When I was a college freshman in 1970 I took an introductory class in American government at Claremont Men’s College. The textbook we used was The Democratic Republic, written by a trio of fairly conservative, somewhat Straussian professors: Martin Diamond, Winston Fisk, and Herbert Garfinkle. The title sums up their view of the American system, which is a republic—a type of government where some important part of those ruled chooses representatives to govern—with democratic characteristics. When the US was founded, ‘republic’ in most people’s minds meant first and foremost Rome in its early days (‘republic’ is the Latin for ‘the public thing’) in which Senators were appointed by magistrates (Consuls or Censors) elected from a narrow group of aristocrats, and Tribunes with important but limited powers were elected by the plebs or ordinary citizens.
What makes us democratic is that in America ‘those ruled’ means a majority of the citizens, or as Madison puts it in Federalist 39: “It is ESSENTIAL to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.” How we have defined ‘the great body of citizens’ has of course changed and expanded since the US began, but the essential principle hasn’t changed.
That the US was both democracy and republic was not seen as something particularly controversial at the time, as far as I can recall. Neither the US (or any other modern country) is a pure or direct democracy, where every citizen takes part in voting on legislation or deciding court cases, as in some periods in ancient Athens, or in some small New England towns. The constitution lays out a process of electing representatives who make decisions in the name of the voters. There are important checks on what those representatives can do to avoid the infamous ‘tyranny of the majority’ feared by Madison. Representation, separation of powers, constitutional protection of certain rights, and a large and diverse population: these were the key improvements in ‘the science of politics’ that Hamilton praised in Federalist 9. It was hoped—no one at the beginning was entirely sure it would work—that together these would make democracy for the first time in history a stable, energetic, longlasting form of government.
If this all sounds like pretty basic stuff that you learn in high school and no American could question, you haven’t been paying attention. Conservatives for a number of years now, with increasing vehemence, have been declaring that the US is ‘A republic, not a democracy!” They shouted this slogan at the capitol on January 6. Perhaps the most extreme, Trumpist political figure in the US, Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor Doug Mastriano, is prone to screaming it regularly at rallies, to get the conservative faithful worked up.
The operational reason for this is quite clear; it is an attempt to seem like a true-blue American while denigrating democracy and rule of the majority. This would have seemed insane to Americans of almost any earlier time. The only exceptions of course would have been southern separatists and racists, who denied human equality and hence the principle at the heart of our democratic experiment.
Suspicion and dislike of democracy is now embedded in American conservatism and in the Republican Party, mostly because the majority of Americans don’t want what conservatism is selling: economic inequality, privileges for the wealthy, government gridlock, religious zealotry, white supremacy, guns for everyone, and rule by a carefully engineered majority of black-robed unelected justices. Conservatives, rather than adjusting their policies to appeal to the majority, are instead trying to keep the policies and rule as a minority by taking over key state offices that control voting results, and (they hope) soon reinterpreting the Constitution to allow state legislators to decide the composition of the electoral college.
This effort is directed and powered by moneyed interests who want a weak state that doesn’t interfere in the accumulation and passing on of wealth—people who in effect want to become the ‘tyrannical nobles’ Madison warned us against. It is producing a cascade of demagoguery, deception, intimidation, and manipulation of the American political system the likes of which we have never seen.
The ‘republic not a democracy’ slogan is part of an ideological campaign to give conservative voters an excuse for rejecting what a majority of fellow citizens prefer, as expressed by their vote. It is the underpinning for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and supporting the January 6 insurrection. It gives a false sense of gravitas to “Great Replacement” and other conspiracy theories according to which today’s American majority, the diverse and increasingly non-white population living in big cities, shouldn’t be allowed to pick our country’s leaders because they are not ‘real Americans.’
I cannot improve on this explanation by Ryan McMaken some years ago:
“The claim that the United States political system is “a republic, not a democracy” is often heard in libertarian and conservative circles, and is typically invoked whenever the term “democracy” is used in any favorable context. This claim is generally invoked when the user believes one of the following:
- ‘I don’t like your idea, and since it involves aspects that are democratic or majoritarian, I’ll invoke the republic-not-a-democracy claim to discredit your idea.’
- ‘A majority of the population appears to support this idea, so I will invoke the republic-not-a-democracy claim to illustrate that the majority should be ignored.’”
It is a piece of demagoguery, not a serious argument. The next time you hear someone say the US is “a republic, not a democracy,” please let whoever is spouting it know, in no uncertain terms, that it is bunk.