A Constitutional Republic, Not a Social Democracy, ‘If We Can Keep It’ by Miguel A. Faria, MD

On September 18, 1787, the last day of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after the Founding Fathers concluded the drafting of the U.S. Constitution at Independence Hall, Mrs. Elizabeth Willing Powel asked Dr. Benjamin Franklin a pertinent question: “Well doctor,” she began, “what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

The Founding Fathers designed a republican form of government. What was a republic, according to the founders? Quite simply, it was a government based on the rule of law and not the capricious rule of men. And it was a federated republican government limited in its powers by a written constitution whose function was to clearly demarcate the limits of the national government.

Ideals in Founding a Republican Form of Government

The American founders crafted a limited government, established with the consent of the governed, and instituted for the expressed purpose of protecting men’s inalienable Natural Rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of (not the guarantee of) happiness, including property, health, occupation, and wealth. All of these ideals were enshrined in the United States’ founding documents—namely, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution—and the thoughts of the founders explained in The Federalist Papers.

The proposition was that man was capable of self-governance, and that men were created equal and had been given liberty by their Creator (God) for that purpose. This meant equality before the law and equal opportunity in life for personal advancement and achievement.  However, the founders did not fool themselves with the false notion that men were equal in talents, ability, or motivation—and therefore in liberty each man would achieve his niche in life, according to those human qualities and not impeded by government. One would be free to pursuit happiness, but there was no guarantee that total happiness would be achieved.

Nor did the founders posit the erroneous idea that happiness would result if only a paternalistic government would nurture men properly; or that liberty would lead to social and economic equality of outcome. They believed in leveling the playing field of freedom and opportunity, not the leveling of society to try to achieve a contrived equality of outcome.

They asserted that freedom (not government compulsion) would result in the emergence of a “natural aristocracy” based on merit, enlightened self-interest, personal ability, and hard work. The founders were cognizant of the fact that liberty and equality when analyzed and carried to their logical conclusions unravel and end up at odds with each other in the political spectrum. And they were correct, as proved a few years later, when the excesses and violence of the French Revolution ended in a bloodbath where liberty, equality, and fraternity never comingled, but anarchy and tyranny were the order of the day. As early as 1763, John Adams, a Massachusetts attorney who later became a leading Founding Father, wrote:

[D]emocracy 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 cruelty of one or a very few.

The American Founders—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, to mention only a few—opposed mass democracy as a form of government because history was replete with examples of the fickleness and passion of incited mobs that had been easily misled by popular demagogues in their selfish quest for absolute power. James Madison, the Master Builder of the Constitution, wrote:

It may be concluded that a pure democracy…can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion of interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole…and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

A Carefully Crafted Government

Although wary of  (social) democracy, in their wisdom, the founders included a House of Representatives to be filled by elected men who were eligible to serve short, two-year terms in office. Each representative would have one vote. The House would provide direct representation of the populace since the number of Representatives each state was allocated was based on the state’s population. The House would fulfill the aspirations of the people and give the new government a broad base of power with popular consent.

The founders intended the lower chamber of the U.S. House to represent the people’s interests and the upper chamber of the U.S. Senate to represent the states’ interests. However, in 1913, the U.S. Constitution was amended, and Amendment Seventeen was ratified, providing for the direct and popular election of Senators. Henceforth, the voting public within each state would decide their election, instead of the state legislature.

Nevertheless, unlike democracy, the republican forms of government consider the frailties of human nature. James Madison, in particular, recognized the failings, divisions, and rivalries among men:

As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be, that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.

Auspiciously for America, the U.S. Senate often does consist of older and wiser members, imbibed with more soberness and respect. The Senate has continued to act as a further check, whenever needed, on the passions and democratic instincts of the lower chamber—the House of Representatives.

In the U.S. Constitution, majority rule was also to be tempered by sectional differences and the need for protection of the rights of the minority. The Constitution encapsulated a system of checks and balances between the three branches of government—the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial—as well as the principle of separation of powers that acted as a further check on federal authority and similarly as a check between the federal government and state governments—that is, the principle of a federated republic. The series of checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution were designed to prevent the usurpation of power by any one branch of government, or the arrogation of power by the federal government over the states. In short prevent tyranny of the federal government over the states and the people. At the same time, it limited the power of all government branches over the individual not only by the creation of an independent judiciary but also by the eventual incorporation of the first Ten Amendments to the U.S. Constitution—namely, the Bill of Rights.

Further Safeguards in a Republican Government

To further protect the young republic from falling prey to majoritarian rule and social democracy, the founders added additional checks, such as the creation of an Electoral College, rather than the direct popular election of president and vice president. And they established two exacting processes for amending the Constitution—for example, the requirement of two-thirds congressional and three-fourths state ratification supermajorities, rather than simple majorities.

The Founding Fathers then had placed a series of checks and balances in the Constitution to prevent run-away government or the outright inception of tyranny by any one branch of government over the others. The republican form of government also prevents tyranny of the majority (mob rule) while protecting the rights of minorities.

Because of the wisdom of the Founding Fathers in establishing a representative form of government with checks and balances—that is, a constitutional republic rather than the simple majority rule of a democracy. It has been precisely due to the U.S. Constitution with its checks and balances, separation of powers, provisions for limited governance, protection of individual rights, and the election of president and vice president via an Electoral College—that Americans have enjoyed the fruits of political stability and unprecedented economic prosperity for over 200 years.

This article is excerpted from Dr. Faria’s 2024 book Contrasting Ideals and Ends in the American and French Revolutions.

Dr. Miguel A. Faria is Associate Editor in Chief world affairs of Surgical Neurology International (SNI) and the author of numerous books, the most recent, Cuba’s Eternal Revolution through the Prism of Insurgency, Socialism, and Espionage (July 2023); Stalin, Mao, Communism, and the 21st Century Aftermath in Russia and China (2024); and Contrasting Ideals and Ends in the American and French Revolutions (December 2025)— the last four books by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K.

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