by Martha Ireland

What form of government does the United States Constitution establish?

When the Founders emerged from the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a woman asked that question of Benjamin Franklin.

"A republic, Madam," Franklin replied, "if you can keep it."

In recent decades, the United States has been busily "spreading democracy around the world."

The majority of U.S. citizens will tell you, "This is a democracy—majority rules."

Often, even self-proclaimed "conservative Republicans" who claim to want a republic, go about demanding a democracy.

Clearly, we have strayed from keeping the republic the founders gave us.

It we are to steer the United States back to being a republic, we need to know the difference between a republic and a democracy.

Via the Internet, we received portions of an "outdated" federal publication, Training Manual No. 2000-25. Published November 30, 1928, by the then War Department, it explained the difference in very clear terms, as seen in the following brief excerpt:

Democracy:

A government of the masses.

Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of "direct" expression.

Results in mobocracy.

Attitude toward property is communistic—negating property rights.

Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.

Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.

Republic:

Authority is derived through the election by the people of public officials best fitted to represent them.

Attitude toward law is the administration of justice in accord with fixed principles and established evidence, with a strict regard to consequences.

A greater number of citizens and extent of territory may be brought within its compass.

Avoids the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or mobocracy.

Results in statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice, contentment, and progress.

Is the "standard form" of government throughout the world.

The Training Manual also quoted from The Constitution of the United States, by Harry Atwood: "A republic is a form of government under a constitution which provides for the election of (1) an executive and (2) a legislative body, who working together in a representative capacity, have all the power of appointment, all power of legislation, all power to raise revenue and appropriate expenditures, and are required to create (3) a judiciary to pass upon the justice and legality of their government acts and to recognize (4) certain inherent individual rights. Take away any one or more of those four elements and you are drifting into autocracy. Add one or more to those four elements and you are drifting into democracy…

"Superior to all others…Autocracy declares the divine right of kings; its authority cannot be questioned; its powers are arbitrarily or unjustly administered. Democracy is the ‘direct’ rule of the people and has been repeatedly tried without success.

"Our Constitutional fathers, familiar with the strength and weakness of both autocracy and democracy, with fixed principles definitely in mind, defined a representative republican form of government. They made a very marked distinction between a republic and a democracy…and said repeatedly and emphatically that they had founded a republic."

Prior to American independence, Professor Alexander Fraser Tyler, writing about the decline and fall of the Athenian Republic over two thousand years earlier, concluded: "A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of Government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. >From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that Democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a Dictatorship."

How can we salvage our republic? Obviously, we must avoid and oppose actions that contribute to the devolution of our republic into a democracy.

For more on that, watch for future installments of Civics 2001.

NOTE: CCRP Chair Ginger Alexander has established a "Republican Education" Special Project. As part of that endeavor, this newsletter will present "Civics 2001" prepared by Project Coordinator Martha Ireland, who is the District I representative on the CCRP Executive Committee. She served as District I Clallam County Commissioner 1996-1999, and now writes a column which appears on the Opinion page of the Peninsula Daily News each Friday. Your questions and contributions are invited. Contact Martha at 683-8399 or by e-mail at irelands@olypen.com.

Civics 2001 – Part II

Do you really want a rule-of-law republic?

By Martha M. Ireland

A constitutional republic is based on moral laws that cannot be violated even by a majority of the citizens.

A democracy is based on majority rule—mob rule. That means basic moral laws can be violated whenever the majority votes to do so.

Which form of government do we Americans really support?

The choice was clear in 1995 when Referendum 48 was on the ballot. R-48 said that if government took private property by regulatory action, it had to pay for it. If government couldn’t or wouldn’t pay, it must not take.

R-48 attempted to restore a very basic moral law upon which this nation was founded, but which has been eroded by Congressional, bureaucratic and judicial action. R-48 would have reaffirmed one of the rights guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment (…nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation) which reflects the moral principle established by the eighth and tenth commandments (thou shalt not steal, and thou shalt not covet…anything that is thy neighbor’s).

