The United States is one of the oldest Constitutional Republics in existence.
A constitutional republic is a state where the head of state and other officials are elected as representatives of the people, and must govern according to existing constitutional law that limits the government's power over citizens. In a constitutional republic, executive, legislative, and judicial powers are separated into distinct branches and the will of the majority of the population is tempered by protections for individual rights so that no individual or group has absolute power. The fact that a constitution exists that limits the government's power makes the state constitutional. That the head(s) of state and other officials are chosen by election, rather than inheriting their positions, and that their decisions are subject to judicial review makes a state republican.
Constitutional Republics are a deliberate attempt to diminish the threat of mobocracy thereby protecting dissenting individuals and minority groups from the tyranny of the majority by placing theoretical checks on the power of the majority of the population. The power of the majority of the people is checked by limiting that power to electing representatives who, theoretically, are required to govern within limits of overarching constitutional law rather than the popular vote having legislative power itself (even though such representatives are elected by said majority, creating a definitive conflicted interest). The United States of America is one of the oldest constitutional republics in the world.
John Adams defined a constitutional republic as "a government of laws, and not of men." Also, the power of government officials is checked by allowing no single individual to hold executive, legislative and judicial powers. Instead these powers are separated into distinct branches that serve as a check and balance on each other. A constitutional republic is designed so that "no person or group [can] rise to absolute power."
Alexander Tsesis, in The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History says, to him, a constitutional republic means "a representative polity established on fundamental law, each person has the right to pursue and fulfill his or her unobtrusive vision of the good life. In such a society, the common good is the cumulative product of free and equal individuals who pursue meaningful aims."
We're not a democracy, we're not a mobocracy, and the Constitution has been thrashed to within an inch of its life while "we the people" have looked the other way and allowed special interests and social engineers to dominate. What has kept us alive in the past is this: Our representatives are sworn to represent the people by upholding the Constitution. When they fail, our country is weakened. The actions of Congress last week took a giant step away from our origins as a Constitutional Republic, and toward a malignant socialism via nationalization of vast corporate assets, a move which is well beyond the bounds of the Constitution.
In other words, the interests of a few have been allowed to dominate the interests of the people via unfettered and anti-Constitutional legislation. It appears none of our representatives care about the ideological principles the nation was founded on, but instead vie with each other to find loopholes through which to shove their favorite pet pork projects.
Disgusting.
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Now on to the discussion
This comment set me off on an even longer rant:
Documents such as the constitution are, in practice, nothing more than pieces of paper
Sigh.
Okay. Here we go, hang on a sec. My response:
How sad to think the Constitution is viewed as nothing more than a piece of paper.
You can toss the Declaration of Independence into that same trash bin I suppose.
But for those who pledged "their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor" this new form of government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" was everything they were willing to literally die for.
So to translate for the uninformed: It is an ideology, a worldview, a point of view, upon which this country was founded. Of course that means little to some I suppose.
and I suppose the flag is just bits of cloth sewn together.
Ignorance and greed have sold what they fought for rather cheaply, imho. In the end our government will never work again, unless people are (1) willing to dismantle the constitution completely and admit they want and will vote for a new democratic socialist state or (2) go back to where we came from with a simplified and strictly constitutional government, handing power back to the states, though I doubt this could ever happen.
Why? Without the conventional checks and balances in place, we are uniquely vulnerable now, more than ever before in the nation's history. The power of special interests have nearly broken the back of the Constitutional Republic and replaced it with a counterfeit that clearly isn't working for the people. Intelligent people understand that government-subsidized anything equals eventual graft and corruption.
We are in the middle of a crisis, and it isn't the economy that's in danger it's the people's trust and confidence in their government.
Our federal government was not meant to be a money-gathering apparatus, which would be in strict opposition to its original purpose. This is precisely why our original Constitution was simply constructed -- to keep the federal government lean and mean and thus keep greed's fingers out of "we the people's" money, (and therefore limiting the federal government's power as well) while focusing on a very few central tasks and a core ideology stressing individual liberty.
Welfare translates into welfare fraud.
SSDI translates into disability fraud.
Subsidized housing turns into subsidized landlords.
Nationalization of assets is practically the definition of fraud.
etc.
Funny. The more I read by the founders the more I realize many of them, having experienced tyranny in their own lifetimes and having been ardent students of the history of politics and government, never really expected it to last *this* long without perhaps another revolution or two along the way.
Thus the emphasis over and over on individual responsibility and individual liberty. Witness the 1st and 2nd Amendments. With the first we are given the message - Always retain the freedom to shoot off your mouth. With the second: and if that doesn't work be prepared to shoot off your weapons.
What we were given with the Constitution was an opportunity to retain freedoms fought for and won by others, and then to live in a peaceful and orderly society where the *united* states would provide national security, leaving the day to day operations of government to local purview within each state. Those days are long gone having been replaced by an intrusive, dictatorial, confiscatory body having no resemblance to its ancestor. Centralized government means loss of opportunity for local oversight, and increased opportunity for graft and corruption.
What a lot of people don't realize as well is this: once that door of subsidy (in the name of helping the poor) is opened, there are those who will make it their business to purposefully and deliberately target and overwhelm that program beyond its breaking point, on purpose, in order to eventually destroy the infrastructure. It's so easy, it's been done to almost every public institution. Welfare. Education. Housing. Mortgage lending. Investment banking. Even our national security at the borders has been compromised in the interests of supposedly helping the poor.
Helping the poor (disenfranchised, disabled) became the magic door-opener through which organized corruption might enter, enabled and supported by guilt-inducing propagandists and lying idealists who expressed not much more than a lack of trust in the public's motives to help privately, and by which those professing to champion those interests moved into positions of power through emotional, political and litigious blackmail. The public can't be trusted. Therefore their income must be confiscated, and redistributed as the kindly, overseeing "government" sees fit.
To disagree even softly equals hate-speech or bigotry. The gun to the head is wielded by "community activists" chanting slogans, backed by powerful coalitions, supported by useful idiots in the media and on campus, and many are in reality themselves only pawns in a more lucrative game of power mongering.
Is all of this a major shift, from the central core ideology of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? Oh how I wish they knew....
The death knell came through the Progressives on Feb. 3, 1913 when the 16th Amendment was passed. Really it was all downhill from there. October 3rd was merely a giant leap in the same direction.
------------------/rant
and I could have gone on, but I won't. if you care, do your own research into the downfall of the Republic, 'kay?
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