Your Democracy Is A Republic—and Vice-Versa

Did the framers of the U.S. Constitution set up the country’s government to be a republic or a democracy? Some folks have surprisingly strong opinions on this question, often with good reason. Yet the words republic and democracy have very similar meanings, so what’s the big deal? The answer has to do with the ways that the historic founders of the USA thought about history—specifically the histories of the democracies and republics that came before them. To make things even more confusing, the Constitution’s authors got some of their history secondhand, through one of their favorite political philosophers, Charles Montesquieu (1689–1755), who had some very specific—and surprising—things to say about republics and democracies. Check out this episode to learn why many people of the past would find many of our present-day political debates on this topic to be especially odd.

Pre-episode stuff: Keep up with the strangeness of now by signing up for the totally free YAAW email list. Just fill out the form at the top of the page at findyourselfinhistory.com . Thanks!

Transcript

YAAW Podcast | Season 2, Episode 1: “Your Democracy is a Republic—and Vice-Versa”

©2023, Doug Sofer

Cold open

[Fade in theme]

Welcome friendly listeners to the opening episode of Season Two of this now-multi-seasonal podcast [applause]—about how history helps you make sense of the Strangeness of Now.

[Pause]

You know folks: If there were such a thing as professional, credentialed experts in internetology—or podcastography—they would tell you that starting your second podcast season automatically makes you an Authentic Internet Celebrity or AIC—[pause] not to be confused with AIC: the band Alice in Chains, or AIC: the Academia de la Inmaculada Concepción school in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, or AIC: the Associazione Italiana Calciatori—an organization of Italian soccer players.

[pause]

No friends: My imaginary AIC credential means that I’m now officially celebrated by the people.

[huge crowd applauding]

But it turns out there’s a logistical problem inherent in my imaginary internet stardom—and it’s this: I can’t physically meet all of my throngs of adoring fans all at once.

For one thing, they’re all over the world. As of pretty much now-ish, my actual, real-life podcast analytics shows thousands of downloads from 26 different countries.

And I simply can’t afford the airfare to invite everyone over to my crib to exalt me in person.

So what can we do?

[pause]

Well, I’ve planned out a global network of You-Are-A-Weirdo-The-Podcast fan clubs in which each geographic or administrative division will elect one or more specially-designated-fans to stand-in for their local populations.

[pause]

So great! That’s the plan! Let’s get that set up.

[to self, typing on keyboard] Let’s see—compiling & organizing contact info, creating org chart, sending out the e-vites, setting up an online forum for conversation, arranging swag… Aaaand done!

[pause]

Oh good. Looks like my messages got out and people are starting to comment about creating some by-laws and—

[Pause]

Wait. They’re starting to argue with each other. It seems my fans don’t agree on how this representative system should work. Here’s what they’re saying:

[pause]

One group is claiming that we should set up this fan club system as a democracy.

But the other half says we need to set it up as a republic.

[pause]

Oh—well—that shouldn’t be a big deal. We’ll sort this out quickly.

It looks like two groups of representatives are coming here now in person to calmly talk it over!

[pause—cut to crowd scene, use a bit of light reverb for new room]

[Happily] Hello friendly people! Thanks so much for coming by to set this up this fan club.

This should be pretty straightforward since the two organizing concepts that y’all are talking about seem to be almost the same thin—

[angry noises, panned hard to left & right, increasing in volume]

Hey guys! No! Calm down! I said that these two ideas are almost ident—

[Yelling louder, now with silly whacking and pain sounds]

Oh man! Now they’re hitting each other!

You know I really should have thought twice before giving my fans those promotional swag mini-nightsticks that say “Welcome to the club!” on the side.

[Climax of shouting, clubbing, screaming, pain noises, then footsteps, close door noise, and fade out of crowd.]

I am out of here.

[Footsteps and calling back, distant from mic]: You’re on your own guys!

[longer pause]

So maybe organizing some kind of scheme of representation is trickier than it looks.

How ‘bout we hold off on that fan club plan for now.

[longer pause]

Still, my make-pretend legions of fanatical loyalists aren’t the only ones who disagree about which of these political philosophies makes the most sense.

