Simple Points on Republicanism and Liberal Democracy

It is very important to explain the historical and ideological context of the U.S. system. The U.S. system was not designed as a strict Roman versus English versus Athenian system. It is a mixed system. You may ask, what is really the difference here. Many people might still not understand.

1. Representative Government: Power exercised through elected officials with checks and balances.
2. Protection of Minority Rights: The U.S. with its Electoral College, Senate, and Supreme Court reflects a republican structure that tempers direct democracy to protect minority rights and stability, and its flaw is that liberal republicanism may limit direct participation, favoring representation and elite deliberation to ensure this “stability.”
3. Attitudes and Relationship to Ancient History, Golden Ages, Literature and Philosophical Influences: U.S. Republicanism is rooted in anti-monarchical traditions, attitudes of liberality towards knowledge and ancient history, and classical republicanism.
4. Civic Virtue: Citizens and leaders prioritize the common good over personal interests.
5. Rule of Law: Laws apply equally, ensuring accountability and protecting liberty.
6. Anti-Tyranny: Structures to prevent concentrated power, whether monarchic or populist.
7. Philosophers drawn from: Thinkers like Montesquieu, Madison, and Rousseau influenced this tradition, emphasizing institutional design and civic responsibility.

What defines Liberal Democracy can be seen as a political system that combines liberalism (individual freedoms, equality under the law) with democracy (rule by the people, typically through voting). It emphasizes broad participation, free elections, and protection of individual rights.

1. Majoritarian Rule: Decisions are often made by majority vote, either directly (e.g., referendums) or through elected officials. Modern Western democracies like the UK, Canada, or Germany, where elections and constitutional protections coexist.
2. Individual Rights: Strong protections for freedoms like speech, press, religion, and assembly, often enshrined in a constitution. Liberal Democracy prioritizes broad participation and majority rule while safeguarding individual rights.
3. It often encourages broader, more direct democratic engagement (e.g., referendums, frequent elections).
4. Universal Suffrage: Broad (ideally universal) access to voting and political participation. Liberal Democracy evolved later than the early American republican tradition, incorporating universal suffrage and mass participation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
5. Countries like Sweden or New Zealand emphasize broad democratic participation with strong legal protections for individual freedoms is an example.
6. Pluralism: Accepts diverse interests and groups competing within the system, with institutions mediating conflicts. Liberal Democracy leans more toward individual autonomy and pluralism.
7. Philosophers drawn from: John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and modern theorists like Rawls emphasize individual rights alongside democratic processes.

CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC AND DEMOCRATIC HERITAGE AND EXPLOITED VULNERABILITIES

Republicans in the U.S. keep saying this country is a Constitutional Republic though it is also a representative democracy. The same party Republican politicians are trying to institute laws to put the Ten Commandments in classrooms, but not the Beatitudes. Our understanding of our political system has devolved into a sports rivalry, but our system combines and embraces the heritage of Classical Republicanism, Democracy (though not pure democracy), Enlightenment era influences, liberality, and Carolingian Renaissance influence all into a neo-classical synthesis of its own. Ancient Greek and Roman Stoicism, Epicureanism and others influence the founders through their readings of the classical writers and through the classical republican statesmen. This zeal before liberalism became a political ideology (The Lost History of Liberalism) was the defining quality of the republican-minded, and the term liberal was not at first strictly applicable to a republican, since sometimes monarchists or aristocrats (elites or nobles) possessed this quality of being liberal. It described also one’s attitude towards education, learning, books, cultures, people and knowledge in general.

Both parties in their origin, represent ‘a fragment’ of this history, some of which is represented through this Timeline on the Crusades to Late Renaissance Occultism to Enlightenment Timeline (1075-1680), but there is much more context there on “the Roots of the American Order.” Now, both parties are not the same, yes; but “both” do represent one great indivisible fraternity, not one half. By fraternity, I mean the government of and by the people, not a group of executive chairpersons, plutocrats or financiers. It is important I flesh out all of this history in the manner and to the extent that I do, especially to shield against any kind of co-opting. Actual knowledge of this system immediately exposes the frauds. Republicanism is not Fascism but can slip in all kinds of directions. Republicanism does not represent techno-feudal, oligarchic interests and greed; and yet like roaches and rats, such corrupt interests under ideals of “human survival” and “human civilizational progress” (e.g. Musk) are able to exploit holes in the system, multiply and gnaw at a Republic from within.

A republic can become a totalistic system. A republic (e.g., whether we study Simon Bolivar or the U.S. empire) can become imperial and express imperial ambitions. The territorial boundary of a Republic is metaphysical. It is bound by human conception of the nature of Space-Duration, God, Logos, Destiny and Providence. The consequences of this lead inevitably to ideas of world policing and surveillance. Republics have never been perfect systems, and that is the entire point of the U.S. Republic. Instead of understanding this, citizens support drastic dismantling of “the system” to replace it with some other utopian and atheistic ideology.

The Founders were deliberately constructing this experiment with attentiveness to the historical mistakes past governments, empires and rulers have made. Does the detail, that they had slaves negate Republicanism? It doesn’t.

The citizens act like and believe that their representatives are separate from them. It does not matter the status or class of the representative — they emerged from within and are themselves citizens. They are not separate. They are not higher; and they are not lower. The U.S. Republic was and remains an experiment in governance, and it does not depend on artificial intelligence or high military technology. It depends at its basis on “the people,” and this necessitates the moral excellence, moderation and collective maturity of the people. It is not that the people of a civilization just exist to survive, consume, be merry, and make money to live the desires that are advertised to them. That is a manufactured society.

This is the materialist secularism so many early republicans and monarchists warned against. The vision of REPUBLICANISM represented more than this (see Giuseppe Mazzini on the Divine Ideal of Republicanism) and does not merely define a form of government. It is a philosophical, sacred and political heritage; and in order to understand the system entirely, any zealous hatred of liberalism, of “the liberal,” or “democratic” is a crippling limitation. Also crippling to the people of such a system is the emotional and negative connotation ascribed to these words, because the parties that are named after these terms cannot live up to the word. Philosophy is not impractical and irrelevant to modern politics. The political party or politician first to understand the spirit of this mixed philosophical tradition beyond mere slogans and dead-spirited statements politicians usually make, will indeed find the most authentic and helpful vision for the country.

One must be a matured, morally excellent and disciplined character, and there are a couple with this temperament who could both meet the times.