AUDREY DICKEY MINISTRIES
Glory International Center
"A Center for God's Presence"
As a nation, Americans have grown accustomed to hearing that we are a democracy. But did you know that such was never the intent of our founding fathers? Our founders had an opportunity to establish a democracy in America and chose not to. In fact, the founders made it clear that we were not, and were never to become, a democracy. The form of government entrusted to us by our founders was a republic, not a democracy.
Many Americans today seem to be unable to define the difference between the two, but there is a difference – a big difference. That difference rests in the source of authority.
A republic differs in that the general population elects representatives who then pass laws to govern the nation. A democracy is the rule by majority feeling (what the founders described as a “mobocracy”). A republic is rule by law.
If the source of law for a democracy is the popular feeling of the people, then what is the source of law for the American republic? According to Founder Noah Webster: “[O]ur citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion.”
The transcendent values of biblical natural law were the foundation of the American republic. Consider the stability this provides: In our republic, murder will always be a crime, for it is always a crime according to the Word of God. However, in a democracy, if a majority of the people decide that murder is no longer a crime, murder will no longer be a crime.
America’s immutable principles of right and wrong were not based on the rapidly fluctuating feelings and emotions of the people but rather on what Montesquieu identified as the “principles that do not change.”
Benjamin Rush similarly observed: “[W]here there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community.”
In the American republic, the “principles which did not change” and which were “certain and universal in their operation upon all the members of the community” were the principles of biblical natural law. In fact, so firmly were these principles secured in the American republic that early law books taught that government was free to set its own policy only if God had not ruled in an area. The founders understood that biblical values formed the basis of the republic and that the republic would be destroyed if the people’s knowledge of those values should ever be lost.
A republic is the highest form of government devised by man, but it also requires the greatest amount of human care and maintenance. If neglected, it can deteriorate into a variety of lesser forms, including a democracy (a government conducted by popular feeling); anarchy (a system in which each person determines his own rules and standards); oligarchy (a government run by a small council or a group of elite individuals); or dictatorship (a government run by a single individual).
As John Adams explained:
- [Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy; such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit, and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable [abominable] cruelty of one or a very few.
Understanding the foundation of the American republic is a vital key toward protecting it.
My input:
In addition, when we say the Pledge of Allegiance, we say:
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God with liberty and justice for all.
The Kingdom of God is also a government that God is expanding everyday especially in these last days. It consists of Righteousness, Peace and Joy in the Holy Spirit. Romans 14:17.
Those that seek first His Kingdom will have His righteousness, His peace and His joy and all good things will be added to him. Matthew 6:33.
A SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND SOCIALISM (According to the New Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language)
Social Democratic Party:
Any of several European political parties advocating gradual transition to a socialist society through the normal workings of democratic government. In American History – a U.S. political party (founded c. 1897) which merged with the dissident members of the Socialist Labor party to become (1901) the Socialist party.
A British political party that splintered from the Labor Party in 1980; generally regarded as expounding middle-of-the-road policies.
Social Democracy:
The political principals of those who hold that socialism should be achieved as an economic and political form of human society in place of capitalism, and that it should be done through the normal workings of democracy.
Socialism:
A political and economic theory advocating collective ownership of the means of production and control of distribution. It is based on the belief that all, while contributing to the good of the community, are equally entitled to the care and protection which the community can provide. The theory assumes different forms according to the relative stress laid on its social, economic and political corollaries. Thus Marxian socialism is concerned very largely with the economic issues, and postulates the communal ownership and control of the means of production, distribution and exchange. Christian socialism stresses the social aspect, making of the theory a way of life. Democratic socialism stresses the political aspect, accepting a compromise in the economic field between state and private enterprise. All forms of the theory agree in being opposed to uncontrolled capitalism and in seeking equality of opportunity for all members of the community.
Socialist:
A person who advocates socialism Socialist a member of a socialist party.
Socialist Republic:
A title adopted by certain people’s republics (e.g. Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Rumania) denoting a more advanced stage in the transition from capitalism to communism.
Capitalism:
An economic system in which the means of production, distribution and exchange are privately owned and operated for private profit.
Communism:
The ownership of property or means of production, distribution and supply, by the whole of a classless society, with wealth shared on the principle of ‘to each according to his need’, each yielding fully according to his ability.
David Barton, Historian
Founder and President of Wallbuilders
www.wallbuilders.com
Question:
Are you Really Ready for a Change?
Well it may NOT be the CHANGE you were hoping for!
There is a word in Hosea 4:6 that says, “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge”…
There are people spreading God’s wisdom and knowledge and when it is rejected the same scripture says that God will also reject you and your children.
With this in mind please be aware of how you Vote – understand what type of government you REALLY want to live with and under.
REPUBLIC vs DEMOCRACY
By Historian David Barton
Article in the August 2008 issue of the
Believer’s Voice of Victory Magazine
by Kenneth Copeland Ministries