So how ‘bout we spend the rest of this episode trying to figure just where these terms democracy and republic came from; why they matter—and maybe even why the difference between them might not really matter all that much.

And while we’re at it, let’s try to understand why our present-day understanding of these ideas may be especially unusual—which is to say weird—when understood in the broader scope of history.

And hey sure yes: I get all too well that thinking critically about the people’s role in government—isn’t always popular.

[pause]

But don’t worry. I’m a professional historian and I’ve been specially trained to help You-All-The-People work through these kinds of challenges.

[pause]

And who am I? My name is Doug Sofer—and I’m a weirdo, just like you.

[theme plays]

Theme & Call for Sponsors

Share this podcast with your friends, enemies, frenemies, and enem-ends!

If you’re enjoying this podcast, point your favorite internet to findyourselfinhistory.com/sponsors to learn how you can both support this project and get some rad swag!

[Sketchy, nasal lawyerly voice]: Note that the mini-nightstick promotion has been suspended indefinitely.

Thanks!

[fade out theme]

Mischiefs of Faction

Hey people

You know, I’ve run into lots of folks online these days who are claiming—sometimes aggressively—that people who favor democracy are radically different from those who advocate for a republic.

So let’s examine that idea. We’ll begin by taking a look at what those terms themselves mean.

My Oxford American Dictionary that lives on my Mac tells me that the word democracy comes from two Greek root words: demos which means “the people” and the suffix -kratia which means power or rule.

Republic, meanwhile, comes from two Latin words: Res which means thing, and Publica which means “of the people.”

This means that someone who is in favor of a democracy is someone who favors government by and/or of and presumably for the people.

Meanwhile, someone who’s advocating on behalf of a republic—a small-‘R’ republican in other words—is someone who wants a thing of some kind—“of the people.” And what kind of thing are they talking about? They’re talking about a government thing.

Let’s sum up. A democracy means government-ruled-by-the-people. And a republic is a government-thing of the people.

[pause]

[trailer] “…all of which means that before you start getting all Internet-angry and joyfully leaping on to the nearest social media pig-pile, it’s worth realizing that these two labels—which seem at first to be opposites—mean nearly the same thing.”

[pause]

Sure. But are they identical?

The short-and-sweet answer to that question is: “More-or-less Yes!”

[pause]

The longer-and-sourer—but ultimately better answer is: “It depends on the historical context in which people thought about those ideas!”

[Aside--Close mic effect]

We historians will pretty much always tell you that the better answer is the one that starts with “it depends on the historical context.”

And you are a weirdo [divebomb]

…is the name of this podcast, so today’s show is about how strange many present-day debates on this subject would seem to prior generations of people.

[pause]

Today’s episode is called “Your Democracy is a Republic—and Vice-Versa.”

[pause]

Here in the United States of America, many of the questions surrounding republics and democracies originated in public debates surrounding our Constitution.

If your U.S. history is a little rusty, here’s the express version of how it all went down.

[pause]

So there were these thirteen colonies in North America that were part of the British Empire. But starting in 1775, many of the politically-savvy people living in those colonies said that they didn’t want to be British anymore.

By July 1776, their leaders declared independence and started calling themselves a group of United States of America. “States” was plural at first—meaning they were thirteen separate countries. But they also said that these thirteen mini-countries would need a sort of central body to keep them united and safe. That body was loosely put together—constituted—under another document called the Articles of Confederation.

So was that body a democracy or a republic?

[pause]

It was kind-of neither. It’s probably most accurate to call it a confederation—a pretty loose alliance of thirteen separate republics.

[pause]

And it didn’t work well.

[pause]

Thomas Jefferson, writing after the fact, said this of the government under the Articles of Confederation:

[QE] “Our first [attempt] in America to establish a federative government had fallen, on trial, very short of its object. [/QE]

Founding Father and five-cent-coin model Jefferson continues, explaining that [QE] “during the war of Independence, while the pressure of an external enemy hooped us together…”[1] [/QE]…the articles were effective.

But that once the Revolutionary War was won, folks from those United States went back to their jobs and stopped paying attention to the government that the Articles had set up.

