Is the USA a Republic or a Democracy?

Is the USA is a Republic not a Democracy:-American Founding fathers had disdain for “democracy”?

An oligarchy is said to be that in which the few and the wealthy, and a democracy that in which the many and the poor are the rulers,” as Aristotle put it in his Politics.
About 370 BC, Plato wrote: “A democracy is a state in which the poor, gaining the upper hand, kill some and banish others, and then divide the offices among the remaining citizens equally.”
A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.” James Madison
sound political decisions concerning means as well as ends require not only reliable knowledge of such things as economics, geography, sociology, and military strategy, but also something like moral competence, the question arises as to how this sort of preparedness can be acquired. Plato’s emphatic answer is: by a sound and systematic education. No good government—democratic or otherwise–is possible without an adequate amount of knowledge and understanding. It is for this reason that education is the most central concern of Plato’s Republic.

It is pedagogical to see the definition of the state and its different functionaries as described by Plato. It si fruitful to analyze the hierarchical structure and stratified society espoused by Plato.

The utopian society described in the Republic has a similar tripartite structure as the human soul. Corresponding to the bodily desires and appetites of the soul is the class of people who are involved in the economy of a state. This class constitutes the vast majority of the people, and it comprises such diverse groups as craftsmen, farmers, merchants, manufacturers, and money changers or bankers. Plato classifies all of them as “lovers of money.”

Corresponding to the spirited emotions in the soul is the much smaller class of the armed forces, the class of professional warriors that is responsible for the safety of the community. Plato calls them “lovers of honor.” Their main desire is to gain fame and admiration by serving their fellow citizens-for whom, in extreme situations, they are willing to sacrifice their lives as well as their material possessions.

Corresponding to the faculty of reason is the smallest class of people-scientists, scholars, high-level experts, and similar sophisticates. Plato calls them “lovers of wisdom,” i. e., “philosophers.” Their most passionate interests are understanding and knowledge, and their greatest pleasure a lively life of the mind.

As a just and healthy person is governed by knowledge and reason, a just society must be under the control of society’s most cultivated and best informed minds, its “lovers of wisdom.” Just societies cannot be run by big money or armed forces with their too narrow agendas. Limitless desire for wealth and blind ambition must be watched and contained as potential public dangers. The most informed minds must determine objectively, with due consideration of all points of view, what the most healthy and practical goals for the commonwealth are. From Jorn K. Bramann: Educating Rita and Other Philosophical Movies) http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/PlatoRep.htm

America is a republic not a democracy
Democratic self-government does not work, according to Plato
http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article17550
http://internationalnews.over-blog.com/article-22718571.html

Psephocracy is a form of government decided by “elections”. Orientalists will tell us all that the Greeks supposedly invented the ballot box when they voted with the psephos or ‘pebble’ in ceramic urns. Psephologyis the study of elections and voting, and a psephologist is an electoral scientist or analyst. In a psephocracy, the media is focused on inconsequential events and issues while the pullulating millions are unable even to see the affluence of those who manipulate the electorate through fear mongering and other tested mechanisms

Illusionary Democracy depends on Psephocracy as a way to legitimize the dictatorship of dynastic plutocracy–as practiced in the Brahamin corridors of power in India.

What happens after elections in a Psephocracy? Nothing. Elections simply endorse the will of the plutocrats who perpetually remain in power.

“Think of the considerateness of the city, its entire superiority to trifles, its disregard of all those things we spoke of so proudly when we were founding our [ideal] city; we said that, except from altogether extraordinary natures, no one could turn out a good man unless his earliest years were given to noble games, and he gave himself wholly to noble pursuits. Is it not sublime how this city tramples all such things under foot, and is suprememly indifferent as to what life a man has led before he enters politics? If only he asserts his zeal for the multitude, it is ready to honour him.” (Pg. 254, The Republic, Translation by Lindsay, 1954, London: JM Dent & Sons)

We have tremendous respect for the constitution of my sweet land of liberty. Our constitution has some very strong points. The bicameral legislature patterned on the “Indian confederation” balanced the rights of the individual states vs. Federalism and has been emulated around the world. The government evolved to allow the Supreme Court as an equal and third wheel of government, even though this was never the intent of the original framers of the constitution.