The advocates of regulatory taking truthfully informed the voters that they could not afford to pay for all the properties the regulators wish to take. The choice was then, (1) take only what you can afford to pay for, or (2) take without paying.

The majority of the voters opted for (2). They could not afford to pay for everything the regulators wanted, so they would steal it. R-48 was defeated. Mob rule prevailed over the rule of law.

More recently, and with strong backing from some Republicans, Initiative 695 was approved by the majority of those who voted in 1999. Subsequently, the state Supreme Court struck it down as violating the state constitution. Many conservatives decry this ruling saying, "The majority should prevail." (As in a democracy.)

Presuming that the court ruled honestly in finding that I-695 violated the rule of law, I-695 was correctly overturned because, in a republic, law prevails over majority opinion—whether we like it or not.

Consider the recent presidential election tally. Many people offered creative plans to resolve the muddled count in Florida. The only correct answer was to proceed according to the rule of law. The rule of law provides no opportunities for revoting. The rule of law prohibits counting ballots over and over until a "desired" result is obtained.

Florida Secretary of State Kathleen Harris abided by and enforced the law as is required in a republic. She has been castigated and maligned for doing her job.

George W. Bush won under the laws in place at the time of the election. He is the legitimate president, whether he received the majority of the popular vote or not.

Government by popularity polls is bad government. The question should never be, "How do people feel about that?" The question must always be, "What does the Constitution say?"

Just as it is good theological practice to test everything by scripture (rather than testing scripture by human opinion), likewise, it is good governmental practice to test everything by Constitutional law.

We may not always like what the law rules, but good government depends on our honoring moral law above ever-changing human opinion.

###

Who REALLY won?

Interestingly, there is clear evidence that George W. Bush would have been elected President even if the United States were a "majority-rules" democracy.

The Palm Beach Post reviewed the supposedly uncounted ballots that Democrat partisans have been claiming would have given Florida’s electoral votes, and the presidency, to Al Gore. The Post found that:

"George W. Bush would have gained six votes more than Al Gore if all the dimples and hanging chads on 10,600 previously uncounted ballots in Miami-Dade County had been included in the totals. That result would have been a hard blow to Al Gore’s hopes of claiming the presidency in a recount. Before the vice president conceded last month, the Gore camp had expected to pick up as many as 600 votes from a Miami-Dade recount—barely enough to overtake Bush’s razor-thin Florida lead. Instead, The Post’s review indicates Gore would have lost ground. If everything were counted—from the faintest dimple to chads barely hanging on ballots—251 additional votes would have gone to Bush and 245 more would have gone to Gore."

Have you seen The Post’s review widely reported in the national news?

A separate statistical analysis indicates that national television’s premature and erroneous awarding of Florida’s electoral votes to Gore, cost Bush 5,000-some votes in Florida and 500,000 votes nationwide. Rather than wait in long lines to vote in an election that had already been decided, many people went home.

In effect, the televised news manipulators deprived George W. Bush of a clear majority of the popular vote, and only narrowly failed to deprive him of the Electoral vote as well.

Don’t expect to see much media coverage of that fact, either.

Instead, the national media continues to trumpet the false idea that the United States of America is a democracy and that our electoral system has failed.

Before the next election rolls around, it would be good to have laws in place protecting the honesty of the vote from media manipulation.

It should be unlawful to broadcast or publish any election results until all polling places are closed throughout the nation.

Civics 2001 – Part III

Government and Religion

By Martha M. Ireland

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" --the first provision of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

"The days of discriminating against religious institutions simply because they are religious must come to an end," President George W. Bush told the National Prayer Breakfast very early in his presidency.

One of his first official acts was to sign two executive orders, one establishing a White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and the other instructing five cabinet-level agencies to fully cooperate with that office. The latter measure, the president explained, largely eliminates the barriers "that make private groups hesitant to work with government."