[pause]

Because they didn’t have to pay attention to it. Because that government was voluntary. Participating in it was pretty much optional.

At that point, some Americans drafted a second constitution—which they appropriately called TheConstitution, completed in Philadelphia in 1787.

[pause]

Yet the big question about this new document was whether or not the states’ governments would agree to throw out the then-current constitution—those still-pretty-new Articles of Confederation—and replace them with the even newer new Constitution—which would be the third North American government within just eleven years.

[pause]

That’s when the new Constitution’s biggest supporters—James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay—wrote a series of 85 long essays which together made up a newspaper column called The Federalist—today known as the Federalist Papers.

They were written to the reading public of the State of New York, advocating for the acceptance—or ratification—of the Constitution.

And to do that, they had to explain just what kind of government they hoped to constitute—put into place.

[pause]

[Slow & dramatic] And they called it a republic.

[pause]

In fact, they sometimes called it a “confederate republic”[2]—a shout-out to the previous confederation they were hoping to replace.

It was to be a stronger, more centralized, more-coherent thing of the people—that was still made up of those thirteen smaller countries—states.

The theory behind this reconstituted country was that it would be large and centralized enough to become strong, without becoming so large and so centralized as to alienate its people.

They knew you needed a stronger national government to be able to resist external enemies, put down internal insurrections, and encourage development of a formidable economy.

But the constitution’s authors also feared that too strong a government could make the new country vulnerable to internal divisions; the population might feel like the government was too remote—too far away to understand the people’s needs.

[pause]

So what do you do? James Madison in what’s probably the most famous of the Federalist Papers—Federalist Number Ten had a solution.

In Madison’s own words what was called for was:

[QE] “A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place…”

And he contrasts this republic with what he says is a much, much less stable thing—[dramatic] called a democracy.

[pause]

So problem solved! We’ve figured it all out! The U.S.A. is a republic and not a democracy after all!

[Small cheering]

Except it’s actually a lot more complicated than that.

Earlier in Federalist Ten, Madison makes clear exactly what he’s contrasting a republic to.

And it isn’t just any old democracy; he says he’s talking about:

[QE] “…a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person”[/QE]

[pause]

So he’s not just talking about anything that could possibly be called a democracy; he’s talking about this so-called “[QE] pure democracy” in which everyone gets together in a single place where they basically do all the things governments do—law making, administration, holding court hearings.

[pause]

Madison says that these kinds of direct democratic governments “[QE] can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction.”[/QE]

[pause]

And Mischiefs of faction is not only a potentially badass name for a ska band.

It refers specifically to the tendency for governments of the people to tear themselves apart through hyper-partisan politics.

[pause]

The word faction in Madison’s day meant division, disunity, conflict, rupture.

[pause]

So why was Madison worried about those kinds of popular governments?

Because like all smart people, he knew that exploring history was the key to understanding his present-day world.

Madison and his contemporaries studied governments of the past, most of which came from a bit further back.

And by “a bit,” I mean a couple thousand years earlier.

[pause]

Let’s take a look some of the historical places Madison was reading about, and see what kinds of insights—if any—they have to offer about early American history.

[Separator music]

Classics of politics

When James Madison and his peers looked at models for what this new US government would most closely resemble, they wondered if it could become like the ancient Greek democracies—most famously the government in ancient Athens.

—where those Greek root words—like demos and cratia came from in the first place.

[pause]

Let’s take a look at Athenian democracy at its height, starting in the year 508 BC after the so-called Constitution of Cleisthenes went into effect.

[pause]

Athens was a polis—a city-state, not even a fraction as large as the first thirteen US states in terms of square mileage.

That government divided its people into ten tribal units, around which political society was organized.

The main grouping of the people called the Ecclesia would meet on a small, sloping hillside where the acoustics were pretty good.

I talk about ancient acoustics in places like Athens in the season one episode called You’re Too Loud.

When that meeting place filled up with people, everyone else who didn’t fit was told to go home.

Right off the bat, that means that the folks who lived closest to this venue were probably the ones who could get there early and therefore were the only ones who could regularly take part in government.

