January 4, 2024, headline in The New Yorker: Joe Biden Makes Saving Democracy the Center of His Campaign
Article IV, Section 4 stipulates, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…”
Knowledgeable Americans describe a democracy as “mob rule.”
While the founding documents do not mention ‘democracy,’ the Founders expressed great disdain for it.
- John Adams: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
- Benjamin Rush: “A simple democracy is the devil’s own government.”
- James Madison: “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever 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.”
At the conclusion of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked what form our new government would be. He answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
How can we keep it a republic? We are responsible for reading and studying the founding documents and American history and applying our knowledge to preserve our republican form of government.
Rockwall County Republican Men’s Club
John N. White 