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LibertyEagle
10-21-2012, 09:36 AM
Republics and Democracies
by Robert Welch


The Origin of the Idea of a Republic
The first scene in this drama, on which the curtain clearly lifts, is Greece of the Sixth Century B.C. The city of Athens was having so much strife and turmoil, primarily as between its various classes, that the wisest citizens felt something of a more permanent nature, rather than just a temporary remedy, had to be developed — to make possible that stability, internal peace, and prosperity which they had already come to expect of life in a civilized society. And through one of those fortunate accidents of history, which surprise us on one side by their rarity and on the other side by ever having happened at all, these citizens of Athens chose an already distinguished fellow citizen, named Solon, to resolve the problem for both their present and their future. They saw that Solon was given full power over every aspect of government and of economic life in Athens. And Solon, applying himself to the specific job, time, and circumstances, and perhaps without any surmise that he might be laboring for lands and centuries other than his own, proceeded to establish in "the laws of Solon" what amounted to, so far as we know, the first written regulations whereby men ever proposed to govern themselves. Undoubtedly even Solon's decisions and his laws were but projections and syntheses of theories and practices which had already been in existence for a long time. And yet his election as Archon of Athens, in 594 B.C., can justly be considered as the date of a whole new approach to man's eternal problem of government.

There is no question but that the laws and principles which Solon laid down both foreshadowed and prepared the way for all republics of later ages, including our own. He introduced, into the visible record of man's efforts and progress, the very principle of "government by written and permanent law" instead of "government by incalculable and changeable decrees" (Will Durant). And he himself set forth one of the soundest axioms of all times, that it was a well-governed state "when the people obey the rulers and the rulers obey the laws." This concept, that there were laws which even kings and dictators must observe, was not only new; I think it can be correctly described as "Western".

Here was a sharp and important cleavage at the very beginning of our Western civilization, from the basic concept that always had prevailed in Asia, which concept still prevailed in Solon's day, and which in fact remained unquestioned in the Asiatic mind and empires until long after the fall of the Roman Empire of the East, when Solon had been dead two thousand years.

The Tyrants of Democracy
Unfortunately, while Solon's laws remained in effect in Athens in varying degrees of theory and practice for five centuries, neither Athens nor any of the Greek city-states ever achieved the form of a republic, primarily for two reasons. First, Solon introduced the permanent legal basis for a republican government, but not the framework for its establishment and continuation. The execution, observance, and perpetuation of Solon's laws fell naturally and almost automatically into the hands of tyrants, who ruled Athens for long but uncertain periods of time, through changing forms and administrative procedures for their respective governments. And second, the Greek temperament was too volatile, the whole principle of self-government was too exciting — even through a dictator who might have to be overthrown by force — for the Athenians ever to finish the job Solon had begun, and bind themselves as well as their rulers down to the chains of an unchanging constitution. Even the authority of Solon's laws had to be enforced and thus established by successive tyrants like Pisistratus and Cleisthenes, or they might never have amounted to anything more than a passing dream. The ideal was there, of rule according to written laws; that those laws were at times and to some extent honored or observed constituted one huge step towards — and fulfilled one prerequisite of — a true republic.

But the second great step, of a government framework as fixed and permanent as the basic laws were supposed to be, remained for the Romans and other heirs of Greece to achieve. As a consequence Athens — and the other Greek city-states which emulated it — remained politically as democracies, and eventually learned from their own experiences that it was probably the worst of all forms of government.

But out of the democracies of Greece, as tempered somewhat by the laws of Solon, there came as a direct spiritual descendant the first true republic the world has ever known. This was Rome in its earlier centuries, after the monarchy had been replaced. The period is usually given as from 509 B.C. to 49 B.C., Rome having got rid of its kings by the first of those dates, and having turned to the Caesars by the second. But the really important early date is 454 B.C., when the Roman Senate sent a commission to Greece to study and report on the legislation of Solon. The commission, consisting of three men, did its work well. On its return the Roman Assembly chose ten men — and hence called the Decemviri — to rule with supreme power while formulating a new code of laws for Rome. And in 454 B.C. they proposed, and the Assembly adopted, what were called The Twelve Tables. This code, based on Solon's laws, became the written constitution of the Roman Republic.

The Twelve Tables, "amended and supplemented again and again — by legislation, praetorial edicts, senatus consulta, and imperial decrees — remained for nine hundred years the basic law of Rome" (Durant). At least in theory, and always to some extent in practice, even after Julius Caesar had founded the empire which was recognized as an empire from the time of Augustus. What was equally important, even before the adoption of The Twelve Tables, Rome had already established the framework, with firm periodicity for its public servants, of a republic in which those laws could be, and for a while would be, impartially and faithfully administered.

