He didn’t say equality or prosperity broadly shared, right? So it’s all about protecting property from the masses who would seek redistributive reforms, and John Adams warned of that. Mike Lee is an economic libertarian, and in his tweet he emphasized liberty and prosperity. And that is the history that these Republican figures are actually conjuring when they talk about the United States being a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Robert George, Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, explains. However, the real answer is more complicated (and unexpected) than that. If you ask Americans to name their country’s form of government, most of them will say they live in a democracy. John Adams wrote at length about how terrible it would be if you had a system where there’s rule of the majority, because the impoverished masses would vote to redistribute wealth. The Difference Between a Democracy and a Republic. And that’s one of their words, right? Madison said that it’s very important to structure the Senate as they did to protect the rights of the opulent minority against the landless masses. But they were very concerned with the rights of the opulent. They didn’t understand the phrase minority rights as we understand it today-protections for trans people, immigrants, et cetera. Is that possible Are democracies and republics the same thing or different We don’t blame you for confusing these two terms.

At the same time, you probably also hear both of these countries called republics. The Founding Fathers were very concerned with protecting minority rights. OctoYou probably hear countries like the United States or France referred to as democracies.

This is why it’s important to understand the history of this country. Do these conservatives have a bit of a point when they argue that the Founding Fathers were concerned about too much democracy?

Federal republic vs democracy