As far as consumers are concerned, I mean, when you look at a television ad, it is not trying to create an informed consumer who’s going to make a rational choice. We all know that. If they were going to do that, General Motors would just list the characteristics of its models and, you know, you’re over, you’re done. The purpose is to delude and deceive by imagery — it’s transparent — meaning to ensure that uninformed consumers will make irrational choices.

And that goes straight to the democratic deficit. The U.S. does not have elections in a serious sense. It has advertising campaigns, run by the same industries that sell toothpaste: public relations industry. When they’re selling candidates, they don’t tell you — provide you with information about them, any more than they do about lifestyle drugs or cars. What they do is create imagery to delude and deceive. That’s what’s called an electoral campaign. The result is that people are just unaware of the stands of candidates on issues. Noam Chomsky on Failed States

Plato was in his early twenties when Athens was defeated by Sparta, and when the second oligarch dictatorship was established. His inclination was to turn his back on politics—it seemed altogether too hopeless a mess. He had no faith in the rule of the rich, nor any confidence in the ability of ordinary citizens to run a city like Athens. The rich, as he saw, had mostly their special interests in mind, and during the time of their short-lived regimes they had shown to what length they could go to defend the advantages of the few against the majority of ordinary people. But the rule by the many was no remedy for the ills of oligarchy, according to Plato, because ordinary people were too easily swayed by the emotional and deceptive rhetoric of ambitious politicians. It was the demos, after all, the majority of ordinary people, who time and again had supported the disastrous campaigns of the Peloponnesian War by their votes, who had condoned numerous atrocities and breaches of the law, and who were also responsible for the questionable trial and execution of Socrates. Athenian politics, in other words, seemed an irremediably corrupted affair, and all a rational person could do was to attend to personal matters, and to pursue wisdom in the privacy of one’s solitude and a small circle of friends. From Jorn K. Bramann: Educating Rita and Other Philosophical Movies) http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/PlatoRep.htm

Here is Noam Chomsky, one of the ten most quoted human beings on this planet–dead or alive.

QUESTION: Do you see much evidence of a revolutionary spirit in the America of the 1990s?

CHOMSKY: You didn’t find evidence of it in the America of the 1790s. The Revolutionary War was an important event. But it was in the first place, to a significant extent, a civil war, as most revolutionary wars are. And it was a war of independence, as opposed to a revolution against the social structure. The social structure didn’t really change significantly. There were problems right after the war was done. For example, Shay’s Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion and so on were challenging the social structure, and there were efforts on the part of radical farmers to take seriously the meaning of the words in the revolutionary pamphlets, but that was pretty well quieted down.

If you go back to the record of the Constitutional Convention, which took place in 1787, almost immediately after the end of the war, you see that they are already moving in another direction. James Madison — who was the main framer, and one of the founding fathers who was most libertarian — makes it very clear that the new constitutional system must be designed so as to insure that the government will, in his words “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority” and bar the way to anything like agrarian reform. The determination was made that America could not allow functioning democracy, since people would use their political power to attack the wealth of the minority of the opulent. Therefore, Madison argues, the country should be placed in the hands of the wealthier set of men, as he put it. Noam Chomsky info

It is debatable that “the founding fathers set up a constitutional system in which the power of the state flowed from and is dependent on the power of the people”.

Plato compares the state to an elaborate and expensive ship. A ship, to accomplish a safe and successful journey, needs an expert navigator at the helm, a captain who knows the capacities of the vessel, geography, meteorology, water currents, navigational astronomy, supplies management, and other related matters. An ignorant and untrained person at the helm of a ship would endanger vessel, cargo, crew, and passengers alike. Similarly, Plato suggests, the ship of state needs expert governors at the helm, governors who are well informed about such things as law, economics, sociology, military strategy, history, and other relevant subjects. Ignorant and incompetent governors can be and have been disasters for citizens and states. From Jorn K. Bramann: Educating Rita and Other Philosophical Movies) http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/PlatoRep.htm

These particular ideas may work well as candy for 8th grade (his)tory books but it is a bit far removed from reality.

