Upon his exit from the Constitutional Convention of 1787, anxious citizens were gathered outside Liberty Hall to learn what had transpired in the proceedings. A Mrs. Powell of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin answered without hesitation, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Franklin did not reply, “A democracy, if you can keep it.” Political representation secured by American national sovereignty was the primary philosophical basis of the Declaration of Independence written by Franklin’s contemporary Thomas Jefferson. Being shut out of representation in the British legislature, yet being subject to its whims and laws while having no representative say in the making of British law that regulated them, the American Colonists therefore moved to separate themselves through force from the British. When freedom was won by war and America’s national sovereignty was firmly established, colonial leaders set their minds to devise forms to deepen and strengthen the shallow basis that they knew simple democracy to be as a stand alone form of governance.
The colonial leaders knew full well that the whims of men and their potential liberty infringing votes were no basis for a successful governmental structure protective of the personal freedoms and general liberties that they sought to secure for United States citizens. They knew that influential citizens might at any later time convince a majority of their fellow citizens to vote for even the most egregious proposals and to enact the most oppressive laws by simply gathering a majority of citizens to temporarily agree, and thus to enact long enduring laws that would flagrantly strip personal freedoms—freedoms which the colonial leaders sought to enshrine in perpetuity. They knew that simple democracy was too reliant on present and transitory passions as compared to enduring eternal principles. Franklin commented on another occasion, “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” Franklin, Jefferson, and the other American founders knew that in order to have a republic that not only secured simple political representation, but also secured broad and permanent personal rights and freedoms for its citizens, a deeper and more sophisticated governmental structure was needed. Franklin’s comment spelled out the need for a buttress to exist that could thwart the whims of a simply democratic and therefore potentially oppressive government. The buttress in that particular case was the Constitutional protection securing the God given right to arm oneself sufficiently to prevent the stripping of personal freedoms and prevention of one’s own personal legal and political subjugation. The vulnerable lamb now not only had a vote, but a Constitutionally protected right to bear equalizing arms sufficient to prevent its own oppression by fellow citizens who might gather a majority of their fellow citizens to agree to its oppression.
The right to carry a defensive weapon to protect oneself from tyranny was certainly the seminal Constitutional right enshrined by our Founders, one secured to defend against the dangers of a strict American democracy. This though was only one of numerous rights they intelligently enshrined in our Constitution in order to fashion a form of governance permanently protective of human freedoms and happiness, while also guaranteeing that each citizen shared in the decisions of self government. The right to speak freely, and to associate with those one saw fit to associate with, were recognized also as God given rights not to be abridged. The right to protect one’s personal papers and communications from their intrusive inspection and confiscation by government authorities was protected by our Constitution. The right to practice one’s religion was also secured, along with other specified constitutional rights.
The hard left in America today is enamored with a political form called Democratic Socialism. It is in effect simply socialism instituted by the agreement of the majority through democratic means. (Communism’s founders Marx and Engels stated that socialism was simply the waypoint between capitalism and communism, the world’s greatest killer in the last century) These purely democratic means towards instituting socialism entail gaining democratic hegemony through mass propaganda programs, suppressing countervailing positions, instituting aggressive voter fraud, propagandizing the general public to accept the purported advantages of the socialist form of government, then effectively instituting it through the popular vote. In order to accomplish this goal, they must indeed degrade the primacy of the Constitution and its protective personal freedoms, and enshrine above it the notion of strict democracy. Leftists in America therefore constantly work to degrade the protections enshrined in the Constitution—speech, assembly, firearm ownership, freedom of worship, etc. and alternatively strive to promote the primacy of strict democracy as a principle—therefore whatever the current crop of in-power politicians see as the new rules would then be the new rules, whether or not they align with our original Constitution and its protection of personal rights or not. If they can convince the populace to vote for Democratic Party policies that strip rights and personal freedoms from the people, their desired form of authoritarian government can then be democratically instituted.
This is the essence of Democratic Socialism, and it must be resisted on all fronts. It’s promoters and their subversive system need to be eventually, if ultimately necessary, faced with overwhelming force in order to block their corrosive philosophies from permanently taking hold in America.
American Renewal