For, as a Roman named Gaius (and otherwise unknown) was to write in about 160 A.D., "all law pertains to persons, to property, and to procedure". And for a satisfactory government you need as much concern about the implementation of those laws, the governmental agencies through which they are to be administered, and the whole political framework within which those laws form the basis of order and of justice, as with the laws themselves which constitute the original statute books. And the Romans contrived and — subject to the exceptions and changes inflicted on the pattern by the ambitions and cantankerous restlessness of human nature — maintained such a framework in actual practice for nearly five hundred years.

The Romans themselves referred to their government as having a "mixed constitution". By this they meant that it had some of the elements of a democracy, some of the elements of an oligarchy, and some of those of an autocracy; but they also meant that the interest of all the various classes of Roman society were taken into consideration by the Roman constitutional government, rather than just the interests of some one class. Already the Romans were familiar with governments which had been founded by, and were responsible to, one class alone: especially "democracies," as of Athens, which at times considered the rights of the proletariat as supreme; and oligarchies, as of Sparta, which were equally biased in favor of the aristocrats. Here again the Roman instinct and experience had led them to one of the fundamental requisites of a true republic.

Checks and Balances
In summary, the Romans were opposed to tyranny in any form; and the feature of government to which they gave the most thought was an elaborate system of checks and balances. In the early centuries of their republic, whenever they added to the total offices and officeholders, as often as not they were merely increasing the diffusion of power and trying to forestall the potential tyranny of one set of governmental agents by the guardianship or watchdog powers of another group. When the Tribunes were set up, for instance, around 350 B.C., their express purpose and duty was to protect the people of Rome against their own government. This was very much as our Bill of Rights was designed by our Founding Fathers for exactly the same purpose. And other changes in the Roman government had similar aims. The result was a civilization and a government which, by the time Carthage was destroyed, had become the wonder of the world, and which remained so in memory until the Nineteenth Century — when its glories began receding in the minds of men, because it was surpassed by those of the rising American Republic.

Now it should bring more than smiles, in fact it should bring some very serious reflections, to Americans, to realize what the most informed and penetrating Romans, of all eras, thought of their early republic.

It is both interesting, and significantly revealing, to find exactly the same arguments going on during the first centuries B.C. and A.D. about the sources of Roman greatness, that swirl around us today with regard to the United States. Cicero spoke of their "mixed constitution" as "the best form of government." Polybius, in the second century, B.C., had spoken of it in exactly the same terms; and, going further, had ascribed Rome's greatness and triumphs to its form of government. Livy, however, during the days of Augustus, wrote of the virtues that had made Rome great, before the Romans had reached the evils of his time, when, as he put it, "we can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies." And those virtues were, he said, "the unity and holiness of family life, the pietas (or reverential attitude) of children, the sacred relation of men with the gods at every step, the sanctity of the solemnly pledged word, the stoic self-control and gravitas (or serious sense of responsibility)." Doesn't that sound familiar?

But while many Romans gave full credit to both the Roman character and their early environment, exactly as we do with regard to American greatness today, the nature and excellence of their early government, and its contribution to the building of Roman greatness, were widely discussed and thoroughly recognized. And the ablest among them knew exactly what they were talking about.

"Democracy," wrote Seneca, "is more cruel than wars or tyrants." "Without checks and balances," Dr. Will Durant summarizes one statement of Cicero, "a monarchy becomes despotism, aristocracy becomes oligarchy, democracy becomes mob rule, chaos, and dictatorship." And he quotes Cicero verbatim about the man usually chosen as leader by an ungoverned populace, as "someone bold and unscrupulous ... who curries favor with the people by giving them other men's property."

If that is not an exact description of the leaders of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and the New Frontier, I don't know where you will find one. What Cicero was bemoaning was the same breakdown of the republic, and of its protection against such demagoguery and increasing "democracy", as we have been experiencing. This breakdown was under exactly the same kind of pressures that have been converting the American Republic into a democracy, the only difference being that in Rome those pressures were not so conspiratorially well organized as they are in America today. Virgil, and many great Romans like him were, as Will Durant says, well aware that "class war, not Caesar, killed the Roman Republic." In about 50 B.C., for instance, Sallust had been charging the Roman Senate with placing property rights above human rights. And we are certain that if Franklin D. Roosevelt had ever heard of Sallust or read one of Sallust's speeches, he would have told somebody to go out and hire this man Sallust for one of his ghost writers at once.

About thirty years ago a man named Harry Atwood, who was one of the first to see clearly what was being done by the demagogues to our form of government, and the tragic significance of the change, wrote a book entitled Back to the Republic. It was an excellent book, except for one shortcoming. Mr. Atwood insisted emphatically, over and over, that ours was the first republic in history; that American greatness was due to our Founding Fathers having given us something entirely new in history, the first republic — which Mr. Atwood described as the "standard government", or "the golden mean", towards which all other governments to the right or the left should gravitate in the future.

