by
M. Richard Maxson
Although we hear the term democracy used constantly in reference to our form
of government, the word does not appear in either the Declaration of Independence
or the Constitution of the United States, our two fundamental documents. Indeed,
Article IV, Section 4, of the Constitution "guarantees to every State in this union a
Republican Form of Government.’ In addition, we sing the Battle Hymn of the
Republic, and pledge allegiance to the flag of “the Republic for which it stands.”
On the contrary, the founders saw great danger in democracy. Tom Paine,
considered democracy the vilest form of government. In describing the
purpose of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Virginia delegate Edmund Randolph
commented: “The general object was to provide a cure for the evils under which the
United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it
in the turbulence and follies of democracy.”
Thirty-eight years after the Declaration of Independence, John Adams stated:
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.
There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1801 to I835 observed:
“Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between
order and chaos.”
As late as 1928, the "Citizenship" chapter of U.S. War Department training manual
TM 2000-25 expressed the opinion: Democracy . . . has been repeatedly tried without
success. Our Constitutional fathers. . . made a very marked distinction between a
republic and a democracy . . . and said repeatedly and emphatically that they had
founded a republic.
One of America's outstanding historians, Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948), put it
succinctly: “At no time, at no place in solemn convention assembled through no chosen
agents, had the American people ofiicially proclaimed the United States to be a democracy.
The Constitution did not contain the word or any word lending countenance to it.”
Why, then, are the Socialist Democrats call us a democracy?
It is because, that is what they want.
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