Robert Welch founded The John Birch Society in 1958 and led it until just prior to his death in 1985. This essay was first delivered as a speech at the Constitution Day luncheon of We, The People in Chicago, on September 17, 1961. The principles he espoused in that speech are timeless. The American Republic will endure only so long as those principles are sufficiently understood by each succeeding generation of Americans.

Highlights of the speech (This essay was reprinted in the June 30, 1986 issue of The New American.)

Out of the democracies of Greece, as tempered somewhat by the laws of Solon, there came as a direct spiritual descendant the first true republic the world has ever known. This was Rome in its earlier centuries, after the monarchy had been replaced. The Romans were opposed to tyranny in any.form; and the feature of government to which they gave the most thought was an elaborate system of checks and balances. When the Tribunes were set up, for instance, around 350 B.C., their express purpose and duty was to protect the people of Rome against their own government. This was very much as our Bill of Rights was designed by our Founding Fathers for exactly the same purpose.

It is only to the extent we are willing to learn from history that we are able to avoid repeating its horrible mistakes.

Antonyms, not Synonyms - Democracy and Republic

The word Democracy (in a political rather than a social sense, of course) had always referred to a type of government, as distinguished from monarchy, or autocracy, or oligarchy, or principate. The word Republic, before 1789, had designated the quality and nature of a government, rather than its structure The word democracy comes from the Greek and means, literally, government by the people. The word republic comes from the Latin, res publica, and means literally the public affairs. The word commonwealth is almost an exact translation and continuation of the original meaning of res publica.

The historical development of the meaning of the word republic might be summarized as follows. The Greeks learned that man became free when he recognized that he was subject to law. The Romans applied the formerly general term republic specifically to that system of government in which both the people and their rulers were subject to law. John Adams pointed out that Aristotle (representing Greek thought), Livy (whom he chose to represent Roman thought), and Harington (a British statesman), all define a republic to be -a government of laws and not of men. And it was with this full understanding that our constitution-makers proceeded to establish a government which, by its very structure, would require that both the people and their rulers obey certain basic laws - laws which could not be changed without laborious and deliberate changes in the very structure of that government. They were deliberately doing everything in their power to avoid for their own times, and to prevent for the future, the evils of a democracy.

It was under Wilson that the first huge parts of the Marxian program, such as the progressive income tax, were incorporated into the American system. It was under Wilson that the first huge legislative steps to break down what the Romans would have called our mixed constitution of a republic, and convert it into the homogenous jelly of a democracy, got under way with such measures as the direct election of Senators. And it was under Wilson that the first great propaganda slogan was coined and emblazoned everywhere, to make Americans start thinking favorably of democracies and forget that we had a republic. This was, of course, the slogan of the first World War: To make the world safe for democracy.

In 1928 the U.S. Army Training Manual, used for all of our men in army uniform, gave them the following quite accurate

• definition of a democracy:
• 'A government of the masses.
• Authority
• derived through mass meeting or any form of 'direct' expression.
• Results in mobocracy.
• Attitude toward property is communistic-negating property rights.
• Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate,
• whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by
• passion,
• prejudice,
• and impulse,
• without restraint or regard to consequences.
• Results in
  • demagogism,
  • license,
  • agitation,
  • discontent,
  • anarchy.'

The Soldiers Guide, Department of the Army Field Manual, issued in June of 1952, we find the following: "Meaning of democracy. Because the United States is a democracy, the majority of the people decide how our government will be organized and run-and that includes the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The people do this by electing representatives, and these men and women then carry out the wishes of the people.

In the Constitution of the American Republic there was a deliberate and very extensive and emphatic division of governmental power for the very purpose of preventing unbridled majority rule. In our Constitution governmental power is divided among three separate branches of the national government, three separate branches of State governments, and the peoples of the several States. And the governmental power, which is so divided, is sometimes exclusive, sometimes concurrent, sometimes limited, at all times specific, and sometimes reserved.

The intellectual snobs and power-drunk bureaucrats of our recent years set out to make everybody theoretically equal (except to themselves) by legislation and coercion. And I can tell you this. When you begin to find that Jew and Gentile, White and Colored, rich and poor, scholar and laborer, are genuinely and almost universally friendly to one another again -instead of going through all the silly motions of a phony equality forced upon them by increasing political democracy -you can be sure that we have already made great strides in the restoration of our once glorious republic.

The American Declaration of Independence became a part of the very foundation of our republic. And they said that man has certain unalienable rights which do not derive from government at all. Those certain unalienable and divine rights cannot be abrogated by the vote of a majority any more than they can by the decree of a conqueror. The idea that the vote of a people, no matter how nearly unanimous, makes or creates or determines what is right or just, becomes absurd and unacceptable Man has now been painfully learning that there are more permanent and lasting laws which cannot be changed by either sovereign kings or sovereign people, but which must be observed by both. And that government is merely a convenience, superimposed on Divine Commandments and on the natural laws that flow only from the Creator of man and man's universe.

Any such idea that there are unchangeable limitations on the power of the people themselves is utterly foreign to the theory of a democracy, and even more impossible in the practices of one. And this principle may ultimately be by far the most significant of all the many differences between a republic and a democracy. For in time, under any government, without that principle slavery is inevitable, while with it slavery is impossible. And the American Republic has been the first great example of that principle at work.

THE NEW AMERICAN / JUNE 30, 1986 General Birch Services Corp. P O. Box 8010 Appleton, Wl 54913

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