Now, take the war in Iraq. When you talk about the government propaganda system we have to recognize that that includes the media. It includes the media, the journalists and so on. That’s all part of the propaganda system, very closely linked. There is virtually no criticism of the war in Iraq. Now, that will surprise journalists, I suppose. They think they’re being very critical, but they’re not. I mean, the kinds of criticism of the war in Iraq that are allowed in the doctrinal system, media and so on, are the kind of criticisms you heard about, say, in the German general staff after Stalingrad: it’s not working; it’s costing too much; we made a mistake, we should get a different general; something like that. In fact, it’s about at the level of a high school newspaper cheering the local football team. You don’t ask, “Should they win?” You ask, “How are we doing?” You know, “Did the coaches make a mistake? Should we try something else?” That’s called criticism.

But there’s a critical question: What right does the U.S. have to invade another country, in gross violation of international law, understanding that it’s probably going to increase the threat of terror and nuclear proliferation? But just, you know, it’s a supreme international crime, in the words of the Nuremburg Tribunal, for which German leaders were hanged. You know, the issue isn’t how they are going to win, it’s “What are they doing there in the first place?” Noam Chomsky on Failed States

For a dose of reality, we need to know that the word “democracy” does not appear in the constitution of the United States. As historians Charles Austin Beard and Mary Ritter Beard wrote (1939):

“At no time, at no place, in solemn convention assembled, through no chosen agents, had the American people officially proclaimed the United States to be a democracy. The Constitution did not contain the word or any word lending countenance to it, except possibly the mention of ‘We the people,’ in the preamble … When the Constitution was framed, no respectable person called himself a democrat.”

The USA was created as “republic” not a “democracy”. The word democracy was coined in the late 40s to “manufacture consent” for the war against “fascism” and “Nazism” to spread “democracy” and freedom in Europe.

James Madison’s Federalist Paper #10 discusses the issue of Democracies. In it he states: “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.

Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of Government, have erroneously supposed, that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions and their passions.” We can see from this that Mr. Madison would never have advocated a pure Democracy for his new nation. http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/13/DEMvsREPUB.htm

About 370 BC, Plato wrote: “A democracy is a state in which the poor, gaining the upper hand, kill some and banish others, and then divide the offices among the remaining citizens equally.”

Alexander Hamilton, in debate, said: “Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate government.” “Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the”

QUESTION: Isn’t that erection of barriers to democracy woven through the entire history of the United States?

CHOMSKY: It goes back to the writing of the Constitution. They were pretty explicit. Madison saw a “danger” in democracy that was quite real and he responded to it. In fact, the “problem” was noticed a long time earlier. It’s clear in Aristotle’s Politics, the sort of founding book of political theory — which is a very careful and thoughtful analysis of the notion of democracy. Aristotle recognizes that, for him, that democracy had to be a welfare state; it had to use public revenues to insure lasting prosperity for all and to insure equality. That goes right through the Enlightenment. Madison recognized that, if the overwhelming majority is poor, and if the democracy is a functioning one, then they’ll use their electoral power to serve their own interest rather than the common good of all. Aristotle’s solution was, “OK, eliminate poverty.” Madison faced the same problem but his solution was the opposite: “Eliminate democracy.”

QUESTION: Madison actually expected more of the rich, didn’t he?

CHOMSKY: Madison was sort of pre-capitalist. He was a person of the Enlightenment, kind of like Adam Smith. And his picture of what the wealthy would do with their power was very different from what they did do. He thought they would be enlightened gentlemen, benevolent philosophers and so on. By the early 1790s, he was already very upset, and he was deploring the depravity of the times. He saw people becoming the tools and tyrants of government, as he put it. They were using state power for their own ends. That’s not the way it was supposed to work. But the opposition had already been pushed back by then. Although there were radical democratic elements, they were pretty much marginalized pretty fast.

James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 10: In a pure democracy, “there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.”

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said, ” … that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.”

John Adams said, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

? Chief Justice John Marshall observed, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”

Ayn Rand. There are serious flaws in the US constitution, which allows a majority to completely over-rule the rights of minorities or allows a minority opinion to be imposed on the majority if the vote is split. For example, if there are 3 candidates in an election and two get 30% of the vote and the third gets 40% of the vote. Now the person with 40% of the votes gets elected, even though 60% of the people opposed his election.

