QUORA: Why does the Pledge of Allegiance say the USA is Republican not Democratic?

 QUORA: Why does the Pledge of Allegiance say the USA is Republican not Democratic? 

I posted this answer:

First, the Pledge doesn’t mention “Republican,” as in the Republican Party. It says “the Republic.” This is a scientific, philosophical term, not a narrowly political term.

The Pledge says Republic because America, in its Founding principles, is a republic. But we must dig deeper. In “Federalist No. 14”, James Madison explained the difference between a republic and as democracy: 

In a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.

The Founders established a republic of a revolutionary new kind—a Constitutionally Limited Republic based on the recognition and protection of inalienable individual rights. While the people elect their governmental representatives and agents, the power of those representatives is constitutionally limited only to powers necessary to secure the equal rights of all of the governed individuals, whose rights are “unalienable”, in accordance with the Declaration of Independence. This means placing individual rights,—which sanction freedom of self-supporting action, not outcomes—outside the scope of democratic rule. This was unprecedented in human history. 

So, why does the question of democracy vs. republic still roil America’s political discourse? Some history needs to be explored.

A full-blown, total democracy has always been fundamental to the Democratic Party’s conception of the United States of America. From its founding in 1828, the Democratic Party has radically reinterpreted the American Founding as a democracy, not a limited republic. Consistent with democracy, the new party supported slavery. as long as it is imposed democratically. 

In the 1850s, the debate over whether slavery should be extended into new Western territories split these political coalitions. Southern Democrats favored slavery in all territories, while their Northern counterparts thought each territory should decide for itself via popular referendum. 

Note that both Democratic Party factions supported slavery. Both sides, true to the Party’s reactionary America-as-a-Democracy re-conception, believed the slavery issue should be decided democratically, rather than in accordance with the republican principles of the Declaration of Independence, as the Abolitionists demanded. Slavery, the Democrats believed, should be decided either unilaterally across America by Congress (which is elected) or by a popular referendum at the state level. Either way, democratically. By contrast, the Abolitionists believed that slaves deserve freedom based upon the inalienable individual rights to life, liberty, and property—meaning, as human beings, neither they (nor any minority) could ever be enslaved by vote.

This is the fundamental difference between democracy and the republican system that the Founders put into place. 

The Democratic Party, to this day, has not changed its stripes. President Biden reiterated his Party’s principle recently, declaring in a major speech that “the fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow.” That was no rhetorical slip. The Biden Justice Department sued the state of Georgia on the same fundamental premise. In defense of the DOJ’s suit against Georgia, Attorney General Merrick Garlanddeclared that "The right of all eligible citizens to vote is the central pillar of our democracy, the right from which all other rights ultimately flow.” The Democrats’ raging hypocrisy notwithstanding, the overturning of Roe v. Wade is fully consistent with the Democratic Party’s basic principles. The SCOTUS stripped the inalienable right to abortion away Constitutional protection and put it into the hands of the democratic process at the state level. That could not happen if the Court had adhered to America’s republican principles.

In direct violation of America’s Founding republican principles, the Democratic Party stands for the idea that all of our individual rights are subordinate to the people’s vote. The right of the majority to enslave a minority, and the right of the majority to control the reproductive functions of a woman’s body, are precisely what “the fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow” looks like. That’s also what democracy looks like. It’s own hypocrisy notwithstanding—it was GOP-appointed judges that imposed that horrendous Dobbs ruling—the Republican Party has traditionally been on the side of the limited democracy of the Founders’ republic, which protects certain fundamental rights, such as the right to one’s own body and the right to be free from involuntary servitude.

Neither party has been fully consistent on their respective principles. But as to the question “Why does the Pledge of Allegiance say the USA is Republican not Democratic,” it’s because there is a deep fundamental difference between a republic and a democracy. Despite the pronouncements of the reactionaries, America was Founded as a Republic based upon the protection of inalienable individual rights to life, liberty, and property in pursuit of personal happiness. This is directly opposed to the idea that “the fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow.” That would be democracy. In a republic, the right to vote flows from those fundamental rights.

Related Reading:

America; Democracy or Republic or Both--Why it Matters

Senator Mike Lee is Right: America ‘is not a Democracy’

Democracy is Democracy

Democracy in Action in Egypt

Rights and Democracy

Constitutional Republicanism: A Counter-Argument to Barbara Rank’s Ode to Democracy

Mesmerized by Elections, the NJ Star-Ledger Forgot that Tyranny is Tyranny

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty—Timothy Sandefur