It’s a Republic, if you can keep it.
That’s what historians–and a musical drama 1776–said Benjamin Franklin answered. The question to Ben was “What did we get from the Constitutional Convention?”
A Republic concept calls for a Democratic vote–only one vote per citizen–to elect someone to represent your neck-of-the-woods and help make those ‘there-oughta-be-a-law’ proposals. The idea was to prevent rule by an agitated mob.
By all means, let’s keep Democracy. Elect our representatives. Charge our representative with making laws. Then the executive branch can administer. As of now, as any Civics teacher should tell a high-schooler, we are living in a Republic where we elect–that’s Democracy–our representatives.
If we get confused by pep-rally politicians orating for ‘Democracy,’ we need to remember that we elect Representatives to represent us. That’s the way a Republic works—if we can keep it.
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