the exercise of political power institutionally limited.

In the USA, no majority, no matter how large, owns political power as a possession. It is not permitted. The matter of government is something that is meant to belong to us all as a whole, without division or concentration.

In the USA, no majority can legally and legitimately operate with caprice. Our Constitution places limits upon the power of government.

That our exercise of government involves elected representatives in no way makes us a republic--that is merely a surface means. However, the apparatchiks who run public schools would rather put things in that way than explain that our government is not supposed to be run by special interest groups and that our government is not supposed to be all-powerful.
 

dfreybur

Premium Member
Asking if the US is a democracy or a republic is like asking if today is a weekday or a Friday. The answer is yes to both. Democracy is the broader set. Republic is the narrower set.

Republic is the next level of description down - an indirect democracy. The levels after that are what type of republic. The US is a federal republic in that it is composed of both states that are republics and direct citizens. The US is a Roman derived republic in that it is not a Parliamentary system. The US is a Constitutional republic in that it is limited - Bro Bryan asserts that being limited means not being a republic. No, being limited means being a specific type of republic as opposed to democratic republics that are unlimited and tend to quickly become dictatorships with elections for legislators of nominal authority.

Yep, republics include dictatorships. Strange and very unstable but what's what history teaches. The more direct or less limited the sub-type of democracy the faster they devolve into it. The UK has managed a lot of stability by being a hybrid form that includes non-democratic principles, quite the conundrum that it works so well. The US has managed for two and a quarter centuries so far bu the trend has matched the predictions of history books. The Soviet Union with its unlimited republic was actually democratic for a very short time after it was formed but it continued to have an elected legislature the whole time it existed.
 

BryanMaloney

Premium Member
I asserted that being limited specifically means being a Republic. Any "democracy", even an indirect democracy without institutional limits is still just a mobocracy, not a republic.
 

BryanMaloney

Premium Member
It should be noted, that under the terms of monarchism, any state that is not a hereditary monarchy is automatically a "republic". Thus, a lot of states could be called "republics" that are actually just dictatorships.
 

dew_time

Registered User
It should be noted, that under the terms of monarchism, any state that is not a hereditary monarchy is automatically a "republic". Thus, a lot of states could be called "republics" that are actually just dictatorships.

The peoples dictatorship. ...

Doug Jewell
Entered Apprentice
Reynoldsburg #340
Ohio Grand Lodge of The F&AM
 

jvarnell

Premium Member
The US is a democratic republic which mean we elect our representatives and a dictator doesn't represent us. if it was a pure democracy a majority could vote to take money from one group and give it to another. oh.....my.....what's up with that.
 

BryanMaloney

Premium Member
The US is a democratic republic which mean we elect our representatives and a dictator doesn't represent us. if it was a pure democracy a majority could vote to take money from one group and give it to another. oh.....my.....what's up with that.

If it were a pure democracy, the majority could vote to simply round up a minority, send them to camps, and exterminate them. We're not at that stage. We are in danger of becoming a democracy, but we're not there.
 

BryanMaloney

Premium Member
Just to revive a dead horse so we can beat it again. I would put forth that a "republic" is not the same thing as an "indirect democracy". Leftists want us to believe the two are the same so they can impose their "democracy" on us all and abolish the Republic in practice, if not explicitly. In a Republic, political power is the property of all, not of each. In a democracy, political power is the property of each. What is the difference? In a Republic, the majority is constitutionally constrained to use their control of political power in trust for all--including for the minority that disagrees with them. Thus, in a representative/indirect democratic republic, a "speech code" that makes it illegal to say unpopular things would be, itself illegal and unenforceable. In a representative/indirect democracy, there would be no constitutional limits on the authority of government, so the "speech code" would be legal. In an indirect democratic republic, it would be illegal to round up people who simply disagree with a President's health care "reform" law--any attempt by government to do so would be a constitutional (and Constitutional) violation*. In an indirect democracy, the government could legally do this, so long as a majority of the elected representatives went along with it. A Republic recognizes a hierarchy of law--some laws automatically have precedence over all other laws, and that government can be, should be, and is constitutionally/Constitutionally limited in its powers and exercise of powers.

Leftists want us to forget this, so leftists lie and tell is that an indirect/representative democracy is all there is to a republic. That way, they can have their all-powerful state and still claim to be a "republic". It's a very simplistic definition, so it's easy to get people to swallow it. The traditional American definition of a republic is not so simplistic, so people don't want to hear it.

*I used "constitutional" and "Constitutional" twice to distinguish between an explicitly written "Constitution" and the underlying body of "greater law" that traditionally was thought of as a "constitution" before it became the fashion to have explicitly written "Constitutions".
 

BroBook

Premium Member
Has anyone read The Mystery Of The Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity?

Great read, mathematics centered but it brings up a mathematician that was friends with Einstein, Cantor. He worked out a method of bringing the US into a Dictatorship while making it seem as though the government was abiding by the Constitution through requesting a series of concessions in the name of security. I bring it up because it appears our government has read this book as well...

No!!!


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