Chances are that if you ask someone on the street what kind of government we have, they will either shrug their shoulders or say that we have a Democracy. Our Founders knew and appreciated the differences between a Constitutional Republic and a Democracy. Thanks to our deficient Civics curriculum in government-run schools, very few of our soon-to-be-voting-citizens will even know that a difference exits. Unfortunately, our people cannot defend and preserve what they do not understand. Therefore, the future of our Constitutional Republic is slowly disintegrating into a Democracy.

Republic and democracy are not the same

The confusion between the two forms of government is understandable. They have common principles that empower common folk over monarchs. However, the overlooked differences between them are substantial. In a Democracy, the mob rules and the despotism of the majority quickly infringes upon the rights of the minority. This form of despotism usually is first exposed in the financial aspects of life. Alexander Tyltler wrote in 1787: “A democracy is always temporary in nature;it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury,with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship…” Benjamin Franklin also understood the fragility of a Republic from a financial perspective. He said: “When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.” Jefferson and other Founders also made similar statements.

The Bible tells us that the love of money is the root of all evil. In America today that love of money is subtly hidden from the public psyche and masquerades itself as entitlements due to segments of the population that demand what they have not earned from those that have. In this case is it envy, or as the Bible calls it “covetousness,” which is deceptively portrayed as compassion. If challenged by clear-thinking citizens, the entitlement mentality is defended as a charitable safety net that wage earners are morally bound to provide for those less fortunate. It perverts the biblical principle of charity by circumventing the requirement of accountability through government disbursements and alleviating the guilt of many of the wealthy by placing the burden of the indigent on government’s shoulders and removing it from theirs. It is this very perversion that has enabled the ambitious to prey upon both the compassion and greed of their constituents in order to ensure their financial gain through the protection of their status. They have proven that “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul,” as George Bernard Shaw observed. Both the covetous and the ambitious join together to form a tyrannical ownership of society that strips the individual of their voice if they happen to be part of the bullied wage earners that will soon join the ranks of the minority. This is inevitable path chosen by a full-fledged Democracy.

On the other hand, in a Republican government all power is vested in the people with protective restrictions against despotism existing in their Rule of Law – or Constitution. This power is exercised and expressed through the election of representatives by those given the privilege to vote under the rules of government. It is important to understand that the privilege to vote should be well-defined in order to protect the integrity of the Republic. Should this privilege be abused or diluted, the threat of devolving into a democracy increases exponentially with the number of illegitimate voters that by their very nature do not respect the rules. And therein lies another nail that is being hammered into the coffin of our Republic.

Extra measures in the Constitution

Our Founders took the protection of the minority further by creating a two-house Congress. Through the creation of the House of Representatives they ensured that the people’s representatives would be directly accountable and accessible to them. Through the creation of the Senate, they did their best to ensure that the smaller states would not become a minority overpowered by the number of representatives of the larger states. In essence, they did this to protect the rights of the minority from what they considered to be the potentially “Omnipotent Majority.” They also identified the pitfalls of democracy as being the “excesses of democracy” and despotic, additionally understanding that the threat of mob rule would increase in a population dominated by ignorant voters desiring the unattainable but being clueless about its unattainability. The lexrex website expressed it best when they wrote: “The American philosophy and system of government thus bar equally the “snob-rule” of a governing Elite and the “mob-rule” of an Omnipotent Majority. This is designed, above all else, to preclude the existence in America of any governmental power capable of being misused so as to violate The Individual’s rights–to endanger the people’s liberties.”

Aiding the perversion of our Republic is the two-party system that has controlled our selection of candidates through cabalist conventions meant to secure the cabalists’ power base over the wishes of the our citizens. We are frequently convinced that voting for a third party candidate will ensure the election of a more undesirable candidate. And so, we get out the old Election Day clothespin for our noses to diminish the smell of the choices that have been forced upon us and dutifully cast our vote for the lesser of the two evils. While the argument for doing so is that we don’t want the greater of the two evils is valid, it is also repugnant. The truth of the matter is that we have allowed ourselves to be controlled by elitists out of fear, as well as false choices. That wasn’t the case back in 1860, when the newly emerging Republican Party defeated the Whigs and the Free Soil Democrats. At that time, citizens from all walks of life – from religious voters, all ranks of businessmen, professionals, factory workers and even those we now call African-Americans – joined together to break the political cabals and their abuses of government power. Americans united then to demand representation that they believed bucked the traditional system that had supported ideas and policies that were offensive and just plain wrong (such as slavery). They recognized and stood against the despotism of the party elites by demanding representation that was anti-establishment.

Parties are the bane of the republic

Today the bullying by the media that whips us into good little party drones is harder to overcome. America collectively believes that our choices are the greater or the lesser of two evils. As long as we are willing to submit to such bullying that presents false choices, that will remain our choice. But of course we must understand that standing against these bullies will be suicidal if we don’t unite. So that remains the question: will America unite to stand against the two-party system and choose a candidate that best represents them or will we continue to submit our country to the tyranny of the majority as well as the tyranny of the cabalists? Should we do so, Republicanism is dead. We no longer can claim that our representatives are beholding to us. They will rightfully belong to the establishment – more properly called the “cabal.”

Unfortunately, governments – even Republics – will always be as corrupt as those governing. For America this means that our once enviable Constitutional Republic is being perverted into a Democracy by the greedy and the overly ambitious. They have either forgotten or have chosen to ignore the very principle that our Constitutional Republic was founded upon, that governments are instituted to secure our inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They have also forgotten that they govern by our consent, and not the consent of special interests or those who write large donation checks. Their self-imposed forgetfulness has morphed them into a deceptive oligarchy empowered by the greed of the majority and their own power-crazed ambitions. If America is to survive the onslaught of the majority’s mob-rule and the cabalists, she must go back to her roots and purge the halls of Congress and the Executive branch of all the manure pretending to be gold. Fools’ gold can only deceive fools, so wise American voters can prevail and start shoveling out what fools revere. Then and only then, can the sweet smell of a righteous Republic replace the stench of a cleverly-cloaked oligarchy. May God have mercy on America and may He bless us with wisdom and a desire to restore what we so carelessly lost to sweet-talking fools. And may He also bless us with the strength and the conviction we need to overcome and rebuild.

Reprinted from The Daily Rant, copyright 2016 Mychal Massie. Used by permission.