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From: trb@drux3.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Republics vs. Democracies
Message-ID: <727@drux3.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-Sep-83 00:33:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: drux3.727
Posted: Wed Sep  7 00:33:43 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Sep-83 08:55:32 EDT
Organization: AT&T Information Systems, Denver
Lines: 66

Here's an interesting tidbit.  Taken from a 156 page book
issued by the U.S. War Department, November 30, 1928, Training
Manual No. 2000-25, they define the difference between a Republic
and a Democracy:

>  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 the 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 property is respect for laws and individual rights,
>    and a sensible economic procedure.
>  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.
>  * * *
>  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 marked distinction between a republic and a
>    democracy and said repeatedly and emphatically that they had founded
>    a republic."

And even more!  Over two centuries ago, Professor Alexander Fraser
Tytler, while writing about the fall of the Athenian Republic over
two centuries ago, wrote of democracy:

    "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 promis-
     ing the most benefits from the public treasury with the result
     that Democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy,
     always followed by a dictatorship."

Kind of makes one wonder.  We're supposed to be a republic: could
we be drifting towards a democracy?  And do we really want to spread
"democracy" to the world, or are we just misusing the term?

The reason for all this?  I saw a bumper sitcker the other day
that said - THIS IS A REPUBLIC, NOT A DEMOCRACY.  LET'S KEEP
IT THAT WAY! - and I wanted to know what they meant.

				Tom Buckley