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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
CONGRESS ACTION: December 24, 2000
=================
A REPUBLIC, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT: Throughout Gore's fight to overturn the
election, we repeatedly heard from people who should know better (lawyers,
politicians, law professors and students), and from people whose ignorance is
already manifest (media analysts), that the election contest vindicated our
democracy; that was how our system of democracy should settle political
disputes; and that in a democracy, the person who wins the majority of the
popular votes in the country should be the president. There is just one
problem -- We do not live in a Democracy.
As shocking as that news may be to the majority of the American public
"educated" in the public school system (and often in private schools as
well), as shocking as it may be to media air-heads in love with democrats, as
shocking as it may be to left-wing partisans to whom "republic" sounds too
much like the hated name "republican", the Founders of this country created,
and our Constitution established, a Republic, not a Democracy. What's the
difference?
"...in a democracy the people meet and exercise the government in person; in
a republic they assemble and administer it by their representatives and
agents." -- James Madison (Federalist # 14)
There is a story, probably apocryphal, of Ben Franklin being asked as he left
the Constitutional Convention in 1787, "Well, Mr. Franklin, what have you
given us?" Franklin is said to have replied, "A Republic, if you can keep
it." Keeping it is the struggle we now face. Why a Republic and not a
Democracy? The Founders wrestled with balancing a central government powerful
enough to do what was deemed necessary, yet not so powerful that it would
oppress individual rights. But the Founders also knew that it was essential
to guard against what they thought of as the tyranny of the majority. And
they knew, from their studies of history, that democracies had substantial
problems in both areas.
" ...democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have
even been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of
property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been
violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this
species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to
a perfect equality in their political rights, they would at the same time be
perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and
their passions." -- James Madison (Federalist # 10)
"It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society
against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society
against the injustice of the other part. . In a society under the forms of
which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy
may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker
individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger.". -- James
Madison (Federalist # 51).
Under democracies and republics, majority rules, and those forms of
government simply reflect and enforce the will of the majority. Unless there
is a Constitution that limits the conduct of government. The Constitution
tells the government, regardless of what the majority decides, whether it can
or cannot use its power to enforce that decision. Thus we have, not a
democracy, not just a representative republic, but a Constitutional Republic.
Madison spoke of a method to restrain an oppressive majority by creating a
"will in the community independent of the majority". He came to believe in
the efficacy of a bill of rights (after initially opposing it as a useless
"parchment barrier"), not only because a bill of rights would restrain
government, but also because the national act of ratifying a set of
principles acceptable to virtually everyone would give those principles the
imprimatur of the will of the whole community -- would, in addition to
restraining government, create a standard of public conduct. The Constitution
and the Bill of Rights were created not only to protect individual liberties
against government oppression, but also to protect the liberties of
individuals against oppression by their fellow citizens as imposed by the
government. But many of those protections no longer exist. Many of our
elected representatives are committed to ending the Constitutional Republic
they swore to uphold, and many of our fellow citizens have the same goal.
Those are the people who believe it is right and proper -- even noble -- to
use the force of government to impose their will, their vision, upon their
fellow citizens. They wildly cheer whenever some big-government leftist
proposes yet another federal program or expansion of government power, yet
another federal entitlement, yet another scheme to "give us" something for
nothing.
In the privacy of their own thoughts, most of those people (except for the
truly ignorant) don't really believe they can have something for nothing,
most understand that their grandiose schemes of social reorganization cannot
be achieved without a substantial destruction of individual liberty. But they
will never admit out loud that destroying the Constitution is their real
goal. Yet they continue to support actions that undermine the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights; they fight to preserve social welfare programs using
Marxist class warfare language more suited to the 19th century than to the
21st century; and they perpetuate a dysfunctional educational system that
raises generations of victims totally oblivious to the nature and purpose of
the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The dependent and the ignorant will
soon comprise a majority of our fellow citizens, if they don't already.
Citizens who are dependent and ignorant easily succumb to pleasant-sounding
rhetoric and demagoguery that will, in the end, destroy their own liberty.
The assault on the Constitution continued in the past election. Al Gore
allegedly won more popular votes (part of the unquestioned "conventional
wisdom", endlessly repeated by the media and democrats hoping that if they
say it often enough, people will simply believe it without demanding to see
the evidence) yet lost the election. Because of that outcome, there are calls
to eliminate another one of the Constitutional provisions of representative
government, the Electoral College. Beside novice Senator Hillary, there is a
group called "Vote With America" (formerly "Citizens for True Democracy"),
seeking to end the Electoral College. VWA also posted the names of Electors,
and advice on how to contact them and get them to change their votes. VWA
says that it ".understands that the US is a republic, not a democracy. In
fact, that is exactly our point -- we think that America should become a
democracy. This would require a Constitutional amendment to replace the
Electoral College with national direct presidential elections."