And they had this major governmental council with 500 citizens in it who were chosen at random to serve—a move designed to limit the influence of rich people or prestigious families.

[pause]

Best of all, Athenian political-types understood that a single individual could mess up political society for everyone else. So they invented a process through which once a year the people could vote to kick someone out of town.

They’d carve the guy’s name onto a piece of pottery shard called an ostracon. If that guy got 6,000 votes, he’d be exiled from the city—for ten years!

That’s where we get the word ostracize from.

[pause]

[Close mic] I suspect that many present-day people would enjoy a chance to legally boot their least favorite politician the heck out of the country. [/close Mic]

[pause]

Okay, so Athenian democracy sounds like a blast. But was this democracy an idea that made sense to the U.S. revolutionary generation?

I haven’t found evidence of any politicians in the new USA who seriously proposed adopting wholesale the Athenian model of democracy.

But even if one or more of the U.S. founders had decided to plagiarize the whole Athenian model of government—just drop Athens on top of, say, Philadelphia, [Drop whistle & impact sound] Athens never had anything in any way remotely like the kind of so-called “pure democracy” that Madison talks about in Federalist Ten.

In fact, historians estimate that only something like 1/5 of the population of Athens were really able to be involved in politics.

Slaves, foreign immigrants, women, and lots of other folks were kept out of the formal political sphere.[3]

[pause]

So look: We know that the Framers of the Constitution and rest of the founding generation were greatly influenced by ancient Greece.

They make constant reference to Athens: For example, they compare Athens to the early US in Federalist 6, Federalist 18, Federalist 38, and Federalist 63.

[pause]

Do a quick keyword search on the U.S. National Archives site—founders.archives.gov—and you’ll see the term “Athens” shows up nearly 300 times in the writings and correspondence of the most important leaders of the USA.

[pause]

But the fact is that what scholars today call “Athenian democracy” simply came out of a radically different society—a remarkably different political, cultural and social context—from the early USA.

[pause]

Fine. So maybe classical republics made more sense to the founders as better models for the U.S.?

[pause]

The first republic that the Framers of the US Constitution thought about a lot first was the Roman Republic—where the Latin words res publica came from in the first place—along with the rest of the Latin language.

[Pause]

So did that republic look anything like the USA?

At first it seems to be a more likely candidate.

Like many Americans, ancient Romans who lived during the republic seemed to have thought their government was pretty dang special. And they felt that way for much longer than the USA has been around—nearly half a millennium.

Anthony Everitt, an officially clever British writer, cleverly writes that:

“[QE] Most Romans believed that their system of government was the finest political invention of the human mind.[/QE]”[4]

Yet Everitt also shows how incredibly messy, unwieldy—often hopelessly deadlocked the Roman Republic was over its nearly five-centuries-long history from 509 BCE to 27 BCE.

[pause]

Here’s the simplest description of how this thing—this republic—was put-together.

The Roman republic operated under a mostly unwritten constitution. What we call Rome’s republican constitution consisted of many important written laws, but just as often its governing structure emerged from customs that had developed over the long haul—centuries in some cases.

The main principle of government at every level was to dilute power, and prevent it from being held by a single individual whenever possible.

So two or more equals jointly shared political power within Rome’s various governmental bodies. And those individuals would be elected for limited terms.

[pause]

The top guys in charge were two consuls, elected by what was called the Centuriate Assembly.

Consuls held what was called imperium: decision-making ability for all of Rome and Rome’s conquered territories.

There was no separation of religion, government and military—meaning the consuls exercised important roles in all of those bodies.

So they were powerful. But their terms lasted one year only.

And they shared religious power with full-time Roman religious officials.

Most importantly:

Any decision an individual consul made could be overruled by the other consul.

They could charge people with capital punishment and execute them. But citizens could appeal consuls’ verdicts.

[pause]

The Roman Republic’s constitution, then, limited consuls’ powers deliberately.

Except during emergencies.

In situations of invasion or equally desperate crises, Romans believed there was a need for quicker decisions that could not be overridden or appealed.

So consuls, in consultation with other high-level government officials, could appoint a dictator [pronounce in Latin & English] during crises.

