Is The United States of America a Democracy?

Is the United States of America a Democracy? The short answer is, No, the United States is not a democracy in any shape or form. We are a Republic, and more specifically, we are a Constitutional Federalist Republic.

For most people, the confusion stems from not taking into account or not knowing the difference between the terms “type” and “form”. These are two very different things, and one does not necessarily follow the other, and that is especially true regarding the United States of America. Democracy as a “type” of government naturally means that free elections are held periodically (which we most certainly do). However, democracy, as a “form” of government, means unlimited rule by a majority (which we most certainly do not allow). The United States of America as a “democracy” ends at “type”. In “form” America is not a democracy, but a Republic. In fact, “a Republican form of Government” is the only guarantee expressly given in the U.S. Constitution,

In a Democratic form of government, citizens vote directly on all matters affecting them, and do not elect others to represent their interests. This is the model for a majority-rules direct democracy and provides unlimited power to the majority with no protection for the Rights of the minority. In contrast, a Republican form of government, the power of the majority is limited by a written constitution and/or Laws which safeguard the inalienable rights of the minority. In a nutshell ...

Democracy is mob rule. It allows the majority to rule and disregard the Rights, needs, and desires of the minority.

A Republic, on the other hand, is guided by Laws — charters or constitutions — which guarantee and protect individual Rights against the desires of the majority.

It's also historically relevant to note that the word “democracy” does not appear anywhere in any of our founding documents, and that no American president since the birth of our nation in 1776 ever referred to America as a democracy UNTIL Woodrow Wilson misapplied the term during World War I.

And do not overlook the fatc that our Founding Fathers hated democracies. They literally abhorred them! They found democracies to be not only tyrannical in nature, but bound for eventual and inevitable failure. So, instead, they created for us a Constitutional Federalist Republic. But don't take my word for it. Here are the Founder Fathers in their own words:

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government” — The United States Constitution, Article IV, Section 4

“We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy, or some other form of a dictatorship.” – Alexander Hamilton, debates of the Federal Convention, June 26, 1787

When asked by Elizabeth Willing Powel, a prominent Philadelphia socialite and close friend to many of the Founders, what form of government the Constitutional Convention had just created, Dr. Benjamin Franklin responded; “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

“Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” — John Adams

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” — Thomas Jefferson

“... that in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.” — Edmund Randolph, at the 1787 Constitutional Convention

“Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.” — Chief Justice John Marshall

“Democracy is the most vile form of 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.” — James Madison, Federalist 10

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner” — Dr. Benjamin Franklin

“Liberty has never lasted long in a democracy, nor has it ever ended in anything better than despotism.” — Fisher Ames

“We have seen the tumults of democracy terminate, in France, as they have everywhere terminated, in despotism.” — Gouverneur Morris

“All such men are, or ought to be, agreed, that simple governments are despotisms; and of all despotisms, a democracy, though the least durable, is the most violent.” — Fisher Ames

"Republicanism is not the phantom of a deluded imagination. On the contrary, laws, under no form of government, are better supported, liberty and property better secured, or happiness more effectually dispensed to mankind.” — George Washington

The purpose of the US Constitution, wrote Constitutional Convention delegate, Gov Edmund Randolph of Virginia, is "To provide a cure for the evils under which the United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and trials of democracy"

“Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.” — John Adams

"The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived." — John Quincy Adams

"Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities [democracies] are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots." — John Adams

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands” — The Pledge of Allegiance

Lastly, here's Dan Smoot of 'The Dan Smoot Report' in 1966 talking about the true form of the US Government and just how critically important it is to our nation as to what the differences are.