User talk:Wheeler/Confusion over term republic

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(Excerpts from Menace of the Herd, by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Bruce Publishing Co., 1943. pp 2-7)

WHAT OF DEMOCRACY?

(pg 2) Finally one and the same thing can be considered to be democratic and undemocratic at the same time: for instance, the New Deal, Tuxedo Club, Presidential acts, prices of fur coats, British accents, China, Russia, England — all according to individual likes and dislikes. Communists call their creed "streamlined democracy" or "Twentieth-Century Americanism."

We see, then, from the plurality of present-day connotations of democracy that it would be thoroughly unjustified to use the term "democracy" in any other sense than in the classical and universal one. *(italics in original) We may well agree that the mischief started by uneducated popularizers has already reached such proportions that a Hercules is needed to clean this Augian stable of popular misconceptions, false labels, and mispresented ideologies. Even some of the more intelligent writers have become a prey to popular pressure, and as modern intellectuals do not lead the masses any more, but follow them and subordinate their ideas and language to the demands of the market, the confusion has now reached its climax.

Before offering any further reasons regarding the deeper implications of the use and misuse of the term democracy we shall give some views on the American Constitution as expressed by the Founding Fathers and by distinguished modern writers. It will be seen that the classical and scientific meaning of that word remained unchanged for 2300 years, notwithstanding the scandalous ignorance displayed by editors, teachers, college professors, stump orators, and other irresponsible persons who are prominent in the public eye.

Thus the trend toward democracy in the modern age is deplored by Harry F. Atwood in his book Back to the Republic where he writes:

"We have drifted from the republic toward democracy: from statesmanship to demagogism; from excellent to inferior service. It is an age of retrogressive tendencies."

J. Hampden Doherty in the Electoral System in the United States confirms similarly our opinion when he writes:

"The tendency in this democratic age is to overlook the fact that the Fathers of the Constitution were not believers in the rule of the people, and it was not until after 1800 that manhood suffrage was adopted in any of the States."

Footnote at bottom of page: *Apart from the fact that we rather borrow our terminology from the Fathers of the Constitution than from radio commentators or the speakers at women’s clubs.

WHAT OF DEMOCRACY?
(pg 3) Dealing with the current criticism of the Constitution at his time, Madison, in the Federalist, says:

It seems to owe its rise and prevalence chiefly to the confounding of a republic with a democracy, applying to the former reasonings drawn from the nature of the latter. The true distinction between these two forms was also adverted to on a former occasion. It is, that in a democracy, the people exercise the government in person: in a republic they administer it by their representatives (No. 14).

Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia, in his booklet Why Should We Change Our Form of Government? (New York, 1912), writes:

Aristotle has pointed out that democracy has many points of resemblance with tyranny. It was he who first told us how a democracy as well as a tyranny, may become a despotism.

It is just as easy for a majority to become a despot as for a monarch to become a tyrant. Even a tyrant may be benevolent, even a democratic despotism may be malevolent (pp. 29 and .30).

Hamilton, who held at the beginning certain monarchical views in order to exchange them later for aristocratic opinions, opposed the republic.
Gouverneur Morris shrewdly said:

"...he confounded it with democratical government." Morris, though he shared Hamilton’s dislike of democracy, thus early saw the confusion of republicanism with democracy that so long existed in men’s mind. — (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 7,1937, p. 183.)

Today democracy is confused with liberalism,* freedom, and prosperity alike.
About the truly' liberal-whiggish Fathers, (italics original, ed. bolded) Ralph Adams Cram writes in his The End of Democracy (Boston, 1937, p. 20):

"I apologize to the revered memory of Washington, Adams, Madison, Gerry, and all their fellows for attributing to them any intellectual commerce with democracy, for if they feared anything it was precisely this; whereby their prevision was highly justified. As Mr. Nock says: "One sometimes wonders how our Revolutionary forefathers would take it if they could hear some flatulent political thimblerigger charge them with having founded ‘the great and glorious democracy of the West.’" Of course, as we know now, they never intended to do anything of that sort.

