The Great Democracy Lie

We started as a republic, but we are devolving into a democracy where the factious nature of Group Rights is leading to a civil war.  People conflate our republic with a democracy because many top positions are elected.  The Constitution did not, however, provide for the direct election of any office except for the House of Representatives. The House was designed to be based on population, hence imposing an intervening body like an electoral college would be against its nature.  Its popular sentiments, however, were constrained by the Senate, whose members were not directly elected. 

Mankind has always struggled between a group’s having enough power to provide for the wellbeing of each member and that power becoming harmful to individual liberties.  The Constitutional Convention decided that the form of government which best constrained the destructive use of power against citizens, while maximizing the power of cooperation, was a republic. As Federalist Paper 10 explained, democracies fall prey to the passions of the majority to the detriment of everyone else.  

The Motive to Create a Republic 

The big difference between our republic and a democracy is that the purpose of a republic is to protect the people from the concentration of power in the hands of a few really bad people, while the natural tendency of a democracy is to concentrate power in the hands of a few really bad people.  For the framers, the government’s legitimacy required not only that the citizens vote, but also legitimacy required the protection of individual inalienable rights.  The tyranny of the majority was as odious as the rule of a tyrant. 

The framers intentionally chose a republic where power was not wielded by the majority.  While people had the right to vote, it was greatly limited. In reality, early America was a type of oligarchy in that a few wealthy men held power, but the Constitution was designed to bring into effect over time the full meaning of the Declaration of Independence that each person had inalienable rights. 

The government which was best designed to bring about emancipation of the slaves and the expansion of the right to vote was a nation where each person’s inalienable rights were respected. A democracy was rejected as it would eventually deteriorate into a mobocracy.  In contrast, the Republic relies on a multitude of power centers and procedures for the purpose of protecting individual inalienable rights. 

The best way to protect the individual is to prevent the concentration of power by balancing power against power.  That is the purpose of the three branches of government.  The fear of a democracy was so great that the people did not get to directly elect anyone, except to the House of Representatives.  Nonetheless, experience showed that madmen get into positions of power.  Thus, the power of impeachment was designed to operate independent of the popular vote.  We gained the concept of impeachment from Great Britain where its use waxed and waned over the centuries since 1476 when it first arose. 

Impeachment is not of divine origin with immutable rules.  Impeachment is man’s attempt to remove a dangerous official without waiting for an election.  Under our Constitution, the first phase is the gathering of evidence on the House and the writing of articles of impeachment (an indictment) and the second part is a trial in the Senate, which may remove the President if two-thirds vote to convict.  Because removing a President is not likely to occur when the President has ardent supporters, publicly voting to remove can be a perilous act for a Senator. 

Only President Nixon was removed via the impeachment process but it played out in a unique yet constitutional fashion.  After sufficient damning evidence had been gathered, the leaders of both parties obtained the signed commitments of enough Senators to guarantee that the President Nixon would be removed.  Faced with that fact, Nixon resign.  Thus, the actual removal is called Nixonization.  When the President resigns, the threat of violence is removed. 

Nixonization carries out the Constitutional mandate to remove a President, who has exceeded the accepted limits of decency and has abused his power so that his staying in office endangers the national welfare.  As the law professors told the House Judiciary Committee in December 2019, The House did not have overwhelming evidence since the GOP leaders were not yet ready to participate in Nixonization.  If they will not Nixonize Trump during the House’s evidence gathering phase, then the Senate will definitely not vote to remove him.  (Nixonization also applies to the 25^th Amendment.) 

The Dems and the GOP knew that the House’s premature halting of evidence gathering guaranteed Trump’s acquittal in the Senate.  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi stopped the presentation of witnesses like to Col. Alexander Vindman for one reason – to abort the growing anti-Trump public opinion before a critical mass supported a bipartisan Nixonization.  A December 2019 Nixonization would give the GOP time before the November 2020 elections to recoup and to gain the accolades of saving the nation from a madman. 

By thwarting Nixonization, Pelosi made the November 2020 elections all important.  The voters have been reduced to warring factions, thriving on their passions.  For decades Pelosi had promoted her anti-White Identity Politics agenda knowing that it would provoke a violent backlash among the far-right extremists.  Her hope was that the combination of Trumpism and White Supremacy would result in a huge Democratic win in the November elections. 

The Nation Now Faces a Nightmare. 

No matter who wins in November 2020, peace will not prevail.  Trump has already declared that he will not leave. Since he will be commander-in-chief until January 20, 2021, the military can do nothing.  If Trump’s militias rampage through the streets, Trump will not call out the US military to stop them. 

If Trumps wins the election, he can put down any feeble left-wing insurrection as he will still be commander-in-chief.  Thereafter, he will rule by fiat. Trump need not dissolve Congress; he will simply do what he wants with no regard for anything except his whims. 

Because Pelosi Dems trashed the Republic and individual inalienable rights along with our constitutional processes in favor of throwing everything onto the democratic process of voting, we’ll soon learn why the founding fathers feared a democracy.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams’ views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.)

-cw