Maybe we should quit using the word...

Walter Williams uses this week's essay to point out that the United States is not a "democracy".

You will never find the US described as one. You'll find lots of places were it's described as a Republic, from the Pledge of Allgeiance to the Constitution to the Battle Hymn of the Democracy Republic. Indeed, the first time the form of government was ever described to another person was in Ben Franklin's response to the question, "What kind of government have you given us"?

His answer was both succinct and prophetic: "A Republic, if you can keep it."

(They capitalized all nouns back then – a relic from English's German roots.)

His last five words are prophetic because we seem to have decided democracy is the be-all and end-all of government. We are far more taken with direct representation than the founding fathers were. Williams lists some quotes from the time, and you can read them at his essay. My favorite quote, which is probably not from any of the founding fathers, is: "Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch."

The Constitution has any number of anti-democratic provisions in it, and I've listened to and read any number of arguments that we should get rid of those provisions because they get in the way of democracy, or because they're antiquated, or both.

The framers gave us a Constitution that is replete with undemocratic mechanisms. One that has come in for recent criticism and calls for its elimination is the Electoral College. In their wisdom, the framers gave us the Electoral College so that in presidential elections large, heavily populated states couldn't democratically run roughshod over small, sparsely populated states. Here's my question: Do Americans share the republican values laid out by our founders, and is it simply a matter of our being unschooled about the differences between a republic and a democracy? Or is it a matter of preference and we now want the kind of tyranny feared by the founders where Congress can do anything it can muster a majority vote to do? I fear it's the latter.

The focus on "democracy" as the goal of government, rather than as one of many tools available for governing human beings, is certainly leading to the latter. Unfortunately, I suspect many people will get the point only when they're personally threatened with it.