Republicanism In The United States
Republicanism is the political values system that has been a major part of American civic thought since the American Revolution. It stresses liberty and "unalienable" rights as central values, makes the people as a whole sovereign, rejects aristocracy and inherited political power, expects citizens to be independent in their performance of civic duties, and vilifies corruption. American republicanism was founded and first practiced by the Founding Fathers in the 18th century. This system was based on early Roman, Renaissance and English models and ideas. It formed the basis for the American Revolution and the consequential Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Constitution (1787), as well as the Gettysburg Address (1863).
Republicanism may be distinguished from other forms of democracy as it asserts that people have unalienable rights that cannot be voted away by a majority of voters. Alexis de Tocqueville warned about the "tyranny of the majority" in a democracy, and advocates of the rights of minorities have warned that the courts needed to protect those rights by reversing efforts by voters to terminate the rights of an unpopular minority.
The term "republicanism" is derived from the term "republic", but the two words have different meanings. A "republic" is a form of government (one without a hereditary ruling class) while "republicanism" is a political ideology that can appear in republics or monarchies.
Two major parties were explicitly named after the idea—the Republican party of Thomas Jefferson (founded in 1793, and often called the "Democratic-Republican Party" by political scientists), and the current Republican party (founded in 1854).
Read more about Republicanism In The United States: New Nation: The Constitution, Civil War and Reconstruction, Progressive Era, New Deal Era To Present, Legal Terminology
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united and/or states:
“What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others.”
—Carlos Fuentes (b. 1928)
“Hearing, seeing and understanding each other, humanity from one end of the earth to the other now lives simultaneously, omnipresent like a god thanks to its own creative ability. And, thanks to its victory over space and time, it would now be splendidly united for all time, if it were not confused again and again by that fatal delusion which causes humankind to keep on destroying this grandiose unity and to destroy itself with the same resources which gave it power over the elements.”
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“The people of the United States have been fortunate in many things. One of the things in which we have been most fortunate has been that so far, due perhaps to certain basic virtues in our traditional ways of doing things, we have managed to keep the crisis of western civilization, which has devastated the rest of the world and in which we are as much involved as anybody, more or less at arm’s length.”
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