Saturday, June 1, 2019

SOCIAL MEDIA AND CHINA WILL ATTEMPT TO STEAL THE 2020 ELECTIONS. They will cut us off from communicating with one another. Here is a list of ways to stay connected when the empowered Social Media Giants censor you. Its not an "If". Its a "when"!

How To Communicate with your conservative allies when the Silicon Valley Oligarchs and China Censor us completely in 2020. Yes they will Censor even those who think they are "safe" today! Watch out talking Heads!

 


I am warning you that the Democrats and the left are planning a massive election season heist in 2020. Do not get too cocky. Here is a list of ways to stay connected in the event access to media is Censored by the controlling Silicon Valley Oligarchs! They are preparing to stop us from winning in 2020.


  Scenario

Its 2020... Donald Trump is running away with the Reelections and The FAKE NEWS MEDIA JUMP INTO ACTION WITH FAKE STORIES AND THEY DO NOT WANT CONSERVATIVES TO BE ABLE TO REACT, COMMUNICATE AND AT WORSE TAKE UP ARMS TO FIGHT BACK. They have set up the fake voters, the newly dead, the bogus Id's, the voter rolls filled with illegal voters, the judges primed and ready to order illegal voting actions. Its coming. Make no mistake .. they misfired in 2016... they will not get it wrong in 2020. Its like the Islamist who got it wrong on the World Trade Center in 2008 and fixed and got it right the next time with disastrous consequences! The Democrats and the Chinese are working on a plan. Hell I don't know what its going to be.. but its coming!

Like Romeo said in the Play by Shakespeare...
 “I fear, too early: for my mind misgives Some consequence yet hanging in the stars Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this night's revels and expire the term Of a despised life closed in my breast By some vile forfeit of untimely death.” (Shakespeare 1.4.106-111)

I could be talking about America! 

So People start with this...Communication is KEY RIGHT ?
Facebook and Twitter and Google are displeased with the communication going on in your location and pulls the plug on your internet access, most likely by telling the major ISPs to turn off service Or using algorithms to completely render your posts dead in the ether! Happened to me. Happened to many of you! It can happen to all of our politicians. It could happen to Donald Trump.

This is what happened in Egypt Jan. 25 prompted by citizen protests, with sources estimating that the Egyptian government cut off approximately 88 percent of the country’s internet access. What do you do without internet? Step 1: Stop crying in the corner. Then start taking steps to reconnect with your network. Here’s a list of things you can do to keep the communication flowing.
 PREVENTIVE MEASURES: MAKE YOUR NETWORK TANGIBLE Print out your contact list, so your phone numbers aren’t stuck in the cloud. Some mail services like Gmail allow you to export your online contact list in formats that are more conducive to paper, such as CSV or Vcard, and offer step-by-step guides on how to do this. Keep them off line and on hard copy!
 BROADCAST ON THE RADIO: CB Radio: Short for “Citizens Band” radio, these two-way radios allow communication over short distances on 40 channels. You can pick one up for about $20 to $50 at Radio Shack, and no license is required to operate it. GET ONE NOW !
Ham radio: To converse over these radios, also known as “amateur radios,” you have to obtain an operator’s license from the FCC. Luckily, other Wired How-To contributors have already explained exactly what you need to do to get one and use it like a pro. However, if the President declares a State of Emergency, use of the radio could be extremely restricted or prohibited. GMRS: The General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) is a licensed land-mobile FM UHF radio service in the United States available for short-distance two-way communication. It is intended for use by an adult individual who possesses a valid GMRS license, as well as his or her immediate family members… They are more expensive than the walkie talkies typically found in discount electronics stores, but are higher quality.

 Family Radio Service: The Family Radio Service (FRS) is an improved walkie talkie radio system authorized in the United States since 1996. This personal radio service uses channelized frequencies in the ultra high frequency (UHF) band. It does not suffer the interference effects found on citizens’ band (CB) at 27 MHz, or the 49 MHz band also used by cordless phones, toys, and baby monitors.

 Microbroadcasting: Microbroadcasting is the process of broadcasting a message to a relatively small audience. This is not to be confused with low-power broadcasting. In radio terms, it is the use of low-power transmitters to broadcast a radio signal over the space of a neighborhood or small town. Similarly to pirate radio, microbroadcasters generally operate without a license from the local regulation body, but sacrifice range in favor of using legal power limits.

