America's Arcane Origins
By Frank Joseph
Political activists of the so-called “religious Right” in the United States never tire of preaching that their country was founded as “a Christian democracy.” But they are wrong on both counts.
When Benjamin Franklin was leaving the first Continental Congress, he was asked by one of many anxious patriots waiting outside the courthouse, “What have you given us?” Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
The difference might seem trivial or even non-existent to narrow-minded persons for whom democracy and dictatorship are the only conceivable forms of government. Yet, the very word, “democracy,” does not occur once in the Bill of Rights, the US Constitution, or any state constitution. It was mentioned often by America’s Founding Fathers, but invariably as a synonym for “mob rule,” and, along with obsolescent monarchy, an evil to be avoided.
Thomas Paine, the American Revolution’s most eloquent voice, summed up his colleagues’ view of democracy when he described it in his world-famous “Rights of Man” as “a species of demagoguery, wherein clever charlatans, making promises as enticing as they are impossible to fulfil, win for themselves unwarranted power and wealth, persuading gullible people to discard their liberties for a secret tyranny masquerading as public freedom.”
Particularly in the writings of Thomas Jefferson, the historic models held up for emulation did not include Greek democracy, but the Venetian and Roman republics. The difference between these examples most important to men like Paine and Jefferson was the concept of citizenship. Anyone born in a democratic state automatically becomes a citizen with all the privileges that entails, including the right to vote. In a republic, one is not born a citizen, but may only become one when he or she reaches adulthood; can demonstrate at least a fundamental grasp of the workings of their government, and is either going to school or gainfully employed.
more...
Political activists of the so-called “religious Right” in the United States never tire of preaching that their country was founded as “a Christian democracy.” But they are wrong on both counts.
When Benjamin Franklin was leaving the first Continental Congress, he was asked by one of many anxious patriots waiting outside the courthouse, “What have you given us?” Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
The difference might seem trivial or even non-existent to narrow-minded persons for whom democracy and dictatorship are the only conceivable forms of government. Yet, the very word, “democracy,” does not occur once in the Bill of Rights, the US Constitution, or any state constitution. It was mentioned often by America’s Founding Fathers, but invariably as a synonym for “mob rule,” and, along with obsolescent monarchy, an evil to be avoided.
Thomas Paine, the American Revolution’s most eloquent voice, summed up his colleagues’ view of democracy when he described it in his world-famous “Rights of Man” as “a species of demagoguery, wherein clever charlatans, making promises as enticing as they are impossible to fulfil, win for themselves unwarranted power and wealth, persuading gullible people to discard their liberties for a secret tyranny masquerading as public freedom.”
Particularly in the writings of Thomas Jefferson, the historic models held up for emulation did not include Greek democracy, but the Venetian and Roman republics. The difference between these examples most important to men like Paine and Jefferson was the concept of citizenship. Anyone born in a democratic state automatically becomes a citizen with all the privileges that entails, including the right to vote. In a republic, one is not born a citizen, but may only become one when he or she reaches adulthood; can demonstrate at least a fundamental grasp of the workings of their government, and is either going to school or gainfully employed.
more...
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