without prejudice
OPINION
Do you know the difference between a democracy and a republic?
In this THINQ podcast, Dave Zanotti, CEO of The American Policy Roundtable, interviews Political Scientist Professor William B. Allen about this important nuance of our Country's Governance.
Transcript:
The Threat to Democracy political scientist Professor William B Allen
Ladies and gentlemen, my good friend Dr. William B. Allen is, in my opinion, the eminent political philosopher in the Western world today.
He doesn't like it when I speak that way. But based upon his writings, his teachings, his lecturing, and his life experience as a political philosopher, he's a person who I treasure every moment I spend with and every word that I get to hear.
So, it is my delight to bring as a gift to Gabe and to Rebecca and to all of you, my dear friend.
And I have one question and then I'm out.
The question is, is America a republic or a democracy?
We hear endlessly on the news that this person or that person, this issue or that issue is a threat to our democracy.
Is this just a debate in semantics or is there a philosophical truth-based issue here?
Well, David, you, like me, probably learned as a child to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
And those who are citizens of the United States are probably joining us in remembering that.
But perhaps we don't remember that we pledge allegiance to the flag and to the republic for which it stands.
The flag, the symbol, the republic, the beneficiary of the pledge.
But what is the republic?
Well, the very notion is an idea, and it's not an organism, it's not an institution, it's not a particular structure, it's an idea.
So that our Pledge of Allegiance puts us in a very awkward space because we are forced to ask ourselves, what do we mean when we say republic and how does that relate to the question of democracy?
Let us begin where the founders began.
DEMOCRACY is the worst form of government, period. Because anything; worse is not a government, it's just pure DESPOTISM.
But Democracy is Chaotic, it's unruly, it's unpredictable, it Produces Majority Tyranny.
So how does one escape? the burden of democracy and preserve the blessings of liberty, with which, of course, our preamble; to the Constitution closes.
The blessings of liberty are available to us only when we restrain Governmental Power, which includes Majority Power.
And we do that by creating what we call representative democracy. So, the word republic is really a synonym for the term representative democracy. that the people govern, yes.
THE PEOPLE ARE SOVEREIGN, YES.
But they do so through delegation of authority to agents to represent them so as to make the process far more reliable, far safer than it would otherwise be.
But there's more to this than that.
And this may come as a surprise to you and to many.
But this idea of the republic is not just the idea of representation.
It's the idea that somehow it is the authority of the people which is at bottom the foundation of the government.
Not their direct rule, but their authority. And what does that authority consist in? It consists in responsibility.
The responsibility of self-government.
So, we have a dilemma, a paradox.
SELF-GOVERNMENT doesn't mean MAJORITY RULE.
It means each; and every one of us being subject to moral self-government, to self-restraint, to moderation.
It means being accountable individually.
And the purpose for the idea of the republic is to capture that personal accountability.
And where does it come from?
Ultimately, we derive it from what was identified at the founding as the freedom of conscience.
And when James Madison defined that for us in 1785, he defined it very clearly as the obligation human beings owe to God, which is prior to any obligation to civil society.
And so, when we're talking about the Republic, we're talking about the idea that we have obligations to God.
And our civil relationships are all subordinate to that.
And therefore, we have; to work those out as well as we can because the reality is we live under two governments, not one.
We live under, call it a representative democracy or republic if you will.
That's one, but it's not the most important.
The most important government we live under is the divine monarchy of God.
And if we forget that, we will lose our way.
We will become fixated on those governmental institutions with which we live and the political parties that seek to run them, and we'll forget we owe a superior obligation to God prior to any obligation we have to civil society.
Madison spoke of the obligation of first defining oneself according to the reality of the existence of God which then permits a person to enter into civil society from a position of responsibility, but we live in a culture that says God is only optional if you want to be religious but if you prefer to be a scientific materialist that entire conversations irrelevant.
Where do we end up with in that debate?
Well, of course, we end up with the same problem we've had ever since Christ appeared on Earth.
When I'm asked what is; my religion, I've decided I'm no longer going to say I'm a Christian or a Protestant or a Baptist or a reformed Episcopalian or whatever else I've called myself through the years.
I'm just going to say I FOLLOW THE WAY.
And to me, that's a sufficient identification for what it means to follow Christ.
It's the first of the terms Christ used to define it himself, the way, the truth, and the life.
So, I'm a follower of the way, and those who are followers of the way have accepted that responsibility, that individual responsibility.
And they've also accepted something which I heard an echo of, this when Gabe was speaking earlier, talking about parallel lives.
The first parallel lives were the lives of the way.
They were the ones who lived not having government get their back, but government on their back.
They were the ones who had to build a separate existence alongside the secular existence.
And of, course ultimately to grow and thrive in; spite of it.
