-It occurred to me that when I announce that I am a Republican, that I am actually announcing, in addition to my political position (which might be termed "Conservative" in the British Commonwealth), I am also announcing my belief in a fundamental theory of governance. To be quite frank, looking at such connections is thinking into it far too deeply for most people, but it's amusing nonetheless. In fact, of you're willing to idealize slightly, the names of the Democratic and Republican parties are in fact, more than mere names-they actually show each group's fundamental philosophy of governance.

-We as Americans are familiar with "democracy" and democrats in the classical sense. Thanks to it's emphasis in basic American History courses, it's almost a product of rote memory to know that "democracy" is derived from Greek roots, the word ultimately meaning "rule of the people." We are taught that our government is a democracy, and that most of the governments of the western world are democracies, and that democracies are good things.

-Rubbish.

-I'll grant you that the traditional alternatives to democracy are no more desirable. The mention of anarchy generally only seems to conjure images of chaos, disarray, and stab-happy, bomb-throwing Victorians. Then there are the various flavors of autocracy that have long poisoned much of the East and have long since leaked into Africa, Russia and some corners of Europe-whether it is driven by a manic (maniac?) personality (as we often see in Africa), being in the nationalist sentiment (Russia under Vladimir Putin comes to mind), dangerously infused with religion (officially in Iran and unofficially throughout much of the Arab world and the outer reaches of the Greater Iran plateau), or in it's most dangerous forms, fascism and communism. Communism, for all the ignorant advocacy afforded to it by the learned idiots in the West, has never been anything but dictatorship by committee. Fascism occasionally follows this route, sometimes it focuses on a single strongman (Mussolini being the most notable example), but it generally seeks the same ends as the communists. Nazism takes the fascist approach and infuses it with ethnocentrism and virulent anti-semitism (as was demonstrated on an appalling scale the one time it was tried out).

-So, how does any of this make democracy bad? Because democracy is, at the base of it, nothing more than mob rule. The foundation of the democracy is the vote, and with it the concept of majority rule. The ancient Greek democracies themselves would enact something if it achieved a majority. For example, if the voting members desired to exile a prominent fellow citizen, whatever the reason, they could do so if enough votes were cast (this practice, as it happens, also gave us the word ostracize, from the name for the voting tokens used for exactly such a measure). Once the majority had decided on it, that was that. You left the city-state for the allotted period of time and you were killed if you refused to obey or returned early-no questions asked. And this was an ordinary and civil action. Imagine, now, if the United States were the democracy many either purport or wish us to be. All decisions are determined by a direct simple majority vote of the people. Sounds great at first, but imagine what happens when important or controversial measures come up to bat. Do you think we as a country would spend money wisely if we were a democracy? (not that we do right now) Do you think measures such as the Civil Rights Act or the 24th Amendment would have succeeded in such an environment?

-Which takes us to the Republic and republicanism. The term seems to have entered public knowledge first as the title of a work of the Greek philosopher Plato, but the Romans were the first to properly develop the concept. The Roman Republic consisted of two branches of legislature that held ultimate political power over the realm-one representing the plebs, or common freedmen of the republic, ands one consisting of the patricians, or the nobility. In the centuries following the collapse of both the republic and the succeeding empire, this model would influence the construction and style of the English Parliament (the names of Parliament's houses continue to reflect this-the upper House of Lords and the lower House of Commons).

-It also had a very profound impact on our own nation in it's youngest days. The Founding Fathers were motivated by many commonly-shared beliefs-deep faith in God, support for Lockean theories of natural rights, and Scottish economic theory (especially that developed by Adam Smith), but chief among them was an admiration of Rome-specifically, the Roman veneration of virtue and the Roman model of the Republic.

-So, what was so admirable about the Republic to our Founders? It combined the necessities of popular influence and combating autocratic tendencies without relying on the mob mentality that plagued democracy (the Founders, even "liberal" Jefferson, held a negative view of it). Our Republic would be based on a legislature that would see a lower House of Representatives directly represent the people (elected directly every two years) and an upper Senate (the name taken from the Roman equivalent) that, instead of consisting of nobles and aristocrats as it had in ancient Rome and in Great Britain, would instead house representatives of the State government. To finish the construction, the nation would be headed by a Chief Executive (our President) who would be elected independently by representatives from each state, with the majority votes within each state being the deciding factor in how the state's electors would vote. In short, our young nation would be a federal republic, a balance between the unitary authority that the States had just fought an eight year war to rid themselves of and the ineffectual confederacy that had been briefly tried following the war's conclusion.

-To wit, I am a Republican. Not merely in the sense that I am a member of the Republican Party, but that I am also a firm believer in the concept of governance we call republicanism. I devote myself, politically and professionally, to beating back the phantasm of the autocracy that was born of the uncivilized world, thrives in the East, and has tried over the millenia to consume us. No single man's freedom or destiny should be suborned or challenged in this mortal realm by a man or men poisoned by a lust for strength. But I am most definitely not a democrat. Democracy is messy, ineffectual, and has the potential to devolve into violence and even backslide into autocracy. I don't trust anyone who thinks that it would be a good idea to govern our nation that way-we are a nation made up of fifty states with their own, unique problems and ways of dealing with them. A democracy would merely prioritize the few governmental commonalities that unite us as a nation at the expense of effectively dealing with regional problems at the national level and, importantly, protecting the rights of the minority (which has a lot to do with how Congress does things and why we have an Electoral College instead of a direct popular vote).

-Our current problem is not our method of governance-it's the fact that, three years ago, we elected a lot of people who collectively joined and ran on a massive empty promise. We started to correct the mistake last year. How it goes from here will depend on whether my fellow Americans share my love and devotion to our Federal Republic. For that, they'll have to be true republicans (and not merely vote Republican (though that would be a good place to start-but that's just my opinion)).

Originally published on 29 October 2011.