And later he adds:

"The Constitution of 1787 was, then, what may be called an aristocratic republican form of organic law with no salient democratic features."

Footnote: *About its confusion with liberty see the text concerning liberalism.

(pg 4)Alexander Hamilton attacked democracy violently in his speeches on June 21, 1788, "On the Compromise of Constitution," and in the Federal Convention on June 26, 1787. Democracy, socalled "Jeffersonian democracy," was assailed in poetical form by such anonymous writers as Dr. Christopher Caustic in his "Democracy Unveiled or Tyranny Stripped of the Garb of Patriotism" (Boston, 1805). Yet Jefferson was no democrat in the current sense; he believed in the rule of the best, not in the rule of the masses. This is evident when he writes:

"The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts and government of society. And indeed, it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed men for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?" (Letter to John Adams, Oct. 28, 1814).

This belief in an elite is not very "democratic." Sometimes Jefferson’s vocabulary was rather unfitting for "progressive" ears; this seems apparent when he deals with the possibility of a large urban proletariat in America which by destroying the agricultural character of the country would make even representative government unworkable. He wrote in the same letter quoted above:

"Every one by his property, or by his satisfactory situation, is interested in the support of law and order. And such men may safely and advantageously reserve to themselves wholesome control over their public affairs, and a degree of freedom, which in the hands of the canaille of the cities of Europe, would be instantly perverted to the demolition and destruction of everything public."

This view is supplemented by a fear of an industrial development in the United States. He wrote on December 20, 1787, to Madison:

"I think that our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural: and this will be as long as there are vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another as in the large cities of Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe." —-(Both letters quoted from J. T. Adams Jeffersonian Principles and Hamiltonian Principles, Boston, 1932.)

His hatred against the urban masses can also be seen in other letters and essays:

"The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body." — (Volume 1, p. 403 Writings of Jefferson, Washington edition.)

and:

"I consider the class of artiflcers as the panclerers of vice, and the instruments by which the liberties of a country are generally overturned." — (Volume I, p. 403.)

These are views which few medieval writers would have expressed with such crudity. They are certainly not the anthor’s and they are only quoted in order to exhort the reader to exercise greater discretion in alluding to the problem of Jeffersonian "democracy".
Another author stressing the strictly nondemocratic character of the Constitution (and of historic America) is E. M. Burns who writes in his volume James Madison, Philosopher of the Constitution (New Brunswick, 1938):

"Instead of defending the absolute sovereignty of the majority, Madison detested it so strongly that he sought in almost every conceivable way to prevent its exercise". (page 63).

A good analysis of the American Constitution is also given by Andrew Cunningham MacLaughlin in the Proceedings of the American. Antiquarion Society (New Series. Volume 22) under the title: "Democracy and Constitution". As to the definitions he writes:

"In any examination concerning the popular character of institutions we need to recognize the value and significance of words and there is no more carelessly used [word] in the language than ""democratic"". Democracy, as we use the word, may mean individualism, that is freedom from restraint, opportunity to do what one will without governmental encroachment or restriction; and, where individualism exists, the spirit of indivualism and of individual self-reliance is apt to exist. But democracy may mean equality, and the spirit of equality may be quite contrary to the spirit of individualism, though it is possible that the two may go hand in hand. Again democracy may mean the right of the authority of the masses of the people to manage their own affairs and to make use of the government for their own interests. Democracy in this latter sense may be in absolute and complete conflict with nd individualism, or even with equality. There is no reason for the coexistence of any two of these three principles which we commonly cover by the convenient word democracy or democratic." (p. 296)

"Excusing" the Founding Fathers for their lack of what is scientific democracy he writes:

"Just that kind of government [i.e.. democracy] was not in accord with (pg 6)popular desire in 1787, the stirring watchword of American life was Liberty (p. 310). (italics original ed. bolded it).

