The way everyone in the media keeps saying that we’re a democracy and President Bush repeats the line that we’re spreading democracy to other nations, you’d think it was some sort of religious epiphany they all had been coming to. Most people think that the U.S. is a democracy, and currently they would be mostly right, however the misconception is that we were always a democracy since our founding.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would sooner have let King George reign supreme and have all the taxes he could get than have created a democracy. That might be a strong statement, but largely I am sure it can be proved because many of the checks and balances they built into the government at its founding are totally opposed to how a democratic government is run, or at least how ours is presently configured. The first ingredient is defining what a democracy is verses what a republic is.

Examples of a working democracy seemingly are all around us, even if they don’t last that long. Classically democracy was defined by the founders as, “Mob Rule.” The basic philosophy of a democracy is to give equal representation to all people by their government no matter how educated, experienced or relevant their opinion on any particular matter might be. The major problem with this which was foreseen by the founders and was the reason they detested the idea of creating a democracy in the first place is that when everyone has an equal say by virtue of their vote then the tendency becomes to create voting blocks which are opposed to each others interests. Some may be better organized than another with an equally valid point and so their issues might be dealt with while others who are either less organized or perhaps unpopular at the moment are ignored or even maligned. Politicians could use the emotional bickering of different people groups to gain favor and also pay off the voters with benefits that are unethically taken from another group with less power. As you can see because of nature of the beast called democracy discrimination is practically built in and there is no cure.

Beyond the potential problems there is more evidence that the founders didn’t intend for us to be a democracy. In the beginning of our republic not everyone was allowed to vote, but the exclusions weren’t only women and minorities. Originally only those who owned land or a business were allowed to vote. There were specific and good reasons for this. Those who owned property were the educated that also paid the bulk of the taxes. They were the ones with means who were able to do most of the purchasing and producing of goods and since most taxes were based on consumption of goods they were the ones most affected by any change in the tax laws. It makes sense then to have the property and business owners be the ones who regulated how much the government was allowed to dole out by virtue of their ability to determine the outcome of elections.

When you throw in the votes of those who don’t directly benefit from the government’s programs it dilutes the regulatory influence on the government’s ability to confiscate your property, because the politicians can now bribe the other voters who will not immediately suffer by the businessman’s losses with benefits they ethically are not entitled to at the expense of those who are the creators of the wealth in the country.

This is why the founders referred to democratic forms of government as “Mob Rule.” The desire of the majority of people, whether their demands are legitimate or not, override the actual needs of the community by virtue of their numbers. Any perceived benefit that the majority can take from the minority – the business and property owners – will be dangled by the politicians in order to gain favor from the majority and thus stay in office. Once you start down this path however, the government at one point or another will either bankrupt itself or the society will fissure into competing interest groups that effectively destroy the nation’s sense of identity from within. Both are currently happening to the U.S. This is why no democracy in the history of the planet has ever lasted. No matter how altruistic the intentions of the founders of a democracy, the simple rules of human nature will dictate that it will always crumble, usually from within long before any outside force is able to conquer it. Rome is the ultimate example.

Democracy’s current incarnation in the U.S. isn’t quite 100% a democracy yet. For all intents and purposes however, the difference is benign. The only real vestige of our once great republic that hasn’t been totally ignored is the Electoral College. Some would disagree and say the Constitution still is the supreme law of the land. For those who labor under this delusion I’d like to ask them to show me just one piece of the Constitution that hasn’t been twisted and misused in order to increase the government’s authority over the lives of those it governs.

