The Form of a Republic

Since the beginning of our nation, leaders have referred top our nation as a Republic.  The Fact that we have utilized democracy as the basis for how we are governed is common knowledge among Americans.

Or is it?

The definition of an American republic was established by James Madison, originally as a representative republic rather than a direct democracy.  A direct democracy is where you and I would vote on everything; we would pass bills, veto laws, etc. This is most commonly seen in some local elections as "balance measures." This form of voting usually has little to no nationwide impacts.

The reason that ballot measures typically will not affect America nationwide, is because our form of government is a representative republic.  The means that you and I will vote for representatives to appropriately vote or establish laws and policies on our behalf. 

Here’s how the original set up of our nation’s republic used to look.

Voters would elect their local representatives.  These state reps would choose federal reps to act on the state’s behalf at the federal level.  If the state’s interests were not being represented accurately, the state would recall the representative or senator in question and replace them with someone who would.

The beauty of this system allowed for little government rule over the states and established a necessary means of regulating interstate/international commerce by establishment of a monetary system and protecting our nation via the military.

However, after the Civil War, the United States Federal government changed its viewpoint to reflect that we were no longer sovereign states overseen by a limited government.  The United States of America changed from being treated as plural – “these united States” – to being a single entity – “the United States.”

With this change, America was now one nation in all aspects.  Our federal government then had acquired the power to reign supreme over the states, and states’ rights became a far second to federal wants.  This directly violates that 10^th amendment.  (Essentially the states were now like counties in a state.)  While I agree with the 13^th Amendment to abolish slavery, when President Lincoln enacted federal policy over the South, he set a precedent – that the federal government has absolute power over the people.

While  modern apologetic and progressive educators will attempt to convince us that the Civil War was only about slavery, it was not.  It was about and only about state’s rights to govern themselves. 

Later in American history, with the ratification of the 17^th Amendment, in 1911 by the Senate and 1912 by the House, the states lost more of their sovereignty.  The 17^th Amendment allowed for direct election of federal congressmen by popular vote.  At times and even now it may seem a good idea that we the people are to be choosing our legislators.

There are two major problems in this reasoning.

1.       The masses, the people of our nation, have become weak minded, slack moral, ill-educated fools.  Most Americans don’t care or care to know about their rights, politics, or their politicians.  9/10 people that I’ve asked (out of 113) have never even read the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence.  This is scary.  If we don’t know what the issues are or don’t care, direct elections can be very dangerous, as we can currently see.

2.       The federal government usurps the power from the states and helps themselves to your money, your freedoms and your life.  Take Obama-care for instance, that bill has dozens of new taxes that strips you of your hard-earned money; it demands we submit our health and at times our very lives to the will of some unseen bureaucrat who knows where.  The federal legislators are not even required to follow these laws; they are exempt from Obama-care.  Many federal legislators have been proposing and pushing for submitting our nation to the rule of the United Nations.  This means that everything we know is in jeopardy.  Every freedom – speech, religion, even down to how we teach our children becomes dictated to us by the United Nations.

These examples are only a few to give you an idea about the gravity of the situation.  This is what the popularity contest and Facebooking and Twittering and basically “prom king and queen” type politics has gotten us via the popular vote. 

I bring this not to scare you, but you should be.  I don’t want you to hate our nation, but hate those who lack integrity.  In the upcoming elections you will see ads against conservatives who want to, or have the personal convictions that, our nation needs to be restored to a states’ rights nation.  The Leftists say that these candidates want to strip you of your right to vote.  It is definitely not that.  There is concern for people who vote based off of their Facebook account or Twitter, or because it’s the cool person, rather than voting based off the issues. 

Our rights have been threatened, but not because of conservatives looking for smaller government.  They have been threatened by the teenie-boppers and peer pressure.  Our rights have been threatened by our own stupidity and ignorance.