In those emergencies, one dictator could be granted imperium for a period of six months, during which his decisions were not subject to any appeal.

[pause]

The dictator Cincinnatus—whom I mention in Season One’s episode called “You’re Disorderly”— was the Roman republican ideal—of someone given a tremendous amount of emergency dictator power but who then returned authority back to the republic after he’d saved it.

[pause]

And if the concept behind the consuls wasn’t confusing enough— 

The Roman republic also included multiple Roman Assemblies that represented different peoples and their interests.

First and most important was the Senate, the main permanent body of government, which controlled finances and foreign policy.

In nearly all cases Senators were Roman nobles—called patricians—who were leaders of large, extended kin groups.

[pause]

It’s not a coincidence that the upper house of the U.S. Congress is named after Rome’s assembly of well-born patricians. Let that idea marinate a little bit in your brain juices and we’ll come back to it a little later.

[pause]

Rome also had a number of other assemblies through its history. While the Senate was constantly in existence, these other assemblies, met either annually, or were assembled in special cases.

There was the Centuriate Assembly—the main political arm of the Roman army; and the Tribal Assembly—that functioned a little like its equivalent in ancient Athens that we just talked about.

And then there was the Council of the People or the Plebeian Council.

This group represented the common people, called the plebeians or plebs.

[pause]

In short, political society of the Roman Republic was ordered—divided starkly not only by wealth and resources—but by status. 

[pause]

The fact is that there were many official and semi-official different kinds of Romans, many of whom but definitely not all of whom had some kind of representatives.

[pause]

The Roman Republic’s constitution, then, existed as a kind of framework that was built on top of Rome’s social hierarchy.

And man was that social hierarchy complex.

[pause]

You can imagine Roman society like a giant lasagna, where each layer represents different people with different social roles, privileges, and responsibilities.

[pause]

The crunchy cheesy layer at the top was the noble-born Patricians who mostly descended from a handful of officially better-than-everyone-else families.

[pause]

Heading up each patrician household was a paterfamilias—the father of the household.

That guy was not only in charge of his immediate family, but of many different kinds of dependents—yes wife and children, but also guests of various kinds, a number of varieties of unrelated servants. And slaves as well.

A paterfamilias had power—called potestas—over his family. And even more power—called dominium—over his slaves.

Regardless, though, he could do pretty much whatever he wanted to people under his control—including take their lives without serious questions being asked.

[pause]

So the Roman Republic was this ancient society with long, long, longstanding rules, entirely unlike anything in the new United States during the writing of the Constitution.

[pause]

For instance, Roman society held together through a series of unwritten ancestral codes of conduct of Rome called the mos maiorum—or way of the elders—basically a traditional set of rules that would keep people in their place.

To keep our metaphor going, the mos maiorum was the pan that kept Rome’s social lasagna from just melting and spilling out all over the place.

[pause]

It held for example that the patrician class's relationship to the lower orders worked the same as the power of a paterfamilias over his wife, his children and his other subordinates.

[pause]

So the mos maiorum mapped out Roman society in the theory. But sometimes, some people who made up those layers of Roman society decided that the system was unfair, and they tried bubbling up to higher levels.

In fact, much of the history of the Roman Republic was dominated by a conflict known as the Struggle of the Orders—about 509-287 BCE—in which plebeians demanded greater access to political power.

[pause]

And speaking of oppressed people, even the Roman institution of slavery is more complicated than it might at first seem.

By definition, Roman slaves were human property, yet Greek and Roman systems of slavery were not race-based as they would become in the American hemisphere and up through the first century of U.S. history.

Enslaved people could buy their own freedom; and they would often be considered part of that extended family of the paterfamilias.

In the best case scenario, domestic slaves might also become fairly well-to-to, or teachers, or even celebrities, like in the case of Tiro, slave of the Roman statesman Cicero.

[pause]

And the Roman Republic held other surprises too, like when it comes to the role of women.

Women were excluded from voting and from direct political participation—but some patrician women could wield a great deal of influence and political power.

At least some women received elite political education, were perfectly capable of representing themselves in legal matters, sometimes even assuming roles as legal experts.