 Packet Radio Back to the ’90s: There do exist shortwave packet-radio modems. These are also excruciatingly slow, but may get your e-mail out. Like ham radio above it requires a ham radio license because they operate on ham radio frequencies.
CELL PHONES & TELEPHONE: Set up a phone tree: According to the American Association of University Women, a phone tree is “a prearranged, pyramid-shaped system for activating a group of people by telephone” that can “spread a brief message quickly and efficiently to a large number of people.” Dig out that contact list you printed out to spread the message down your pyramid of contacts. Enable Twitter via SMS: Though the thought of unleashing the Twitter fire hose in your text message inbox may seem horrifying, it would be better than not being able to connect to the outside world at all. The Twitter website has full instructions on how to redirect tweets to your phone.
Join Alternative Social Media NOW and create a Network ASAP!
Join the biggest and fastest growing only because a United Conservative Front is more important than bickering on which one is better! Lets harp about that after 2020 and we have won the Elections!
FAX: If you need to quickly send and receive documents with lengthy or complex instructions, phone conversations may result in misunderstandings, and delivering the doc by foot would take forever. Brush the dust off that bulky old machine, establish a connection by phone first with the recipient to make sure his machine is hooked up, then fax away. You may not need a fax machine to send or receive faxes if your computer has a dial-up fax application.

 NON-VIRTUAL BULLETIN BOARD Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the virtual world that we forget about resources available in the real world. Physical bulletin boards have been used for centuries to disseminate information and don’t require electricity to function. If you are fortunate enough to be getting information from some other source why not share it with your friends and neighbors with your own bulletin board? Cork, magnetic and marker bulletin boards are as close as your nearest dime store and can be mounted just about anywhere. And if push comes to shove you can easily make your own with scrap wood lying around the house. Getting back online: While it might be relatively easy for a government to cut connections by leveraging the major ISPs, there are some places they wouldn’t get to so readily, like privately-owned networks and independent ISPs. FIND THE PRIVATELY RUN ISPs

 In densely populated areas, especially in central business districts and city suburbs there are multiple home WiFi networks overlapping each other, some secure, some not. If there is no internet, open up your WiFi by removing password protection: If enough people do this it’s feasible to create a totally private WiFi service outside government control covering the CBD, and you can use applications that run Bonjour (iChat on Mac for example) to communicate with others on the open network and send and receive documents. **needs more clarification If you are a private ISP, it’s your time to shine. Consider allowing open access to your Wi-Fi routers to facilitate communication of people around you until the grid is back online.