An Associated Press article described President Bush as "challenging traditional notions about separation of church and state."

In fact, Bush is challenging modernist notions by returning to traditional ideas about the relationship of religion and American government.

Look at history. The Boy Scouts of America were founded as a faith-based organization and granted an honorary charter by Congress. That is the traditional view. The modernist view has anti-theological activists attempting to use government to force the Scouts to discard their faith-based standards.

Consider also the YMCAs which have become such basic parts of our secular social structure. YMCA stands for Young Men’s Christian Association. These entities began as faith-based ministries established to meet social needs.

Ditto the Red Cross, Lutheran Family Services, Saint Vincent de Paul Society, the Salvation Army, and Union Gospel Missions. These traditional faith-based ministries meet social needs. Some have hushed their religious voices to the point that the general public forgets that they are rooted in religious faith. Others maintain a strong witness while operating soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Either way, they do not force their beliefs on anyone, although some certainly present those beliefs clearly.

President Bush’s initiative would allow such organizations to receive federal assistance. If a Salvation Army soup kitchen feeds the hungry without requiring a religious commitment, why should it not qualify to receive free federal food commodities? If a Union Gospel Mission provides shelter to the homeless without requiring a religious commitment, why should it not qualify for a federal grant to buy beds and linens?

It can be convincingly argued that the Constitution gives federal government no authority to be involved in the anti-poverty business by taking resources from some people and giving them as charity to others.

However, the federal government is so involved. Presidential power is insufficient to make such a sweeping change by the stroke of a pen. The best President Bush could do is assure that social service entities are not discriminated against on the basis of religion.

An organization’s philosophical/religious foundation cannot ethically be used to determine whether or not said organization may receive support for its social service programs.

Federal money should be directed to programs that work. No program works for every person, but some have better success rates than others. Faith-based organizations are generally among those with the best track records. Therefore, it is logical for Mr. Bush to say, as he has said, "When we see social needs in America, my administration will look first to faith-based programs and community groups, which have proven their power to save and change lives. We will not fund the religious activities of any group, but when people of faith provide social services, we will not discriminate against them. ... We will not discriminate against them."

William Buckley has responded, "Conservatives...once again...have the instrument of government engaged in activity that is best supervised by (a) non-government, and (b) a smaller unit of government."

However, as The Federalist observes, "Mr. Bush is in no position, politically, to transform 70 years of the central government’s failed ‘war on poverty’ overnight. Thus, we cautiously applaud the fact that he is actively recognizing the value of community-based solutions in the most tangible way since President Reagan’s administration."

The Federalist added the following memos:

"Memo to ACLU minions upset about tax dollars going to ‘religious’ institutions: ‘Separation of church and state’ ain’t in the Declaration, the Articles of Confederation or the U.S. Constitution. Thomas Jefferson’s 1801 letter to the Danbury Baptists referred to the ‘wall of separation,’ but, according to the exhaustive research on that misunderstood letter by the curator of the National Archives, Jefferson never intended to strip the public square of religion.

"Memo to faith-based organizations: Based on the history of community responsibilities that have been nationalized after becoming dependent on the central government’s tax trough, it is yet to be seen if Mr. Bush’s initiative will have in tow the same mandates that have rendered such services ineffective, if not counterproductive. There is a strong case to be made, according to the ‘law of unintended consequences,’ that government funding may ultimately undermine the
effectiveness and legitimacy of community based services, as it has, notably, with ‘public’ schools."

Speaking of schools, it is worth noting that the leading institutions of higher education—including Harvard, Yale, and Princeton—were founded as faith-based schools.

Faith-based providers of social services would do well to take warning and carefully guard their religious foundations as they accept secular financial aid.

The U.S. Constitution is clearly concerned with protecting religion from government interference, rather than with protecting government from religious influence.