And further he again states plainly:

"It cannot be said that the Constitution of the United States has retarded the growth of democracy, but in the interest of historical accuracy it needs to be said that it did not establish democracy."

The conflict between democracy and liberty to which A. C. MacLaughlin alluded was also well known by Calhoun who wrote in his famous Disquisition on Government (New York, 1853):

"There is another error, not less great and dangerous, usually associated with the one which just has been considered. I refer to the opinion, that liberty and equality are so intrinsically united, that liberty cannot be perfect without perfect equality." (p. 56).

and his attack against democratic majoritism becomes more concrete when he writes:

"Liberty is little more than a mere name under all governments of the absolute form, including that of the numerical majority, and can only have a secure and durable existence under those of the concurrent or constitutional form" (p. 60).

Returning to an earlier period we want to quote the opinions of John Adams, second president of the United States. In his famous work, A Defense of the Constitution of the United States of America (Volume III, new edition, London, 1794), he asserts that the following propositions can be proved to be true:

        1. No democracy ever did or can exist.
        2. If, however, it were admitted, for argument sake, that a democracy
        ever did or can exist, no such passion as a love of democracy stronger than
        self-love . . . ever did, or ever can, prevail in the minds of the citizens in
        general.
        3. That if the citizens . . . preferred the public to his private in-
        terest . . . it would not be from . . . love of the democracy, but from reason,
        conscience, etc.
        4. That no love of equality, at least since Adam’s fall, ever existed.
        5. That no love of frugality ever existed as a passion, but always as a
        virtue.
        6. That therefore the democracies of Montesquieu . . . are all mere frag-
        ments of his brain, and delusive imaginations.
        7. That his passion of love of the democracy would be, in the members
        of the majority only a love of the majority....
        8. That his love of equality would not even be pretended toward the
        members of the minority but the semblance of it would only be kept up
        among the members of the majority....
        11. That in reality the word democracy signifes nothing more or less
        than a nation or people without any government at all. . . 
        12. That every attentive reader may perceive that the notions of Mont-               
        esquieu concerning a democracy, are imaginations of his own derived from
        the contemplation of the reveries of Xenophon and of Plato, concerning
        equality of goods and community of wives and children, in their delirious
        ideas of a perfect commonwealth (pp. 493—495).
        

Democracy’ as an ideal of the Founding Fathers is equally denied by W. H. Hamilton and D. Adair in The Power to Govern (New York, 1937, p. 58). It must also be borne in mind that the protest against calling the Constitution democratic comes from historians of all groups, yet while Rightists praise lack of ‘democracy’ in the Constitution "Leftists" ike Charles Beard* and H. Rugg are prone to condemn it outright.

We have a ready once cautioned the reader against the concept of "Jeffersonian democracy". Thomas Jefferson never called himself a democrat and the word democrat is only mentioned once in the Monticello edition — as an accusation leveled against him by Hamilton. In his letter addressed to Washington on May 17, 1792, he called himself a "Republican Federalist", and in his first inaugural address as President he said: "We are all Federalists, we are all Republicans." When Andrew Jackson ran against John Q. Adams for the presidency in 1828 he was called by some of his followers (as both candidates were Republican) a "democratic-republican". Van Buren called him sell a Republican and the unfortunate label "democratic" was used again by F. Pierce in 1852. Since that time it became increasingly popular with some people. Others protested and go on protesting.

We have said before that it is difficult to find the exact reasons for the growing popularity of the word democracy and democratic taken from a dead language which is thoroughly nonunderstandable to 999 out of 1000 Americans. The decline of classical education in favor of progressive ""self-realization"" has favored the increased use of wrong labels. It is deplorable that even Catholics have become victims of this chaos in verbiage.

Footnote: *Charles A. and Mary R. Beard wrote: "As was said afterwards, the founders of the Republic in general, whether Federalist or Republican, feared democracy more than they feared original sin." (America in Midpassage, New York, 1939, Vol III, p. 922.) About the use of the word democratic between 1865 and the close of the century, see p. 923 of the same book.