 RETURN TO DIAL-UP According to an article in the BBC about old tech’s role in the Egyptian protests, “Dial-up modems are one of the most popular routes for Egyptians to get back online. Long lists of international numbers that connect to dial-up modems are circulating in Egypt thanks to net activists We Re-Build, Telecomix and others.” Dial-up can be slow. Often, there is a lightweight mobile version of a site that you can load from your desktop browser quickly despite the limitations of dial-up.
AD-HOC NETWORKING Most wireless routers, PCs, laptops, and even some ultramobile devices like cellphones have the ability to become part of an “ad hoc” network, where different “nodes” (all of the devices on the network) share the responsibility of transmitting data with one another. These networks can become quite large, and are often very easy to set up. If used properly by a tech-savvy person, such networks can be used to host temporary websites and chat rooms. There are many internet tutorials on the internet for ad hoc networking, so feel free to google some. Apple computers tend to have very accessible ad hoc functionality built in, including a pre-installed chat client (iChat) that will automatically set up an ad hoc “Rendezvous” chatroom among anybody on the network, without the need for an external service like AIM or Skype. Ad hoc network-hosting functionality is built in to the Wi-Fi menu. Windows computers have several third-party ad hoc chat applications available (such as Trillian) and setting up an ad hoc Wi-Fi network is almost as simple as on a Mac. Linux operating systems, of course, have plenty of third-party apps available, and most distros have ad hoc network-creation support built in. BUILD LARGE BRIDGED WIRELESS NETWORK Using popular wireless access point devices like a Linksys WRT54G, you can create a huge wireless bridged network — effectively creating a Local Area Network (LAN), or a private Internet that can be utilized by all users within range using a Wi-Fi enabled device. You can also link multiple devices together wirelessly, extending the range of your network. Most access points will cover a 100 meter area and if your wireless device is built to support the 802.11n wireless standard, you will get almost a 500 meter coverage area for each access point. To build a wireless bridge, check out the dd-wrt wiki, and learn how to configure Linksys WRT54G as a wireless client using this Anandtech thread. NINTENDO DS A used DS family device can be purchased inexpensively. In addition to wi-fi, the DS supports its own wireless protocols. Using Pictochat, it is possible to chat with nearby DS users without having any DS games. Unfortunately, the range is quite short. Some games, such as the fourth generation Pokemon games, support mail items. Thus you can send your message under the guise of just playing a game. Mail items can be sent through the Internet if you can get on the net and you and your partner(s) have each other’s friend codes. The original DS and the DS Lite do support the Opera web browser, but finding the game card and memory pack may be very difficult. Starting with the DSi, Opera is downloadable. INTRANET Your computer has the ability to set up your own INTRANET. This was done BEFORE the internet was popularized in two ways: Your computer dialed up other computers and sent them the contents of a message board, or local people people dialed into your computer. A nationwide system can be set up this way with a central location sending to many cities then each city sending out the info locally. BECOME UNTRACEABLE. USE VPN's If you’re going to post government secrets on your work-around site, you may want to set up an untraceable account. Really, you only need a mail drop, an assumed name, a prepaid credit card you can get at many stores to set up service.
GET SATELLITE ACCESS You can have very, very slow internet if you have something similar to an Iridium phone, which would allow you to do dial up at 2400 baud, which at least gives you e-mail. This will also work when your government has shut down GSM and telephone access, and will work pretty much anywhere on the planet. If you’re in the right place, get yourself KA-SAT access which is satellite broadband and will not be routed through any internet exchange that certain local governments may monitor or block
BACK TO BASICS Make some noise: Have an air horn or other loud instrument handy. It may just come down to being able to alert people in your local geographic area, who would otherwise be unaware of an emergency. You may also want to learn a bit about Morse code and have a cheat sheet available. Stay up to date with the latest news:




START PAMPHLETEERING IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD.
Be like Thomas Payne and bypass the digital portal altogether and use Copy Machines and Printers to create news Pamphlets and hand them out to your neighborhood.


The Time to do all this is now !!

ROBERT MUELLER HID EXCULPATORY EVIDENCE TO PROTECT HILLARY CLINTON

 

 

What Did Mueller Know? New Documents Show Clinton-Russia Scandal Dwarfs Anything on Trump’s Side

 

Contrary to the Left's favorite narrative, any Russia scandal has always been worse for Hillary Clinton than for Donald Trump. Recent revelations confirmed this Tuesday, and even implicated the special prosecutor at the center of the Trump-Russia investigation, former FBI director Robert Mueller.
In 2010, the Obama administration approved a controversial deal giving Russian company Rosatom partial control of Canadian mining company Uranium One (and with it 20 percent of U.S. uranium), just as Russians paid former president Bill Clinton for speeches and Hillary Clinton was secretary of State. To make matters worse, the FBI had already gathered evidence of Russian corruption in the U.S. but kept it secret just when it would have mattered most, The Hill reported Tuesday.
A confidential U.S. witness working in the Russian nuclear industry helped federal agents gather financial records, make secret recordings, and intercept email starting in 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised U.S. trucking company Transport Logistics International, in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Officials also acquired documents and an eyewitness account corroborating earlier reports that Russian officials had routed million of dollars into the U.S. to benefit the Clinton Foundation just as Hillary Clinton served on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which endorsed the Uranium One deal.
This racketeering scheme was allegedly conducted "with the consent of higher level officials" in Russia who "shared the proceeds," The Hill reported.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) did not bring immediate charges upon learning of the corruption in 2010, but kept investigating the matter for nearly four more years, leaving the American public and Congress in the dark.
Knowledge of Russian nuclear corruption on U.S. soil would have been vital to preventing the disastrous 2010 Uranium One deal, but it also might have prevented a lesser known approval in 2011. That year, the Obama administration approved a request from Rosatom's subsidiary Tenex, allowing it to sell commercial uranium to U.S. nuclear power plants (in addition to reprocessed uranium from dismantled Soviet nuclear weapons sold under the Megatons to Megawatts program).

