Why do American conservatives say that America is a constitutional republic and not a democracy? Would it not make sense to call America a constitutional republican democracy?
Last Updated: 23.06.2025 03:21
The thinking of our founders:
—Benjamin Franklin
The United States IS a democracy… a constitutional democracy, the most limited form of democracy possible. Why?
In short order we got ballot initiatives, recall elections, referenda, direct election of Senators, a Bismarckian-style administrative state (allowing the great bulk of our legislation to be enacted secretly)… NOT power to the people, but power to the majority position. After all, through the half century of the Progressive Era, the progressive Anglo-Saxon-Protestant outlook numbered almost a super-majority of voters resulting in abominable acts against the rights of minority populations.
The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.
When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.
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I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either.
When the Democratic Party came along in 1828, it was with the primary goals of, one, dispossessing Indian tribes in the South of their fertile lands and moving them west to the territories, and, two, protecting slavery. In order to dispossess categories of people of their property and rights, “majority-rules democracy” is called for, and the Democrats ramped that up on all fronts:
We were founded as a constitutional democracy, with democratic methods limited to citizens voting for those citizens who serve in and vote on legislation in the House of Representatives.
—Thomas Jefferson
Another tendency, which is extremely natural to democratic nations and extremely dangerous, is that which leads them to despise and undervalue the rights of private persons.
[with republicanism being the rights-protecting form of governance afforded us by our Constitution]
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—Alexis de Tocqueville
When Democrats go on and on about “our democracy,” they are literally bragging about the tools they put in place to keep the rest of us in our place! Remember, our constitutional form of government was established to protect the rights and freedom of all, not to advance the goals of a voting majority.
—John Adams