Kimball Shinkoskey

Woods Cross

Is this nation a Republic or a Democracy? That is the question on the minds of many political party members today.

Some conservative Republicans don’t like the term “democracy” to describe our government. They have read a book or two that say this country’s founders never intended it to be a democracy, but rather a “republic.” Democrats, on the other hand, like the word “democracy,” because it seems to describe the inclusion of everyone.

Our nation’s Founders did not start the nation off with a full slate of civil rights for everyone, not even white folks. White men had to own a certain amount of property to be deemed capable of responsibly exercising a vote in the patriarchal religious society of the 13 colonies/states.

However, it is abundantly clear the Founders wanted people voting who had an education as well as property. Interestingly, property ownership was the perfect way to get people educated. In order to obtain, settle and improve land, folks had to learn how to read law books so they could figure out how to manage property. In furtherance of land ownership and good citizenship, the legislature in the colony of Massachusetts required parents to assure that every child had a “knowledge of the capital laws.”

In the early republic, working hard got you property, property got you education and law, and knowledge of law and history got you the vote. To make this process happen more quickly, the Founders formalized the idea of a public education for all, which included attention to legal matters in grade-level school books like the McGuffey Readers.

Once young people got a comprehensive education, they could decide how to fit their economic and political efforts into a non-violent society where wisdom and intelligence got one ahead faster than anything else. That is why a college degree is still worth more than a high school diploma today.

History teaches that lack of education is associated with wanting to use force rather than gentle persuasion to get things done. Persuasion is what a parent does with a child, and a citizen does in a voting booth. To keep folks from deciding things with their fists or with guns, it is necessary for them to first read books about law, science and history.

America got closer to the ideal of everyone being educated and everyone being owners by giving away free land to folks through various free-soil/homestead initiatives. This was the embodiment of the Founders’ idea of “democratic republicanism,” because those programs meant America was working on the ultimate goal of including everyone.

A republic uses elected representatives to vote on policy decisions, rather than having everyone gather in the public square and vote on an issue like irrigation canal construction. We are still a republic in that sense today. But we are also more and more of a democracy because two big groups in our society lobbied for and successfully expanded American voting rights: women and African Americans.

America slowly solved a huge problem of limited voting rights in the beginning, but today we have a different huge problem. Not even wealthy white folks today are educated enough in law, science and history to responsibly exercise their civil rights in the public square.

In fact, the wealthy have become so interested in obstructing education for all and rapidly expanding their wealth that they want to bestow special economic and political privileges on themselves. They want to monopolize whole industries, gerrymander voting districts, impoverish public schools and purchase elections with unlimited campaign contributions. To get the special status of a privileged aristocracy, they have essentially turned to discrimination, intimidation and physical violence.

Wealthy America wants to monopolize property and power for the few instead of using law, science and history to distribute money and power to the many in America.