The Russians were compromising American contractors in the nuclear industry with kickbacks and extortion threats, all of which raised legitimate national security concerns," a person who worked on the case told The Hill. "And none of that evidence got aired before the Obama administration made those decisions."

Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Trump-Russia investigation, was at the helm of the FBI from 2001 until 2013, so it seems likely he was culpable in keeping this investigation secret — at the very time when it would have been most pivotal for U.S. national security.
A man who may be responsible for allowing tremendous Russian corruption on U.S. soil to continue — and even intensify — during the Obama administration is now leading the investigation into potential Russian connections involving the man who ran for president against Obama's legacy. Conflict of interest, much?
In 2015, conservative author Peter Schweitzer published a blistering story in The New York Times uncovering Clinton's connections to and benefits from the 2010 Uranium One purchase. The Obama administration and the Clintons defended their authorization of that purchase by insisting that there was no evidence any Russians or donors to the Clinton Foundation engaged in wrongdoing. They also argued that there was no national security reason to oppose the Uranium One deal

According to documents from the FBI, Energy Department, and court proceedings, however, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence before the committee's decision that Vadim Mikerin — the Russian overseer of Putin's U.S. nuclear expansion — was engaged in wrongdoing since 2009.
Mikerin directed Rosatom's Tenex in Moscow since the early 2000s, and he oversaw Rosatom's nuclear collaboration with the U.S. under the Megatons to Megawatts program. In 2010, he acquired a U.S. work visa to open Rosatom's new American arm, Tenam.
According to a November 2014 indictment, Mikerin "did knowingly and willfully combine, conspire, confederate and agree with other persons ... to obstruct, delay and affect commerce and the movement of an article and commodity (enriched uranium) in commerce by extortion" between 2009 and 2012.
His conduct was discovered with the help of a confidential witness who began making kickback payments at Mikerin's direction, with the permission of the FBI. The first recorded kickback payment was dated November 27, 2009.
Energy Department Agent David Gadren testified that, "as part of the scheme, Mikerin, with the consent of higher level officials at TENEX and Rosatom (both Russian state-owned entities) would offer no-bid contracts to US businesses in exchange for kickbacks in the form of money payments made to some offshore banks accounts."
The investigation was supervised by then-U.S. attorney (and currently President Trump's deputy attorney general) Rod Rosenstein, then-assistant FBI director (and now deputy FBI director) Andrew McCabe, and then-FBI director Robert Mueller. All three of these men play key roles in the Trump-Russia investigation.
The FBI investigation, kept secret from the American public just when the Obama administration made key international business decisions, also exposed a serious national security breach: Mikerin signed a contract giving American trucking firm Transport Logistics International the rights to transport Russia's uranium around the U.S. — in return for more than $2 million in kickbacks from executives.