In fact, their participation seem to have increased over the course of the republic’s history—all of which means that the possibilities for women in the Roman Republic were greater than many scholars previously recognized.[5]

[pause]

So that’s the very short version of Roman social organization.

And sure, maybe a few parts of that society looked a little like the USA—after all women didn’t get to exercise their vote in the United States until 1920—just one hundred and thirty short years after the writing of the Constitution.

But for the most part the society of the Roman Republic was not all that much like that of the early USA.

It would’ve looked like it might as well have come from Mars—not the Roman God but the planet—when compared to the United States.

[pause]

Romans managed a society that existed in a complex balance between centuries-old categories of humans, traditional legal concepts, mired in mostly fixed categories of birth-based prestige, and functioned under a largely unwritten constitution.

While the USA was brand spanking new, with newly mixed-together populations

[pause]

I guess that observation isn’t all that surprising: It’s fair to say that a lot happened in the one-thousand-eight-hundred-or-so years between 27 BC and 1787 AD.

[pause]

And the constitution’s framers knew that, too.

These were smart, highly educated people who not only read a ton of history, but could read it in Greek and Latin and a bunch of other European languages. And they had no illusions that the United States would somehow magically become either the democracy of Ancient Athens or the Roman Republic.

[pause]

So what exactly were James Madison and the other founders thinking about in 1787 and beyond when they used these classical concepts to propose their new government?

Let’s fast-forward to the future to figure out just what these founding fathers had fathomed.

[separator music]

Athens & Rome by way of Montesquieu

So the Founders studied the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome.

But that Classical education didn’t always come to them directly. They also read about what a variety of much more recent brainy European dudes thought about the Greeks and Romans.

[pause]

And the Framers of the Constitution were especially interested in the ideas of a French guy named Charles Montesquieu who had lived from 1689–1755.

Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu is not only someone whose name is tremendously fun to say.

He’s also the political philosopher whose ideas most heavily influenced the U.S. Constitution, especially his concepts of separating political powers between legislative, executive and judicial branches of government.

And Montesquieu—as the less-fun English pronunciation of his name goes—wrote political-slash-philosophical-slash-historical writings about Athenian democracy.

And about Roman republicanism.

And about many other political models—as he understood them.

And from those political models, he wrote a book called The Spirit of Laws

And in that book, he concluded that there are three main kinds of governments:

Kind number one [count sfx] that he refers to is a despotism—absolute power in the hands of one typically cruel and abusive individual tyrant. A despot does not need laws because he is the law.

Montesquieu says that the underlying principle behind a despotic government—that is, the main mental glue that holds a despotism together—is fear of the leader.

[pause]

Government kind Number Two [sfx] is a monarchy, led by a king or queen, usually born into their position of royalty, and who governs through a traditional state that is understood and cherished by the population, at least when it’s functioning correctly.

In this scheme according to Montesquieu, kingly and/or queenly governments function not through the whims of the monarchs but through “[QE] fixed and established laws [/QE]”

Those laws in turn support the different kinds of orders of people within society. 

For instance, special privileges for nobles or religious officials—those turn into long-held, customary expectations—sort of like what happened with the mos maiorum in Rome.

Montesquieu further argues that a successful monarchy, then, maintains that traditional status quo through the principle of honor.

People under a monarchy work within their own orders—their own positions in society whether as commoners, nobles, or clergy—to serve their government. 

And a successful monarchical government rewards its subjects through honoring them with prestige through special titles or recognition.[6]

[pause]

Which leads us to Government Kind Number Three [count sfx]. And hey, Montesquieu says the third kind of government is your good friend and mine—the republic!

[pause]

And actually, Montesquieu contends that there are two different kinds of republics.

One is an aristocratic republic, and it’s ruled largely by a hereditary elite order of well-born nobles. And much of his concept here seems to have come out of the Patrician-dominated Roman Republic we talked about earlier.

So what’s the other kind of republic according to Montesquieu?

[dramatic pause, then slow, emphatic, articulated delivery here.]

He calls that one a democracy.

[long pause]

Wait what?!?

