Source: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_form_of_government_does_the_US_have#ixzz24fhg3VC9
Thomas Jefferson said, “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” 
Thomas Jefferson, March 11, 1790: “The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.” f Alexander Hamilton, in debate, said: “Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate government.”
Alexander Hamilton, in Senate: “It has been observed that a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny: their figure deformity.”
It is a common mistake to think that the United States is a democracy. To hear our founding fathers come out so clearly as above against that form of government is very disconcerting to many. Thank heavens for their wisdom in setting up our government as a republic and not a true democracy. It is only because of them that we still exist as a country today.
A contrast is often made between a republican and a democratic form of government. A democracy is based on being a direct wielding of power by the people with unrestricted majority rule. A republic being a government by representatives elected by the people with restrictions on the power of the majority (that is the very important difference). John Adams in 1788 was probably the first to use the term “tyranny of the majority” but that term actually goes back to ancient Greece. In many cases throughout history and into the present day a disliked ethnic, religious, non-religious or racial group is deliberately penalized by the majority element acting through the democratic process.
Up until recently the filibuster was part of the restrictions on the power of the majority. It allowed the minority to shut down the legislative action in very extreme cases. Unfortunately the Republicans in the current congress have grossly abused that sacred principle. That very fact is yet another reason that even our republican form of government is currently being threatened.
It should be noted that the requirement of restrictions on the power of the majority are not contained in our original constitution but are, instead, contained in the Bill of Rights which Madison introduced in the first United States congress in 1789. Thus, whichever definition one adopts, the United Stated has a republican form of government and thank heavens for the wisdom of our founder in relation to that.
Filed under: All, Inside The Beltway Loony Bin Tagged: Democracy