Uncovering and blocking such a massive Russian nuclear bribery scheme would seem like a pivotal success for the DOJ and FBI, but they took little credit for the investigation when Mikerin, the Russian financier, and the trucking firm executives were arrested in 2014.
A full year later, the DOJ put out a press release unveiling the defendants' plea deals. At that time, the case against Mikerin consisted of a single charge of money laundering for a scheme from 2004 to 2014. Although agents had evidence of criminal wrongdoing since 2009, federal prosecutors only cited a handful of transactions in 2011 and 2012 in the plea agreement. These came well after the Uranium One deal.
The final court case also made no mention of the Russian attempts to peddle influence with the Clintons, which the FBI undercover informant witnessed, despite the documents showing millions of dollars sent from Russian nuclear businesses to an American entity connected to the Clinton Foundation.
Only in December 2015 did the Justice Department announce Mikerin's sentence of 48 months in prison and the forfeiture of more than $2.1 million. The release referred to him as "a former Russian official residing in Maryland."
Ronald Hosko, then-assistant FBI director in charge of criminal cases, told The Hill he did not recall being briefed about Mikerin's case, despite the criminal charges. "I had no idea this case was being conducted," he said.
Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), then-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, also told The Hill he had not been briefed about the Russian nuclear corruption case.
"Not providing information on a corruption scheme before the Russian uranium deal was approved by U.S. regulators ... has served to undermine U.S. national security interests by the very people charged with protecting them," Rogers said.
In light of such a scandal, it seems particularly damning that members of the intelligence community have been shamelessly leaking allegations against Donald Trump involving potential Russian connections. Every story in this direction turns out to be a dead end.
Most recently, the Russian-backed Facebook ads turned out not only to support Hillary Clinton and Black Lives Matter, but to have a tiny impact on the election as a whole. In fact, Democrat senators like Richard Blumenthal made fools of themselves in a fruitless attempt to pin these ads on the Trump campaign.
Meanwhile, evidence continues to mount that the Obama administration wiretapped key leaders in the Trump campaign, most notably Paul Manafort, and may have spied on Trump himself in doing so.
The real Russia scandal has been a Clinton scandal, from 2010 onward — and now, in a darkly ironic twist of fate, it involves the very former FBI director responsible for investigating that elusive "collusion" between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. It seems the Left's attempts to hide their own corruption by pinning it on Trump may be coming to an end.




 

The U.S. is a Democratic Constitutional Republic, and Yes, It Matters. Keep it that way. Here's why!





The U.S. is a Democratic Constitutional Republic, and Yes, It Matters.

THE DEMOCRAT LEFT IS TRYING TO CONVERT IT INTO A "DEMOCRACY" = "MOB RULE" .. THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS A SOCIALIST OLIGARCHY!

WE MUST FIGHT THEM WITH DEADLY FORCE TO KEEP IT A REPUBLIC!

THEN WE NEED A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT THAT PUNISHES ANY POLITICIAN OR GROUP THAT TRIES TO SUBVERT THE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC!



