| OCR Text |
Show economy and encouraged the greatest great-est growth of individual freedom, happiness, prosperity, and industrial indus-trial progress ever known. But -we are faced with repeated attempts to destroy it. On the 17th of September, 1787 Benjamin Franklin was asked by a colonist, as he stepped from the final session of four months of deliberation: "What kind of government gov-ernment to have?" He replied: "A republic, if you can keep it." CAN WE? The American Republic CanVe Keep It? MERLE RICH Millions of people today use the word "democracy" with different meanings in mind. Originally the word comes from the Greek. It meant rule by the people direct-not through representatives. repre-sentatives. Contrary to present day popular pop-ular understand- ing, our Constitution Constit-ution did not establish es-tablish a democracy. democ-racy. It established a CONSTITUTIONAL CONST-ITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, structurally struct-urally unique, and differing radically rad-ically from all earlier republics. Some call it a "democratic re-public."This re-public."This is false and intentionally inten-tionally misleading. The words "democratic" and "democracy" do not appear in the Constitution or in any of the Constitutional Amendments. On the other hand, the Constitution specifically provides pro-vides that every state in the Federal Fed-eral Union, shall have a republican republic-an form of government. Where then did this word "democracy" "dem-ocracy" spring from in our modern mod-ern application to this form of government? The word was. rarely used in the United States prior to World War I. It was then launched as a synonym for Americanism by Woodrow Wilson when he set sail to "make the world safe for democracy." de-mocracy." But once the "democracy "dem-ocracy foot" got in the door new forces that were rising to power gave it new purpose and meaning by attaching it to descriptive phrases relating to the Republic. Then the Roosevelt -Frankfurter "New Deal" put it under full sail. We have drifted a long way from Constitutional days. Then the establishment of a democracy was never debated -not in the Constitutional Constit-utional Convention nor in any of the state assemblies. The major issue was always states rights and the amount of federal power to be granted by the states. The establishment es-tablishment of any kind of democracy dem-ocracy was never seriously considered. con-sidered. The almost unanimous attitude was reflected by James Madison, who pointed out that democracies de-mocracies had ever been turbulent turbul-ent in their histories and shortlived. short-lived. The Founding Fathers were keen students of political science. They had before them the sad history his-tory of ancient Greece and Rome. They had before them nearly two centuries fo experimentation with almost every type of government by the American Colonies. Their studies showed that only some form of republic offered chances for success. And so a Constitution was adopted ad-opted providing an entirely new type of republic. It was wholly distinct structurally and philosophically philos-ophically from any type or variety of democracy. It was based on the fundamental principle that the rights of the individual are the gift of God; not of any man-made power. For 170 years it has permitted per-mitted the development of a free |
