Democracy, Republics, and Revisionist Tea Party Drivel

I've been involved in a number of discussions recently (many of them on Facebook) about how America is a Republic, not a Democracy. Proponents of this idea all seem to be Conservatives who are either involved in the Tea Party or at least smile on its activities.

The video below got posted on one of my Conservative friend's Facebook pages this morning, and it's a classic example of the sort of compost they promote. We'll look at a transcript after the video.

When Benjamin Franklin existed the Constitutional Convention he was asked by a woman "Sir, what have you given us?" His immediate response was "A republic Ma'am, if you can keep it." Yet most American's today have been persuaded that our governmental system is a democracy, and not a republic. The difference between these two is essential to understanding Americanism and the American system. Many Americans would be surprised to learn that the word "democracy" doesn't appear in the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution. Nor does it appear in any of the Constitutions of the 50 states. The founders did everything that could to keep us from having a democracy.

• James Madison, rightly known as the Father of the Constitution, wrote in essay number 10 of the Federalist Papers, "Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulance and contention; have ever been found incompatable with personal security or the right of property, and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."
• Alexander Hamilton agreed and he stated, "We are a Republican Government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of democracy."
• Sanuel Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, stated, "Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself."

The founders had good reason to look upon democracy with contempt because they knew that the democracies in the early Greek city-states produced some of the wildest excesses of government imaginable. In every case they ended up with mob rule and anarchy, and finally tyrrany under and oligarchy.

The problems in this text are numerous. First, I've never understood why these people want to insist that democracy is incompatable with being a republic. Asking whether we're a democracy or a republic is like asking whether an apple is red or crunchy. Usually, apples are both. The two are not mutually exclusive. And while I hear a lot today about democracy, I don't think I hear more about it than I used to - and I don't hear anything about us not being a republic.

Conservatives seem especially concerned to stress the idea that we are a constitutional republic. And so we are. But how does that, by itself, make us unique? Almost every country in the world today is either a constitutional republic or a constitutional monarchy - from the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (whose current constitution was ratified in 2003) to the Republic of Zimbabwe (whose 1979 Constitution was amended for the 17th time in 2005). In fact, 124 of the world's 203 sovereign states include the word republic in their official names.

Of course, what's in a name. Brunei's name, for example, includes the dubious epitath "Abode of Peace." If a republic is a state where most decisions are made with reference to established laws, rather than the discretion of some monarch or head of state, then North Korea is a republic in little more than name and most of the world's monarchies today have become psuedo-republics, with constitutions and the rule of law being the framework for their society. The term "constitutional republic" may be emotionally packed, but it is largely redundant. Name the three most important republics that aren't governed by a constitution or some similar body of code. You can't.

Were the Founding Fathers opposed to democracy? Should good Americans have contempt for the idea of Democracy (as the video suggests)? This line of drivel seems fairly new to me. Abraham Lincoln surely didn't share it:

Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people” ~ Abraham Lincoln

Neither did Ronald Reagan.

Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. ~ Ronald Reagan

Conservative voices in recent years haven't always embraced the message that democracy is something evil.

Despite what the pundits want us to think, contested primaries aren't civil war, they are democracy at work, and that's beautiful. ~Sarah Palin

But if there's an erosion at home, you know, Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of an oligarchy and if we surrender our democracy to the tyranny of an oligarchy, we've made a terrible mistake. ~Pat Robertson

I would suggest that the Founding Fathers were concerned that America not become more of a Democracy than was necessary, and they were resigned to the idea that if had to be a democracy. The actual quotes in the video are accurate - but the video's director is cherry picking the thoughts of the Founding Fathers.

Jefferson was resigned to democracy as a component of American government.

“All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression.” ~Thomas Jefferson

He wanted to ensure that democracy had its limits and didn't infringe too much on individual liberty. And Madison understood there was little risk of pure democracy ever replacing the republic.

A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person. ~James Madison

America has never had "a small number of citizens." Madison understood that pure democracy was impossible in a country the size of America (or the size of Liechtenstein, for that matter).

As academics, the Founders were very interested in the democracy as a philosophy of government. Constitutions generally address the mechanics of government. I think the most humorous idea in the video above is that somehow James Madison's disdain for democracy was still an influential force when Oklahomans sat down to write their constitution in 1907 and Hawaiians did it in 1949. They excluded the word out of respect for the Founding Fathers? How about we say they excluded the word because it doesn't serve much functional purpose; it's not a technical term, in government. It's an ideal.

