America a Democracy?

If you're like me, you've been taught by teachers, professors, and the media over the years that America is a democracy. The only time you ever heard the word 'republic' was when they were bashing the selfish, evil, racist, homophobic Republicans. Unfortunately, America is becoming more and more democratic with each passing day it seems. This wasn't always the case. When our founding fathers sat down to write the Constitution, the year was 1787. Just six years earlier, the American Continental army had defeated the most powerful fighting force in the world, thus securing freedom from the tyranical control of King George III. In order to understand the mindset of our Founding Fathers in the early days of American history, we must look at the events which sparked the American Revolution. The first offense was probably the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which effectively prohibited American colonists from settling west of the Appalachian mountains in a territory for which many American colonists had fought and died serving the Crown in the French and Indian War. Over the next few years, a series of arbitrary taxes and regulations were levied upon the colonists, including the Sugar Act (1764), theCurrency Act (1764), the Quartering Act (1765), the Stamp Act (1765), the Townshend Acts (1767), the Tea Act (1773), and the Intolerable Acts (1774)--Google these. Our Founding Fathers had a great deal of contempt for big government, which they viewed as the enemy of individual freedom and liberty. They believed in placing America's destiny in the hands of the People, and they knew that establishing a Republic was the only way to achieve that goal. Thomas Jefferson once said, "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine." In contrast, a Republican form of government is based purely on a foundation of law (in our case, the Constitution) and guarantees the individual rights of every citizen. So long as they remain within the bounds of law and refrain from encroaching on the rights of others, individuals in a Republic are protected from the shifting winds of popular sentiment, even when the majority looks upon them with contempt!

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