Why a Republic?
Everett PiperEverett Piper's Blog
- 2011 Feb 23
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If "democracy" resulted in the election of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or Hamas in Lebanon, would that be a good thing? How about Al-Qaeda rising to power by the will of the people in Yemen or Saudi Arabia?
If the KKK had a majority vote in Indiana or Alabama in the 1950s, would a democratic vote have made their ideas and agenda morally acceptable?
The story is told that after the Constitutional Convention of 1787 Benjamin Franklin was asked, "Well, Doctor, what have we got…?" He responded, "A republic, if you can keep it."
Now, why did he say a republic and not a democracy?
John Adams offered this: "Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy; such an anarchy," he said, "that every man will do what is right in his own eyes… Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide…"
You see, a republican system of government understands that the only way to control the selfishness of the masses is to know the laws of nature and nature's God and to hold them as self-evident and as superior to man's opinions. James Wilson, signer of the Constitution and U.S. Supreme Court Justice, said it best: "Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is Divine." Alexander Hamilton agreed: "the law…dictated by God Himself is, of course, superior in obligations to any other…No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this."
So why a republic? Simply said, because the morality of the masses—of the Muslim Brotherhood, of Hamas, the KKK, the DNC, and even the GOP—is a frightening thing unless it is measured and checked by the Divine and the True.