It's Not Democracy

I am reminded today of a fundamental misunderstanding that seems to be growing rather than being debunked.

Our nation is not a democracy.

Anyone with a decent grasp of our history understands this. Our founders worked hard to make sure that that we did not wind up with a democracy. They were students of history, and they read about Plato and the experience of the Greeks with democracy. They wrote about the "tyranny of the majority", not the supposed "virtues" of democracy. They gave us, in Ben Franklin's famous words "... a republic, if you can keep it".

So it is good to see editorials from people like George Will connecting these principles, and articulating the dangers in confusing our basic principles.

It is equally disturbing to see political fashion pressing to teach our children a false history. For reasons I do not understand, the fashion in education is to misread our history and call us a democracy; to deliberately make the mistake that George Will calls out so well and label the "tyranny of the majority" as a goal rather than a problem. "Might (majority) makes right" replaces "Rule of Law"

Ronald Reagan said it well:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
I'm with Reagan. Let's tell our children the truth.

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