Speaker Mike Johnson

Mike Johnson (R-LA) has become speaker of the House. His inaugural speech mentioned religion and the Declaration.

Newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA): "Scripture, the Bible, is very clear: God is the one that raises up those in authority. All of us ... [Marxism and Communism] begin with the premise that there is no God." pic.twitter.com/VCh4kKHdQC

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) October 25, 2023

The republic, not a democracy thing and the separation of church and state

Mike Johnson in 2016: "What’s happened, Alex, over the last 60 or 70 years, is that our generation has been convinced that there is a separation of church and state. Most people think that that’s part of the Constitution, but it’s not.”

(It is: See The Establishment Clause). pic.twitter.com/yP0vsl7rC1

— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman) October 26, 2023

Republic and Democracy

 Ron Elving at NPR:

Robert Draper of The New York Times published a piece on Republicans who say this in August. He cited a GOP candidate for the Arizona state legislature, Selina Bliss, saying: "We are not a democracy. Nowhere in the Constitution does it use the word 'democracy.' I think of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That's not us."

But a democratic republic is us. Exactly.

Throughout our history we have functioned as both. Put another way, we have utilized characteristics of both. The people decide, but they do so through elected representatives working in pre-established, rule-bound and intentionally balky institutions such as Congress and the courts.

The government seated in Washington, D.C., represents a democratic republic, which governs a federated union of states, each of which in turn has its own democratic-republican government for its jurisdiction.

The relationship between the democratic and republican elements of this equation has been a dynamic and essential part of our history. But it has not always been easy, and in our time the friction between them has become yet another flashpoint in our partisan wars.

The United States is a Democracy

Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg:

One of this age’s great crank ideas, that the U.S. is a “republic” and not a “democracy,” is gaining so much ground that people in Michigan are trying to rewrite textbooks to get rid of the term “democracy.” And the discussion is such a mess that a New York Times article about the fight manages to get it wrong.

The truth is actually simple: For all practical purposes, and in most contexts, “republic” and “democracy” are synonyms. 1 The big difference is that the first comes from Latin and the latter from Greek. To say that the U.S. is a republic, not a democracy, is like claiming to eat beef and pork but not cows and pigs.

The debate may seem like hair-splitting, but it is important in the same way all assaults on knowledge are important – it’s part of the never-ending fight against attempted partisan intervention into education, whether it’s denying evolution or pretending the Civil War wasn’t about slavery. But it’s most important because opposing the idea of democracy can be a step toward opposing the reality of democracy, at a time when voting and other structures of formal equality are at risk.

Direct Democracy v. Representative Republic

At The Freestater Blog, Professor Todd Eberly of St. Mary's College writes of same-sex marriage legislation in Maryland. Some public officials, including Governor Martin O'Malley and De. Sam Arora, say that they want the people to decide. Eberly says that this attitude is not consistent with that of the Founders.

In Federalist 10 James Madison spoke of direct democracies as "spectacles of turbulence and contention." In a representative republic "the delegation of the government... to a small number of citizens elected by the rest..." These representatives, will "refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations."

Madison is telling us that in a representative republic we entrust our elected leaders to use their judgment when making decisions. It is not for them to place their fingers in the wind and vacillate with the ebb and flow of public opinion. It is for them to act based on their conception of what is best for community and country (or state).

None of this should be misconstrued as indicating that the voters have no say, of course they do. Madison wrote of this in Federalist 57, "Before the sentiments impressed on their minds by the mode of their elevation can be effaced by the exercise of power, they will be compelled to anticipate the moment when their power is to cease, when their exercise of it is to be reviewed, and when they must descend to the level from which they were raised; there forever to remain unless a faithful discharge of their trust shall have established their title to a renewal of it."

Here, Madison is telling us that those elected to lead are to exercise their judgment, to do what they think best, but to know that they will ultimately be held to account for their decisions via elections - that is when the people speak. Madison may have been writing about the US Congress specifically, but he was also writing of the concept of representation generally.

Virtue and Public Life

Peter Wehner writes of a recently-republished address by Irving Kristol:

His essay goes on to reflect on the ideas of “republican virtues,” which asks of people a certain public-spiritedness, which is a form of self-control, which is itself an exercise in self-government. Kristol goes on to write about the main point that emerged from the American democratic experience. “People do not have respect for institutions which, instead of making demands upon them, are completely subservient to their whims,” Kristol wrote. “In short, a people will not respect a polity that has so low an opinion of them that it thinks it absurd to insist that people become better than they are. Not simply more democratic; not simply more free; not simply more affluent; but, in some clear sense, better.”

This conception of republican virtue has been largely lost in modern times. And while a peaceful populist uprising can be a very good thing from time to time, there is something deeply wise and true in Kristol’s warning. There is a “democratic dogma” that insists our institutions should in every instance conform themselves to the whims and will of the people — a belief the Founders themselves rejected in both their writings and in their form for government (they were horrified by the notion of a “direct democracy” rather than a representative one, believing government should mediate, not mirror, popular views).