James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution and primary author of the Bill of Rights, repeatedly emphasized that the United States is a “republic” and not a “democracy.” In stark contrast, Jonathan Bernstein, a Bloomberg columnist and former political science professor recently insisted:
  • “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’.”
  • “For all practical purposes, and in most contexts, ‘republic’ and ‘democracy’ are synonyms.”
  • When Madison said that the Constitution established a “republic” and not a “democracy,” he was using a “mild form of propaganda” and “none of this had to do with specific institutions or forms of government. Just word choice.”
Those statements, along with the bulk of Bernstein’s column, are misleading or patently false. In reality:
  • People were not trying to remove the term “democracy” from Michigan textbooks. Instead, they proposed education standards that would teach students that the U.S. is a “unique form of democracy.”
  • The proposed standards made clear that the U.S. is not merely a “democracy” or a “republic” but a “democratic” and “constitutional republic” that “limits the powers of the federal government.”
  • In Madison’s day and now, there are crucial differences between democracies and republics that are vital to the issues of human rights and equal justice.
The Michigan Standards
In 2014, the Michigan Department of Education began to revise its social studies standards, releasing a draft of them in 2018. Soon thereafter, critics began attacking the planned changes as “far-right.” Beyond the issue of whether or not this generalization is cogent, some of the specific allegations used to support it are plainly false.
For example, a Change.org petition signed by more than 75,000 people claims that the standards “would eliminate references to climate change.” In fact, the older standards contain only one reference to climate change, while the newer standards contain two. Notably, these are social studies standards, not environmental science standards.
The article that started the uproar over this issue, which was published by a Michigan news outlet called Bridge, reports that the newer standards “limited” climate change “to an optional example sixth-grade teachers can use when discussing climate in different parts of the planet.” This is deceitful in three respects:
  1. The newer standards also mention climate change in the context of contemporary global issues.
  2. The older standards’ lone reference to climate change also appears only in the sixth-grade section of the standards.
  3. The Michigan Department of Education’s comparison of the older and newer standards states 74 times that the newer standards “relocated” numerous subjects to an “examples column” that spans most of the document. This includes climate change and many other topics, like “Independence Day,” “respect for rule of law,” “taking care of oneself,” “Constitution Day,” and “respect for the rights of others.”
Contrary to what Bridge led its readers to believe, this is not a case of global warming being singled out and relegated to an optional example. This was a general layout change that involved numerous issues, including many conservative ones. Yet instead of correcting Bridge, other media outlets like the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Detroit Free Press repeated these specious allegations.
Likewise, Bernstein’s claim that people were trying to purge the term “democracy” is untrue. The newer standards use the word “democracy” 34 times, including 21 times in the phrase “American Democracy.” In fact, the newer standards actually use the term “democracy” one more time than the older standards.
The newer standards also repeatedly state that the U.S. is a “unique form of democracy” called a “constitutional republic.” This differs from other republics like the People’s Republic of China or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It also clashes with the agenda of many people in the United States, including some of the nation’s most prominent politicians.
Why It Matters 
Bernstein leads his readers to believe that there is no practical difference between republics and democracies. He asserts that “when Madison said the U.S. was a republic and not a democracy, he meant (in today’s vocabulary) that it was a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. Given that all modern democracies employ a ‘scheme of representation,’ that’s an unimportant distinction today.” Bernstein quotes a grand total of five words from one of Madison’s writings to make that case, but the full historical record shows otherwise.
Early during the convention at which the Constitution was written, Madison declared that the government it creates must provide “more effectually for the security of private rights and the steady dispensation of Justice.” He said that violations of these ideals “had more perhaps than any thing else, produced this convention.”
Madison then singled out “democracy” as the cause of those abuses and pointed out that all societies are “divided into different Sects, Factions, and interests,” and “where a majority are united by a common interest or passion, the rights of the minority are in danger.” He stressed that:
  • this is “verified by the histories of every country, ancient and modern.”
  • this is the cause of slavery, “the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.”
  • it is the duty of the convention to “frame a republican system” of government that will better protect the rights of the minority from the will of the majority.
Other delegates to the Constitutional Convention concurred with Madison. Edmund Randolph of Virginia observed “that the general object was to provide a cure for the evils under which the U.S. labored; that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy….” Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts stated: “The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy.”
For the purpose of curbing such evils, Madison and the other framers of the Constitution developed a system of checks and balances on the powers of the government that they formed. In the words of Madison, these provisions were to “guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part” and “will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States.”
One of these features is the Electoral College, which was designed to prevent highly populated states from dominating the election for U.S. president. As shown below in the electoral precinct map from Washington State University professor Ryne Rohla, the vast majority of America’s communities voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet Hillary Clinton’s personal vote count was higher, mainly due to support in big cities:  AND ILLEGAL  VOTERS WHO HAVE BEEN ASSISTED IN VOTING FOR THE BIG GOVERNMENT CANDIDATE! Mod rule assures that the will of the masses will be taken as final and the meritocracy will be stripped away and replaced by a Marxist Ideology of Free every thing for everybody who cannot afford it and taking it away from those that do.. until nobody has anything except the "RULING CLASS"

How they will sustain this in America is very simple. The Natural resources of America is valued about $400 Trillion. They will exploit it all to sustain their Control. We have 1000 times more Natural resources than Venezuela. Venezuela stripped their country and it lasted 28 years and made Hugo Chavez a $ 4 Billion dollar man. Imagine what the controllers of America could do for 250 years!