Thinking themselves so much smarter than the men who founded this nation, VWA
pontificates, "Some people fear that making America a true democracy by
establishing direct presidential elections would lead to 'mob rule'. Some of
the Framers shared this concern when they were designing the US government.
This was one of the two main reasons for establishing the Electoral College:
the Framers simply did not trust people to pick their own leaders (the
Electoral College's other original purpose was to give smaller states more
power). For the same reason the Constitution said that US Senators would be
selected by state legislatures, not by direct election (the 17th Amendment,
passed in 1913, changed this)." The 17th Amendment was one of the changes
that severely unbalanced the Constitutional system of checks and balances and
allowed the massive expansion of the federal government that we have seen in
this century, with the consequent loss of individual liberty and
accountability that followed. Without the Electoral College we would not have
mob rule, but what might be called "urban rule". Bush won the election with
about 50 million votes. Without the Electoral College, the cities of New
York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and 2 or 3 more urban centers alone will
pick the next president. The interests of the rest of the country will be
irrelevant. But that's majority rule, so that makes it fair, right? If you
don't think so, you begin to understand why we have a Constitutional
Republic, not a democracy.
Vote With America also advocates "proportional representation", so that,
according to their website, "people can have real choices and make a real
difference". What is proportional representation? Far from expanding people's
choices, proportional representation overrules free choices that conflict
with what Thomas Sowell calls "The Vision of the Anointed" -- the
predetermined "proper" outcomes. During the election contest, Gore's minions
shouted -- one person, one vote; and every vote should count. Except that
Gore wanted recounts of undervotes only in selected (Gore supporting) black
precincts in Miami-Dade County, and wanted to ignore the undervotes from the
(Bush supporting) Cuban precincts in the same county. Gore wanted some votes
to count more than others. So it is with proportional representation. The
concept of proportional representation first made its way from the law
journals into the public consciousness with Lani Guinier. In 1993, Guinier
was Clinton's nominee for head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice
Department. Her writings about the expansion of government-enforced racial
quotas was one reason her nomination was withdrawn, proportional
representation was another. Proportional representation, wrote Guinier, is
supposed to assure that "racial minorities in all states are represented
fairly in the legislatures"; but it was unclear how that was to be
accomplished without destroying the free choice of voters. For example, by
the 1990 census, the state of Mississippi had 36% black population. But out
of 5 Representatives and 2 Senators, Mississippi has only one black
representative in the Congress. Proportional representation would require at
least two. So one of the voters' elected representatives would simply have to
be replaced. And not just by any black, mind you. Oklahoma had 7% black
population and 8 members in Congress, which would require 0.56 black members.
Presumably this would be rounded up to one. Well, Oklahoma has J.C. Watts,
but Watts is a republican. To Guinier, black representatives are not just
physically black, but must also be "authentic blacks", defined as "a cultural
and psychological view of group solidarity". Since this last election saw 90%
of blacks voting for Gore, conservative blacks don't represent this "group
solidarity", and so would be excluded. Free choice of the voters? Forget it.
Proportional representation would also require more than majority votes on
legislation, giving a small number of legislators veto power. Thus would
Guinier create a system "by which we, the people, not they -- the court or
the unrepresentative legislature -- rule" (emphasis added). How would "we,
the people" govern the nation without legislatures? Democracy, where we all
shout at once? Mob rule? More likely, proportional representation would
require a wholesale restructuring of our nation, in which representatives and
legislation would be filtered through some sort of racial and ideological
tribunal. Perhaps Vote With America and Guinier would advise hiring some
retreads from South Africa's apartheid government to help establish such a
system.
The left is playing a dangerous game. Since they are currently in charge of
the education system, the media, and of many of the institutions of society,
they believe the need will never arise to rely on the Constitution and Bill
of Rights for their own protection, for the preservation of their own
individual liberty. Yet despite the years of expanding government,
educational indoctrination, and media propaganda, the left has now
experienced total electoral defeat. It was to prevent such an outcome that we
witnessed a democrat campaign filled with lies, attacks, and fear-mongering.
Having come to believe their own propaganda, they are afraid that
conservatives really will open a campaign of oppression against them. And
since they have so effectively undermined the Constitution and the Bill of
Rights all these years, they fear that those bulwarks of protection are no
longer available to defend their own individual liberty. They fear oppression
by the very tyranny of the majority that they have tried so hard to create,
to oppress others.
FOR MORE INFORMATION.
========================
The Federalist (Federalist Papers):
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/fed/fedpapers.html
http://www.mcs.net/~knautzr/fed/fedpaper.html
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/fed/fedpaper.txt
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mr. Kim Weissman
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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