So, it's the way that defines that relationship that will allow us to survive the trend towards secularization.
To have, the, resilience, to have the strength of conviction, to follow the way no matter what.
That has always been from the beginning what we have been called to do.
That is witness.
Now, those who say we must save our democracy, are they trying to say something more?
Well, they're trying to say, as it seems to me, perhaps the best way for me to express this is that they are invested in what is clearly a partisan operation, i.e. identification with a political party, loyalty to a political party.
And so they identify the democracy as, in effect, the party.
And the outcome of the; democracy is nothing other than whatever works to establish the party's power and authority.
But the reality is no one can be properly loyal to a country who isn't prepared to abandon a political party.
I'm sorry, could you repeat that for us, please?
He likes to do this to me.
He knows.
I said, no one can be properly loyal to a country without being prepared to abandon a political party, because the party is not the agency of governmental representation.
It is merely an informal association for those who are in the struggle for power, the contest for power.
It does not command primary loyalty and should not command primary loyalty because to do so means to betray one's fundamental commitments to one's country.
Would it be safe to say that a person following the way would put principle over party?
It would put principle over party, yes.
But remember, following the way means understanding that our first obligation is to God.
That's the obligation which we understand by conscience.
And I won't go into a long conversation about this because it can become abstruse.
But I want everyone to understand that when I identify conscience as the key moment in the development of our defense of liberty, I'm talking about the single thing that makes a country like the United States a Christian country.
It is not because there are Christians in it that it is a Christian country.
It's a Christian country because it was founded on the freedom of conscience, The freedom of conscience is nothing other than the freedom to hear and follow the voice of God.
And any country founded on; the basis of the freedom of conscience will be therefore a Christian country even if there's not a single Christian in it.
Because this obligation to follow the voice of God means that everyone gets to assert claim to the freedom of conscience even when they don't believe.
Oddly enough, even atheists who assert universally the freedom of conscience end up listening to God, though they do not recognize him or acknowledge him.
Is there any instance in the cultures of government that you have studied, going as far back as you like, where a pure form of democracy worked to protect the right of conscience in the end?
That question really has; to be answered in historical terms by asking whether the United States has fulfilled its mission.
And the answer to that is, the story hasn't ended.
We've done well enough so far, and there's much better that could be done.
But we will say at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter what country survives.
I don't want to shock people when I say this, but we are not going to be here forever.
NO COUNTRY'S GOING TO BE HERE FOREVER.
NO GOVERNMENT'S GOING TO BE HERE FOREVER.
And so, we don't want to pursue the vacuous and empty reliance upon ideologies and parties when we know the way will, take us home.
Is there anything else you wanted to add?
We have very little time, but I would say this, I want to go back for just, a brief; moment to why we don't want to follow parties particularly, and why we want to take ideas seriously.
When Gabe mentioned Vasilev Havel this morning, I was reminded of a conversation I had and a group of people with Hobble in 1992.
And Hobble had this to say, and I'll leave this with you as a closing word.
This is Hobble in answer to a question.
I won't repeat the question.
I believe that if democratic institutions ought to be firm, and if the state has; to have a frame and be able to vote, there must be something to hold things together.
But I believe that ideology is the worst possible instrument; of holding things together.
I believe that this glue, holding things together, should be neither an ideology nor a utopia, because it's certainly easy to invent an ideology or a utopia and have it accepted.
But I believe we should follow a more complicated course and build on our own values and ideas.
Hubble went on.
But I would say our own values and ideas are precisely those we have inherited from the emergence of Christianity as the primary force in the world.
That quote sounds very much like a passage from the book of Colossians.
Speaking of Jesus, he is before all things and in him all things hold together. Is he sufficient to hold together our form of civil government?
Well, let me close by telling you a story that may give you the answer to that.
A very brief story.
I opened with pointing to the Pledge of Allegiance and saying we pledge allegiance to a symbol of the republic, of an idea.
The first time I had that, told to me, was by a mentor who was himself a former socialist who had become disenchanted and abandoned Marxism; and, become; somewhat conservative.
And he pointed out in a perfectly secular account how this was greatly important and paradoxical.
I only later learned that years before he arrived at that, Ronald Reagan, in an address at Fulton, Missouri, had made the argument about the idea of the Republic as a godlike institution in the name of which we were formed.
It was Ronald Reagan who first said that.
As early as 1952, in Fulton, Missouri, the same place where Winston Churchill, of course, proclaimed the advent of the Iron Curtain.
So, our history is shaped providentially, and it is filled with meaning that goes beyond even the best intentions of those who speak with a purely secular purpose in mind.
Acknowledgement Original Sources
Credit to Pof. William B. Allen The Threat to Democracy by thinqmedia.com
Credit to Dave Zanotti, CEO of The American Policy Roundtable
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