Exposing the falsity of Bernstein’s storyline, most Democratic presidential hopefuls have called for abolishing the Electoral College based on arguments about democracy. South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, for example, said of the Electoral College: “It’s gotta go. We need a national popular vote. It would be reassuring from the perspective of believing that we’re a democracy.” Educators build support for such agendas when they teach students that “the U.S. is a democracy” without any qualifiers.
Another major implication is the centralization of power. President Trump and former President Obama have complained about opposition parties standing in the way of their agendas, but the founders created different branches of government for the expressed purpose of “keeping each other in their proper places.” As detailed in Federalist Paper 51, this entails a separation of powers between:
  • the states and federal government.
  • the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the federal government.
  • the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
A mere “representative democracy,” as described by Bernstein, does not necessarily have such features. And without them, a “stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker,” as stated in Federalist 51. Such governments, wrote the paper’s author, are akin to “anarchy,” because “the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger.”
Nonetheless, some people wish the Constitution didn’t have all of these provisions. For instance, Sanford Levinson, a professor of law and government at the University of Texas at Austin has called the Constitution “imbecilic” because its “separation of powers” and “checks and balances” causes “gridlock” that “prevents needed reforms.” He would prefer that the U.S. government had more elements of a “direct democracy.”
All of these facts reveal major differences between the words “democracy” and “republic.” Hence, Bernstein’s blurring of these terms fosters ignorance of the crucial reasons why the founders of the U.S. structured the government as they did.
The Foremost Matter
The most substantial check on unfettered democracy created by the U.S. founders is Article V of the Constitution, which allows it to be amended with the approval of three-quarters of the states. This high bar is meant to stop a simple majority from trampling on the rights of others. At the same time, it gives the Constitution flexibility to change if there is widespread agreement.
Yet, Professor Levinson has argued that the “worst single part of the Constitution” is “surely Article V, which has made our Constitution among the most difficult to amend of any in the world.” He would like to make it easier to change, which would also make it easier for democratically elected majorities to strip people of their constitutional rights. This includes, for example, freedom of speech, the “right to be tried by an impartial jury,” the “right of the people to keep and bear Arms,” and the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”
This is why George Washington, the president of the Constitutional Convention and first U.S. President, highlighted the import of Article V in his farewell address to the nation:
If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.
Many politicians and jurists have attempted to undercut this restraint on democracy. One of the most candid admissions of this came from Thurgood Marshall, a liberal icon who mentored President Obama’s second Supreme Court appointee, Elena Kagen. When asked to describe his judicial philosophy, Marshall responded, “You do what you think is right and let the law catch up.”
This view is reflected in a third grade social studies textbook titled Our Communities from Macmillan/McGraw-Hill. It states: “The Supreme Court is made up of nine judges. They make sure our laws are fair.”
Marshall’s doctrine—which violates the oath of office that every public official takes to uphold the Constitution—allows a majority of the Supreme Court to flout the Constitution based on their personal notions of right and wrong. Since Supreme Court justices are appointed for life by the president and confirmed by the Senate, these elected officials can effectively void the Constitution by appointing jurists with such mindsets.
That is what occurred in the Supreme Court’s ruling in Korematsu v, United States. In this World War II-era case, six of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s appointees to the Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional for Roosevelt to put U.S. citizens of Japanese descent into detention camps without any evidence that the individuals were disloyal to the United States. These justices ruled in this way in spite of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment requirement that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
Had the justices faithfully applied the U.S. Constitution in Korematsu, this infringement of human rights would not have happened. However, under democratic standards, it could, and it did.
Conclusion
After the uproar that ensued when the Michigan Board of Education released draft social studies standards in May of 2018, an election changed the composition of the board from an equal number of Republicans and Democrats to two Republicans and six Democrats. This new board released an altered draft of the standards in March of 2019.
These latest standards never use the phrase “constitutional republic,” which appeared 43 times in the previous standards. Instead, they use similar phrases among a jumble of other terms to describe the U.S. government, such as “republican government,” “constitutional government,” “American democracy,” “representative republic,” and “Constitutional Democracy.”
To Madison and other framers of the Constitution, the words “democracy” and “republic” had important differences. Democracy meant majority rule, and it still has this connotation today. A republic, on the other hand, meant a democratic government with limited powers that are widely divided among different voting blocs in order to protect the rights of as many people as possible.
Towards that end, the founders of the U.S. produced what is now the longest-standing constitution of all nations in the world. As explained by Encyclopædia Britannica, it is “the oldest written national constitution in use,” and it “has served as a model for other countries, its provisions being widely imitated in national constitutions throughout the world.”
Like many words, the meanings of “democracy” and “republic” have changed over past centuries, and neither now fully describes the United States or differentiates it from other “republics” like the People’s Republic of China. A term that arguably does that is “democratic constitutional republic.” This captures in modern terminology the key elements that the founders put in place.
The U.S. also distinguishes itself from other democratic constitutional republics by virtue of its stronger protections against tyranny by majorities. However, the practical application of this is sometimes undercut by politicians and jurists who violate their oaths of office and place their personal agendas over that of the Constitution.