I thought a democracy and a republic were different things, but now you’re telling me that Montesquieu—James Madison’s main go-to philosopher when it came to understanding politics—says that a democracy is actually a kind of republic?!?[7]

[pause]

Yeah, that’s exactly right.

[Build higher, harder]

It’s why his section on virtue in a republic begins with this subtitle:

[QE] “Ce que c’est que l’amour de la république dans la démocratie.”!!! [DS- the ‘-tie’ ending goes “see.”][8]

[pause]

Yes, it’s possible that my French accent sounds like le garbage, but that was my best shot so be nice.

But the point is that this section’s subtitle translates as “[QE] What is meant by a Love of the Republic in a Democracy”!!!

[pause]

And—sticking now to an English translation—he keeps going!

“[QE] A love of the republic in a democracy is a love of the democracy; as the latter is that of equality.”

In other words, in the democratic kind of republic, the people should—must—love equality.

What’s more, he argues that really loving equality in a democracy means that everyone should be modest in terms of their personal wealth. He continues:

“[QE] The love of equality in a democracy limits ambition to the sole desire, to the sole happiness, of doing greater services to our country than the rest of our fellow-citizens.… At our coming into the world, we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.”

From here he contends that loving frugality and moderation means that citizens in a democracy-flavored republic will go about acquiring “[QE] …necessaries to our family, and superfluities to our country.”

That is, those who love their republic will work to get necessities for their families, but big surpluses that are left over will go to the country—to serve the greater good of one’s fellow citizens.

Anything else, he continues, “[QE] would be …repugnant to the equality.”

[long pause]

And laws in a democracy need to reflect that equality.

Montesquieu, looking at positive historical examples from ancient Greece and Rome, points out that successful laws made sure that land was owned by the many, not the few; that inheritance laws would be carefully attuned to prevent excessive wealth going to too few people; and that success through trade is okay but only so long as a “[QE] spirit of commerce” and of the virtue of hard work and self-sacrifice continued to exist.

[pause]

Losing sight of those virtues would mean disaster for a democratic kind of republic, in Montesquieu’s view.

[long pause]

Whoa. That’s hard-hitting stuff, even by the weird political standards of the present-day.

And we could dive much deeper into Montesquieu’s enlightening work, but for now it’s time we close the book on Baron Montesquieu and see if we can work through some kind of [French accented] conclusion.

Conclusion

Without question, James Madison and the other authors of the Constitution worried about too much so-called “pure democracy” in Federalist #10 and elsewhere.

That fact helps explain some parts of the Constitution that seem odd by today’s standards—or that would have made today’s standards seem strange when viewed through the Ben-Franklin-style eyeglasses of the constitutional generation.

[pause]

For just one example of many, consider the original structure of the U.S. Senate. The original, unamended text of Article I of the Constitution reads:

“[QE] The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature there-of, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.”

[pause & slowly re-emphasize]

So Senators were chosen by state legislatures—not through elections by the people like the Representatives in the House.

[pause]

That’s one of the reasons why many of those who opposed the Constitution’s ratification back in 1787 called it “aristocratic” in nature.[9]

[pause]

Like the Anti-Federalist from Massachusetts who wrote under the alias of “John DeWitt.” In November of 1787, DeWitt criticized the newly written Constitution for proposing a government that he said was not really a republic at all but some kind of twisted hybrid. He described the new government this way:

“[QE] The Legislative is divided between the People who are the Democratical, and the Senate who are the Aristocratical part …and the President who represents the Monarchial Branch.”[/QE][10]

So DeWitt feared that the president would become a king under the proposed constitution.

And as far as the Senate becoming a legislative body of nobles: We’ve already seen that the original Roman Senate was the name of Rome’s council of patricians. The word Senate comes from another Latin word Senex which means “old man”—so the Roman Senate originally was just a group of elders.

But over the course of the Roman Republic it came to mean the group of old men who represented a group of old families with special privileges—the well-born patricians.

[pause]

So maybe it wasn’t such a stretch for anti-Federalists to fear that the US Senate could become aristocratic—like the thing it was named after.

[pause]

Yet looking back at the big-picture history of the USA, Americans’ willingness to put up with things-aristocratic declined over the next centuries.

