The USA is a REPUBLIC, not a Democracy. [View all]

[live2011]

`Let’s be honest, America. The United States of America is not and never has been a Democracy, despite all the rhetoric from the politicians, who are trying to deceive you. The United States of America was founded and instituted as a REPUBLIC, specifically DESIGNED to prevent America from EVER becoming a Land of Equals. The Founders HATED Democracy and openly said so.

“The framers were of the opinion that democracy (rule by the common people) was “the worst of all political evils,” as Elbridge Gerry put it. For Edmund Randolph, the country’s problems were caused by “the turbulence and follies of democracy.” Roger Sherman concurred: “The people should have as little to do as may be about the Government.” According to Alexander Hamilton, “all communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and the wellborn, the other the mass of the people.… The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right.” He recommended a strong centralized state power to “check the imprudence of democracy.” And George Washington, the presiding officer at the Philadelphia Convention, urged the delegates not to produce a document merely to “please the people.”13 Page 8, “Democracy For The Few” by Michael Parenti

“The framers believed the states were not sufficiently forceful in suppressing popular uprisings like Shays’s Rebellion, so the federal government was empowered to protect the states “against domestic Violence,” and Congress was given the task of organizing the militia and calling it forth to “suppress Insurrections.” Provision was made for erecting forts, arsenals, and armories, and for the maintenance of an army and navy for both national defense and to establish an armed federal presence within potentially insurrectionary states. This measure was to prove a godsend to the industrial barons a century later when the U.S. Army was used repeatedly to break mass strikes by miners and railroad and factory workers.” Page 10, “Democracy For the Few” by Michael Parenti

“In keeping with their desire to contain the propertyless majority, the founders inserted what Madison called “auxiliary precautions” designed to fragment power without democratizing it. They separated the executive, legislative, and judicial functions and then provided a system of checks and balances between the three branches, including staggered elections, executive veto, the possibility of overturning the veto with a two-thirds majority in both houses, Senate confirmation of appointments and ratification of treaties, and a bicameral legislature. They contrived an elaborate and difficult process for amending the Constitution, requiring proposal by two-thirds of both the Senate and the House and ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures.17 To the extent that it existed at all, the majoritarian principle was tightly locked into a system of minority vetoes, making swift and sweeping popular action less likely. The propertyless majority, as Madison pointed out in Federalist No. 10, must not be allowed to concert in common cause against the propertied class and its established social order. The larger the nation, the greater the “variety of parties and interests” and the more difficult it would be for a mass majority to act in unison. As Madison argued, “A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other wicked project will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it.” pp 10-11 “Democracy For the Few” by Michael Parenti

“Though supposedly dedicated to selfless and upright goals, the delegates nevertheless bound themselves to the strictest secrecy. Proceedings were conducted behind locked doors and shuttered windows (despite the sweltering Philadelphia summer). Madison’s notes, which recorded most of the actual deliberations, were published, at his insistence, only after all participants were dead, fifty-three years later, most likely to avoid political embarrassment to them.21"

“The delegates “gave” nothing to popular interests, rather—as with the Bill of Rights—they reluctantly made democratic concessions under the threat of popular rebellion. They kept what they could and grudgingly relinquished what they felt they had to, driven not by a love of democracy but by a fear of it, not by a love of the people but by a prudent desire to avoid riot and
insurgency. The Constitution, then, was a product not only of class privilege but of class struggle—a struggle that continued as the corporate economy and the government grew.” p 16, “Democracy For the Few” by Michael Parenti