The Founding Fathers saw democracy as flawed when they looked at experiments in democracy hundred of years earlier. But that brings up a problem with the Founding Fathers' views of democracy. There simply weren't a huge number of functioning government at that time where democracy could be observed. And the Founding Fathers made the same mistake those early democracies made: they gave every citizen the vote, but greatly restricted access to citizenship so that women and slaves weren't citizens.

I know... You're going to tell me that those were the times. And you'd be right. That's why Jefferson said this in a letter to Madison on September 6, 1789.

"...no society can make a perpetual constitution or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation." ~Thomas Jefferson

America is a great country - not because the Founding Fathers were right about everything (they weren't), or because we're a constitutional republic (there are plenty of people on earth who haven't been helped much by that form of government). There are many reasons America is great - among them, its work ethic (which is still pretty good) and its tolarance for pluralism (which the Tea Party sometimes appears to be trying to erode).

The Founding Fathers did not do everything that could to keep us from having a democracy. In fact, they gave us a democracy - and they framed it in a republic in order to make it function well and last.

Shea the Plumber?

I couldn't resist this brief moment from Thursday night's introductions at the redistricting committee meeting. Republican Shea Cook decided to inject a little humor (I think) and described himself as a part time student at Southwest Virginia Community College who was studying to be a plumber. As in Joe the Plumber? I'm not sure...

In case you don't know, Shea has his own law practice and has been the GOP candidate for Commonwealth's Attorney.



Text: My name is Shea Cook. This is the first time I've had to serve on the redistricting committee and I'm looking forward to serving along with all of you. Like everybody here I'm a lot of things to a lot of different people. I'm a part time student at Southwest Virginia Community College. That's one of the things that I do. I'm learning how to be a plumber, and uh (laughter)... so I'm looking forward to working with you all and help as much as I can the people of Tazewell County.

What to Call Tea Ba… ah, er… Tea People

It was pointed out to the recently that Tea Party Activists don’t appreciate the term “Tea Baggers.” I hadn’t really thought about the terminology much myself. I knew there was some reference to an obscure sexual preference, and I saw it discussed once in an out take from Sex in the City. I don’t really want to discuss it here. Go look for it on Wikipedia or something if you really want to know…

I put the whole thing in the same category as the iPad joke on Mad TV (see the video). Steve Job’s iPad is a few weeks old. The Mad TV clip is three years old. Maybe Jobs wishes there were more women in the room when the iPad was named. But no one’s going to change the name now. And iPad has become such a powerful brand name in such a short period of time that no one really thinks of any feminine products when you talk about the iPad now.

Where did the term Tea Bagger come from? There’s a picture out there in cyberspace from one of the early Tea Party events: a kid holding a sign that says "Tea Bag the Liberal Dems Before They Tea Bag You." What do you call people who “tea bag” people? Duh. Tea Baggers.

And the term stuck. I think some prominent figures in the movement used that term early on, but I can’t find the video. I could be wrong about that…

The movement has been around since February of 2008. And it’s made it into a few dictionaries. According the New Oxford American Dictionary, a Tea Bagger is "a person who protests President Obama’s tax policies and stimulus package, often through local demonstrations known as ‘Tea Party’ protests (in allusion to the Boston Tea Party of 1773)." The word was a finalist in 2009 in that dictionary's contest for "word of the year."

So the term Tea Bagger is probably here to stay. Tea People need to get used to it, and accept the fact that almost no one is thinking of some kind of sexual activity when they use the term (unless a Tea Bagger decides to remind everyone of that old – and now secondary – meaning for the term).

Is it a friendly term? That’s a different question. Obviously, any time you call an individual or a group by a name they don’t really like, that’s not a positive term. And to be perfectly honest, when I use the term Tea Bagger it’s not because of my profound respect for Sarah Palin’s intellectual abilities, or because I support the agenda of the Tea Party in general. I admit, Tea Bagger is a vaguely derisive term. And that’s okay on a blog. Blogs are supposed to have an agenda. Blogs are editorial in nature. I don’t like the Tea Party. You should be able to tell that when you read what I have to say.

That makes the term Tea Bagger inappropriate in a straight new context. So what term do you use on page one of a paper? I’ve seen Tea Partiers and Tea Partyers; I’m not sure who will settle the spelling dispute… Tea Party Activists? That probably also works. I actually like that better.