In fact, from shortly after the acceptance of the Constitution between 1787 and 1790—through the 20th century, the word democracy came more and more into vogue.

Best known is what every textbook ever written on US history refers to as the “Age of Democracy” that eventually centered around Andrew Jackson’s political party—which he and his supporters used to simply call “The Democracy.”

And which came to be known as the Democratic Party of the United States.

[pause]

And that party’s existence didn’t end the conversation.

After 1865 came the post-Civil-War amendments to the Constitution which mandated an abolition of slavery, and defined as citizens anyone everyone born in the USA’s borders or naturalized here. And which established a principle of equal protection under the law for all citizens.

[pause]

Then came the political movements of the so-called Progressive Era from around the 1880s through the early decades of the 1900s—which led to new, radical-for-the-day ideas:

Like requiring the direct election of senators by the people with the 17th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913—which overrode the original text of Article I.

Or finally conceding women the vote in 1919 with the 19th Amendment, and therefore officially recognizing for the first time in US political history that women were part of the people too.

[pause]

And a half century later came hard-fought political victories of the Civil Rights Movement, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—both of which finally assured African Americans equality before the law and more opportunity than ever before to be part of we the people.

[pause]

In sum, since the country’s founding, U.S. history has been in an ongoing conversation—or maybe an argument—sometimes even a brawl—over who exactly “the people” are.

Or what it means to have a government that is a thing of the people.

[pause]

Or, in Montesquieu’s terms, a republic—of the democratic variety.

Or if you prefer: a democratic republic. [theme vamp]

Outro, teaser, credits

For our next episode:

What’s wet, is made up of hydrogen and oxygen, is imbued with special spiritual and/or divine properties, and defies standard economics logic about how value works?

Holy water! 

Immerse yourself.

[pause]

You may find the references to the historical sources, sound files, and other information used for this and other episodes at findyourselfinhistory.com !

I even threw up a link to free-to-read-and-download Google Books versions of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws both in English and in the original French if you’re up for reading what the Founding Fathers read.

[pause]

I’d love to hear what you think about this podcast. Lob an email in my general direction at doug@findyourselfinhistory.com .

Some parts of today’s episode came out of my history-of-the U.S. Constitution course that I teach at Maryville College.

That’s Maryville College—smack dab between the city of Knoxville, TN and the Great Smoky Mountains. 

Maryville College: Everyday Unexpected. Learn more at maryvillecollege.edu 

[Fast, lawyerly] Opinions expressed in this podcast are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of Maryville College, its administration, faculty, staff, students, board of directors or any other people or aristocratic orders associated with this thing of the students or res studentium.

[pause]

This podcast episode was researched, written, edited, narrated, recorded and mixed by Doug Sofer; all materials are copyright 2023 Doug Sofer. The theme song was written and performed by Doug Sofer with Matt Trimboli on rhythm guitar. Find out more about Matt at trimboli.com .

Check out findyourselfinhistory.com/sponsors if you’d like to officially certify your weirdness as a person of today—and thanks for listening.

[1] Thomas Jefferson, “Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on Early Career”, 6 Jan., 1821–29 Jul., 1821, at https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-17-02-0324-0002. (Spelling modernized for coherence.)
[2] See, e.g., https://founders.archives.gov/index.xqy?q=%22confederated+republic%22
[3] E.g., Dennis Sherman & Joyce Salisbury, The West in the World, Vol I. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2015), 55–57.
[4] Anthony Everitt, Cicero: The life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician (New York: Random House, 2001), 16.
[5] Aude Chatelard and Anne Stevens, “Women as Legal Minors and Their Citizenship in Republican Rome,” Clio. Women, Gender, History, no. 43 (2016): 24–47. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26242541.
[6] Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, 25.
[7] “Baron de Montesquieu” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/montesquieu/ accessed 31 Oct., 2023.
[8] [French version], 99.
[9] [Cite AntiFeds like Brutus & Montezuma, e.g.]
[10] John DeWitt [alias], “Essay III (Nov. 5, 1787), in Ralph Ketcham, editor, The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates: The Clashes and the Compromises that Gave Birth To Our Form of Government (New York: Signet Classic, 2003), 313.