Now the truth is that, by merely substituting the name "Rome" for the name "United States", and making similar changes in nomenclature, Mr. Atwood's book could have been written by Virgil or by Seneca, with regard to the conversion of the Roman Republic into a democracy. It is only to the extent we are willing to learn from history that we are able to avoid repeating its horrible mistakes. And while Mr. Atwood did not sufficiently realize this fact, fortunately our Founding Fathers did. For they were men who knew history well and were determined to profit by that knowledge.

Antonyms, Not Synonyms
Also, by the time of the American Revolution and Constitution, the meanings of the words "republic" and "democracy" had been well established and were readily understood. And most of this accepted meaning derived from the Roman and Greek experiences. The two words are not, as most of today's Liberals would have you believe — and as most of them probably believe themselves — parallels in etymology, or history, or meaning. The word "democracy" (in a political rather than a social sense, of course) had always referred to a type of government, as distinguished from monarchy, or autocracy, or oligarchy, or principate. The word "republic", before 1789, had designated the quality and nature of a government, rather than its structure. When Tacitus complained that "it is easier for a republican form of government to be applauded than realized", he was living in an empire under the Caesars and knew it. But he was bemoaning the loss of that adherence to the laws and to the protections of the constitution which made the nation no longer a republic; and not to the fact that it was headed by an emperor.

The word democracy comes from the Greek and means, literally, government by the people. The word "republic" comes from the Latin, res publica, and means literally "the public affairs". The word "commonwealth", as once widely used, and as still used in the official title of my state, "the Commonwealth of Massachusetts", is almost an exact translation and continuation of the original meaning of res publica. And it was only in this sense that the Greeks, such as Plato, used the term that has been translated as "republic." Plato was writing about an imaginary "commonwealth"; and while he certainly had strong ideas about the kind of government this Utopia should have, those ideas were not conveyed nor foreshadowed by his title.

The historical development of the meaning of the word "republic" might be summarized as follows. The Greeks learned that, as Dr. Durant puts it, "man became free when he recognized that he was subject to law." The Romans applied the formerly general term "republic" specifically to that system of government in which both the people and their rulers were subject to law. That meaning was recognized throughout all later history, as when the term was applied, however inappropriately in fact and optimistically in self-deception, to the "Republic of Venice" or to the "Dutch Republic". The meaning was thoroughly understood by our Founding Fathers. As early as 1775 John Adams had pointed out that Aristotle (representing Greek thought), Livy (whom he chose to represent Roman thought), and Harington (a British statesman), all "define a republic to be — a government of laws and not of men." And it was with this full understanding that our constitution-makers proceeded to establish a government which, by its very structure, would require that both the people and their rulers obey certain basic laws — laws which could not be changed without laborious and deliberate changes in the very structure of that government. When our Founding Fathers established a "republic", in the hope, as Benjamin Franklin said, that we could keep it, and when they guaranteed to every state within that "republic" a "republican form" of government, they well knew the significance of the terms they were using. And were doing all in their power to make the feature of government signified by those terms as permanent as possible. They also knew very well indeed the meaning of the word "democracy", and the history of democracies; and they were deliberately doing everything in their power to avoid for their own times, and to prevent for the future, the evils of a democracy.

The Founders Knew the Difference
Let's look at some of the things they said to support and clarify this purpose. On May 31, 1787, Edmund Randolph told his fellow members of the newly-assembled Constitutional Convention that the object for which the delegates had met 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 trials of democracy ..."

read the rest.... (http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/welch.html)

torchbearer
10-21-2012, 09:56 AM
Thanks for the info.
This should be listed under, "Things our school systems no longer teach children"

FrankRep
10-21-2012, 10:00 AM
Ron Paul agrees. FYI.


Ron Paul: Democracy Is Not Freedom
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul233.html

Ron Paul: A Republic, Not a Democracy
http://www.free-press.biz/usa/A-republic.htm

Ron Paul: A Republic, If You Can Keep It
http://www.ronpaulforcongress.com/html/republic.html


United States: Democracy or Republic? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G81wUdBZHrA)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G81wUdBZHrA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G81wUdBZHrA

torchbearer
10-21-2012, 12:38 PM
bump because of the large number of ignorant peeps we have trolling the forum.

FrankRep
10-21-2012, 01:11 PM
Ron Paul: The US is a Republic, NOT a Democracy! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O0dUBgFM30)
Texas Straight Talk - 9/10/2012



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O0dUBgFM30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O0dUBgFM30

LibertyEagle
10-24-2012, 04:33 AM
bump

FrankRep
10-24-2012, 06:32 AM
Ron Paul: Democracy is NOT Freedom - (Ron Paul: U.S. is a Republic!) - 8/27/2012 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDBFA9dmc6E)



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDBFA9dmc6E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDBFA9dmc6E