This was taken care of on the French and German constitutions by having run-offs. How about a few quotations demonstrating the disdain our founders held for democracy?

In a word or two, the founders knew that a democracy would lead to the same kind of tyranny the colonies suffered under King George III Not to digress to far, but this is very similar of “manufacturing consent” to spread “democracy” in the Middle East, where we support a minority non-pashtun government in Afghanistan and are now in the process of replacing a secular government with a pro-Iranian ayatollah led theocracy in Iraq.

In fact all the founding father, Jefferson, Hamilton repeatedly spoke up AGAINST “democracy” as a system of government for the USA. However I agree that a system of government however imperfect that strives to allow people to control the government may work well in literate societies. Our glorious experiment in democracy is surely a beacon to the world and yes it is based on the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions.

QUESTION: At this point, what do you see as the greatest threat to democracy?

CHOMSKY: The greatest threat to democracy right now is the transfer of decision making into the hands of unaccountable private power. It’s done by a lot of ways, but one of them is what they call “minimizing the state.” This is kind of paradoxical for me. I’m an old-time anarchist from way back. I don’t think the federal government is a legitimate institution. I think it ought to be dismantled, in principle; just as I don’t think there ought to be cages — I don’t think people ought to live in cages. On the other hand, if I’m in a cage and there’s a saber tooth tiger outside, I’d be happy to keep the bars of the cage in place — even though I think the cage is illegitimate. I think that image is not inappropriate. There are plenty of good arguments, in my opinion, against centralized government authority. On the other hand, there’s a much worse danger right outside. The centralized government authority is at least to some extent under popular influence, and in principle at least under popular control. The unaccountable private power outside is under no public control. What they call minimizing the state — transferring the decision making to unaccountable private interests — is not helpful to human beings or to democracy or, for that matter, to the markets. In this time when we are told there is “a triumph of the market,” the markets are threatened themselves, aren’t they? What’s developing is a kind of corporate mercantilism with huge centralized, more or less command economies, integrated with one another, closely tied to state power — relying very heavily on state power, in fact — and enforcing social policies and a conception of social and political order that happen to be highly beneficial to the interests of the top sectors of the population, the richest sectors.

QUESTION: This is fundamentally changing not just developing nations but even the most powerful nations in the world, including the United States, isn’t it?

CHOMSKY: For some years now, about 20 years — this actually goes back before the Reagan period — there have been very detectable and I think increasingly obvious efforts to turn the United States into something that structurally more or less resembles a Third World society. It’s so rich that it won’t be like Egypt, but it has many of the structural similarities — an enormous gap between rich and poor, getting rid of “superfluous” people, a lot of what you find in a Third World structure.

There are many in America, Europe and the religious world that continue to debate whether “Law of ‘man’ “, supercedes “Law of God”.Many in the Evangelical Red States do not agree in allowing abortion since it violates “law of God”. Many evangelicals want America to be a “Christian state” and may succeed in doing this if present Red colorization of states continue.We saw this happen in India where a communal party was able to rise to power from 2 seats in parliament to 240 seats and eventually form a “Hindu” government. The same happened in Hitler’s Germany and Italy. Voting spawned dictators with devastating consequences for millions of people.. Our glorious Constitution was based on the Magna Carta. The most important part of our constitution is chapter 39 taken from the Magna Carta.

“Nullus liber homo capiatur vel imprisonetur aut disseisietur de libero tenemento suo, vel libertatibus, vel liberis consuetudinibus suis, aut utlagetur, aut exuletur, aut aliquo modo destruatur, nec super eum ibimus, nec super eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum, vel per legem terr.”

In English this shows up as “No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.”

Some may have conniption fits when you read the following, but it is based on well research and documented facts. Contrary to popular belief, the original was not even written in English. It was translated into Latin from the original Arabic.

“Trial by jury” was of course an Arab invention popular in Al-Andulusia (Spain). The Magna Carta was taken from the much despised and misunderstood Shariah Law.

See John Maksidi’s research consecrated and published in the North Carolina Law journal (copy can be retrieved or mailed to you).

The Bill of Rights were taken from Ibn Tufail, Ibn Haitam and canonized (“canon’ is from the Arabic word “qanoon”) by Hamilton and Jefferson as the Bill of Rights.