The right word matters
“Really a large matter” is how the inimitable Mark Twain described the difference between the almost-right word and the right word.
“It’s the difference,” he said in 1888, “between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
Some 120 years later, another American comedian coined a quote about the importance of getting “a little thing like words” right.
“Sloppy language leads to sloppy thought,” which leads to sloppy governing, Dick Cavett wrote in a 2007 New York Times opinion piece.
As you seek equilibrium between the sluggishness of gluttony from Thursday’s Thanksgiving table and the agitating commercialism of Black Friday, take solace in this saving grace: Thank goodness today’s “democracy” crowd—those who decry the electoral college and idolize popular voting—weren’t in charge back in 1787.
Study after study, survey after survey, and anecdote after anecdote all conspire to confirm that when it comes to history, Americans are a confederacy of dunces.
And while it’s bad enough to not know basic historical highlights, such as which wars were fought when, it’s far worse to not understand what James Madison called the “great points of difference” between a democracy and a republic.
Poor (and possibly dead) is the unworthy blighter who has to learn the difference between bolt and bug through life experience rather than language study, and the same danger applies to our national system’s right word.
The founders and framers of late 18th century America considered “democracy” a dirty word because they had studied its failure as a government model—though our modern sloppiness has emasculated the word “study” to be inaccurate in describing the concentrated scholarship applied by men like Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton and their contemporaries.
The average voter today can’t differentiate between Cato’s Letters and the Greek namesake, and has likely never read a single book by French philosopher Gabriel de Mably (who authored dozens).
Which is fine, because the founders and framers not only read but also scoured and scrutinized them, and in turn formulated their own ideas. When Madison wrote “Notes on Ancient and Modern Confederacies,” he drew heavily from two trunks of books Jefferson had sent him two years earlier.
The founding period is replete with disparaging quotes regarding democracy from every learned and leading voice. They sought strenuously to avoid democracy, defined as direct governance by popular vote, because it inevitably equated to mob rule and led to self-destruction.
The founders’ concept of a federalist republic uniting the states was the genius that has enabled our model of self-government to revolutionize and lead the world since 1787.
Pundits who claim today the two terms are interchangeable betray incredible ignorance (or worse) and do the nation a great disservice. To seek to recklessly undo the republican system that built our country is tantamount to sabotaging it.
The brilliance of the framers was in establishing a constitutional republic that used separation of powers to pre-empt tyranny. Its checks, balances and pitted internal controls were each put in place for specific protections.
The states elected the national executive branch leader, which appointed the judicial branch justices, which were approved by the legislative branch, which was split into two houses in order that the people and the states (and their distinct interests) could both be represented in lawmaking.
To accomplish this, members of the House were popularly elected to represent the people, and senators were initially chosen by the state legislatures to represent the sovereign state governments.
Ask a typical young person why we have a bicameral legislature. They can’t explain the difference between senators and representatives if they don’t know anything about the original federalist purposes that struck balance between the two bodies—or about the 17th Amendment that dismantled that balance.
That amendment, which provided for direct election of senators by popular vote, dealt a blow to federalism by turning the upper chamber into a second House of Representatives in the progressive name of “more democracy.”
What the framers knew from their examination of antiquity was that democracy had always proved unsustainable over large territories and populations. The maximum liberty is achieved in a representative republic that keeps governing authority over daily civil matters closest to citizens.
Individual freedom is realized most when, here in Arkansas, we’re not affected by (but might learn from) the policy whims of Californians or Oregonians or Michiganders or Rhode Islanders, and vice versa.
The wrong word can be fatal, whether used on a road sign or to guide our nation’s governmental course.
That wrong word in Athens’ heyday, at our founding, and right now is “democracy.” Our forefathers recognized democracy as a siren that would steal our liberties, and convincingly made their case for the republic in the Federalist Papers.
Today’s anti-republic critics chirp from an essentially uneducated perch to pick arguments with conclusions arrived at by exceptionally erudite intellectuals who read voluminous works on ancient governments (often in the native language).
Worse yet, they use recent election outcomes to challenge longstanding constructs based on lessons about unchanging human nature and government philosophy and history over millennia.
Second-guessing the founders’ decisions without first revisiting their historical source material is poor logic, but fine demagoguery.