I occasionally write other places where my political opinion isn’t supposed to impact the content. So I use that term there. When you see the term “Tea Party Activists” in my writing you’ll know I’m trying to appear objective about the movement.

So if I use the term "tea bagger" from time to time, I have the dictionary definition mentioned above in mind, and it's not some weak attempt at a double entendre. I won't make too much of an effort to appear objective (by confining myself to terms like "tea party activists") very often. That would be hypocritical of me…

Trip to a Tea Party...

I took a trip to Abingdon today because I hadn’t been to a tea party in, well, a couple of decades and I heard that they were having one at the Farmers Market Pavilion there, off Cummings Street. If you were there too, you probably remember me. I wore my Obama-Biden T-shirt.

The crowd was small and somewhat sedate, I thought. They were all seated around small tables with linen tablecloths and various types of fine China.

I sat down to sip a little tea with one of the other men there. He asked me why I was there and admitted that my shirt puzzled him. I told him I was reporting on the event for a local blog. He smiled and acted like he liked blogs.

Our table had some smallish, dainty European looking cup and saucer sets. Mine had some hot Earl Grey already in it. My new friend was drinking a blend of Orange Pekoe that the waiter said had ginseng in it. I lifted my cup with my right hand and used my left to turn the saucer over. Theodore Havilland. I had expected something British – perhaps Rathbone or Royal Doulton.

I asked my friend for his name, but he said that he didn’t really want his name to appear in the media in connection with the event. I told him I understood and we agreed that I could just call him Yankee Doodle. We talked for about 10 minutes, and the conversation progressed something as follows…

Me: Mr. Doodle, can you explain to me what’s going on here today?
Doodle: Please, call me Yankee…

That seemed out of place to me in Abingdon, Virginia. But whatever…

Doodle continued: This is a grassroots demonstration - an uprising, if you will, against the unfair tax policies of the new socialistic Obama Administration in Washington.
Me: But, hasn’t he just cut taxes?
Doodle: For some people. But just look at the way he’s spending. It’s clear he’ll eventually have to raise taxes to pay for it. And that’s not fair.

The logic was obviously well developed. I hoped I'd be able to keep up...

Me: So, you’re protesting over something the President hasn’t actually done yet?
Doodle: Oh he’s already spent a lot!
Me: No. I mean the raising taxes part.
Doodle: Oh… He will. You wait and see.

We sat in silence for a moment. A waiter came by and refilled my Earl Grey from a Johnson Brothers teapot painted in a Blue Willow pattern. So there was English china...

Me: So, why a tea party…?
Doodle: We’re following in the footsteps of the early colonials. They threw tea into Boston Harbor to protest the British policy of taxation without representation.
Me: But, aren’t you represented in Washington?
Doodle: Not really.
Me: Where do you live?
Doodle: Just up the road a ways, near Rosedale.
Me: In Russell County?
Doodle: Yes.
Me: Have you tried contacting Rick Boucher? He’s got a pretty good reputation for at least listening to constituents…
Doodle: He doesn’t represent me.
Me: But you live in the Ninth District, in the Congressional District he serves.
Doodle: He may represent, well, people like you. But he’s not my representative.
Me: So, you're saying that you get taxed without representation because you don’t claim Boucher as your Congressman?
Doodle: That’s right.
Me: Have you tried contacting Mark Warner or Jim Webb?
Doodle: Don’t much like them either…
Me: So, you really think this is analogous to the Boston Tea Party? Even though you have a Congressman and two Senators in Washington? And even though no one’s raised your taxes yet?
Doodle: We’ve already said that it’s clear that taxes will be raised. And as long as they’re not my people in Washington, they don’t represent me.
Me: You know they were duly elected an’ all?
Doodle: Perhaps democracy needs an overhaul.

At that point I decided that maybe it would be best to simply focus on the tea (which wasn’t that bad). I was afraid I’d be asked to join a militia if the conversation continued.

We drank politely for a few more moments and spoke of things like the weather and the preparation of our gardens for spring. I thanked my new friend for his time and left, thinking about the politics of it all.

Note: While the ideas of Mr. Doodle are authentic enough, if you really believe I wore my Obama shirt to a tea party on April 15 you vastly over-estimate my courage. You may want to brush up on the uses of political satire. Truth is, I spent much of the day playing Phase 10 (a card game) with my wife and inlaws in a small rural Appalachian town a good seven hours drive north from Abingdon. I did wear my Obama t-shirt, but only to a Wal-mart in Oakland, Maryland.