But as I was saying, in recent years the Electoral College has come up as a contentious issue – for democrat party at least – and the reason behind that is because the Electoral College is a body of representatives of the political parties that vote in proxy for the people in the final vote that actually elects the President. Electoral College representatives who are appointed by the party of the candidate that won their state’s votes are not legally bound to vote as the people who they represent voted. They can change their vote, but only once in the history of the Electoral College has anyone done this. The reason this check in the people’s power to directly elect their president was put into the Constitution is the same theme the democrat party has been yelling about in every election they lose – election fraud, and the founders were of the mind that the general population had no business electing the president. Only those that really care about the country enough to be involved politically on a scale that would gain them recognition and admiration within their own party would have the right to elect the leader of the country – for a good reason: they know the issues, the background, the contributing factors and largely they are not influenced by false reports and propaganda as those in the general public are, because they are usually the ones who were there at the actual events those propagandists are trying to distort.

First hand knowledge of the political process and the reasons behind what is going on. First hand knowledge of the leaders of the parties and the ones who will actually be voted on. First hand experience working with those in the party who have been activists for change and have supported the men being voted on. And with this first hand knowledge, comes the ability to see facts amidst the rumors, half-truths and lies being told by either side. After all, have you ever met the President? Have you ever sat down with him in some strategy meeting five years before he announced his candidacy and heard him complain about even the mundane things in life? Can you tell where his heart is at when you watch his polished speeches on the evening news? No, of course we have not. We can only guess, but there are those behind the scenes who know and have the ability to change his mind by their proximity to him. Shouldn’t these people who represent the issues the party says it believes in have the ability to say, “Yes, I’ve seen him at his worst and best and know him to be an honest man who will be able to make a positive difference for the country.”

These people who make up the Electoral College are given the chance to influence the process of the election of the President because they know him, they have worked with him and they have seen the sides that have been either exaggerated or belittled. They know the truth of the matter and bring us that are on the outside closer by virtue of their ability to change the outcome of the election. If they are honest and did change their vote based on the conviction of their conscience, we would know that the man they know is not the same man we thought he was. We will have insight that wasn’t available to us without their integrity.

If we take the Electoral College out of the picture, not only will we have thrown away the last vestige of our republic, we will also have totally separated ourselves as individuals in those parties from the President we elect in an effort to bring him closer. How ironic.

A republic is based on the idea that those that work hard and produce something for themselves and the others around them will have a voice in the government for the purpose of keeping the government from taking away their ability to produce – namely their property. When our republic was founded, the intention wasn’t to give voice to everyone regardless of who they were, it was to ensure freedom for everyone regardless of who they were. There is a big distinction in this difference. As an American our Constitution – if it was followed – would ensure your freedom to buy from anyone, speak to anyone, do with your own property as you saw fit and as long as you didn’t infringe on other’s rights to do the same you were fine. Those that used this freedom to gain property and to produce things that others wanted to buy were given a voice in the government because no one is free if they aren’t allowed to govern their own property.

At the beginning of our Republic, the public did not elect the Senators in the U.S. Congress, the state legislatures did. This gave the states a voice and allowed them to have the ability to regulate how much power the federal government had over the states. The sovereignty of the individual states was a very important issue to the colonists, because they did not want anything to do with having a centralized government that would act like a monarchy – totally detached from the people’s will and too far away from most of them to do anything about it. By the same token, the U.S. Supreme Court justices were selected by the president and approved by the Senate, but no direct input is given by the public. The reasons for this way of thinking comes from the idea that even though men are created equally, they do not all end up that way. Yes all men have the same rights, however not all exercise the best judgment and therefore some are better suited to lead. What one man prizes may be totally against the societies values at large and so giving everyone the right to decide who is in the government is really counter-productive to proper governance. It was very logical to the founders that those who demonstrated responsibility through hard work and the ability to manage such things as business and property had learned what was necessary to be a part of the governing process. In this way, I think that the republican form of government is a much higher form than what we are now experiencing.

Let me also include one other piece: I do not own property, and I do not own a business. In the old system I would have no right to vote. However, I would have a greater desire to contribute and to work hard so that I could vote and contribute to the governance of the society I was a part of. If the U.S. was to ever have the political will again to discipline itself and go back to being a republic, this one adjustment alone would radically change our society for the better.