Our nation has been a democracy for almost 200 years now.
The Founders’ original vision was of a government dominated by social elites, with the Senate and President chosen indirectly, filtered through the state legislatures, which themselves consisted of each state’s elites: wealthy, disinterested men. Only the House would directly represent the People. The whole system was based on the notion that the People would instinctively defer to the educated, wealthy disinterested elite who alone could be trusted with power.
The Electoral College, for example, was supposed to consist of respected individuals chosen by their states to themselves choose the man THEY thought best suited to be President. THAT didn’t last long. The Electoral College functioned as intended only twice, for Washington’s two elections. Thereafter it increasingly became simply a somewhat inefficient method of registering the popular will.
With the election of Jefferson and, especially Jackson, the notion that the government would be run by wealthy disinterested elites went out the window and was replaced by the idea that balanced interested groups competing for power would keep the country on an even keel. The People, possibly correctly, no longer believed in the existence of educated, disinterested elites who could be trusted to run the country.
The last real vestige of a Republic disappeared with the 17th Amendment. The Electoral College can be considered such only if its function in practice is ignored. At the present it’s merely a way of differentially weighting effective individual votes by state.
So, no, I’m sorry to say, we don’t have a Republic rather than a Democracy. Not any more. It disappeared in 1800, 1828, or at the latest in 1913.
Interestingly, much of the history of the last 100 years can be seen as the attempt of a group that views itself as an elite with a right to power to get it back. IOW, a variant on the Founders’ original intention, though a very different type of elite than what they had in mind.
>> “ The whole system was based on the notion that the People would instinctively defer to the educated, wealthy disinterested elite who alone could be trusted with power.” <<
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Sherm, you’ve been peddling your Soft Marxism here for over seven years, and we all know what you are by now.
Our founders were not a “disinterested elite,” but a well educated and morally sound body of very interested and motivated Christians.
We all know how much that word rankles you, but as long as you insert yourself here, you’re going to have to live with it.
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