By BOB BIRD
Democracy-Schmocracy. We are a republic, not a democracy. Notice how Democrats/socialists/communists/leftists have made “democracy” their oft-repeated mantra. It fits right in with “People’s Democratic Republic of China” and other such euphemistic titles, disguising state terror and genocide under sweet-sounding blather.
The point is, true democracy is unwieldy. American “progressivism” (which is really regressive) has held sway since the 1890s. In the name of “democracy” they have enlarged the right to vote. In early U.S. history it was guarded in a very niggling way, and for good reason. But since then it has become quite generous, and now — they are trying to enlarge it to include all “residents”. Not citizens, but residents. This means, as we all know, illegal immigrants who cannot even speak the language, have no intention to enculturate themselves and reside here only to enjoy the fruits of someone else’s hard-earned and over-taxed labor.
“Universal suffrage” used to mean including women, minorities and the poor being granted the right to vote, but now it is understood to mean something else — and something quite sinister.
In Homer, Alaska’s plantation for all-things-liberal, the socialists actually invited me to speak this spring on “democracy” for the 250th anniversary of our independence. They quickly withdrew the invitation when I said that I was going to point out that, even on the local level, the USA is by and large a republic.
Horrors! We’re not a democracy? What’s the difference? Apparently, they were too scared to learn.
In a republic, we have hard and fast rules about limiting government power, as well as who gets to vote for our representatives. Pure democracy seldom works, although we do use it for things like referendums and initiatives. Notice that this is never used on the federal level, rarely on the state, and only sometimes on the very local levels.
How do you want your borough or municipality to pass laws and regulations? Even there, we really don’t use “democracy”, we elect our assembly members, and their authority is bound by charter (“constitutional”) limitations. I don’t think we would like a massive town-hall meeting, going on endlessly into the night or conducted in the streets, such as is done sometimes in certain Swiss cantons.
Socialist tendencies existed for centuries before Marxism. In the 1600s the English had “Levelers”, a euphemism that wanted universal suffrage and basically DEI. They were destructive of private property and wanted, um, “No Kings!”. The French Revolution, which began in 1789 as an earnest desire for a “constitutional monarchy”, quickly accelerated into proto-communism, dictatorship, genocide and ultimately self-destruction.
America’s founding fathers, keen observers of history, wanted no part of this madness. There was to be no citizen voting for U.S. Senators, who were to represent the states, not the people. Presidents were to be chosen by the state legislators’ electors.
Thus, they wanted to make sure that the right to vote, which meant electing only their state leaders and their representative to the U.S. House, remained in the hands of the productive and responsible members of society. Thus, they instituted a property requirement, in most places about a $200 threshold, before granting the right to vote.
If this seems harsh, as schools have taught us, think again. Americans were 95% farmers, and it was a cinch for a farmer’s collective property to be worth more than that: in land, livestock, buildings, fences and household goods.
So, why did they limit the right to vote? Because there existed, as in all societies, groups of bums, itinerant wanderers, drunkards, snake-oil salesmen, pick-pockets, beggars and the like. If they were granted the universal franchise, they would be pandered to vote for unscrupulous politicians, who would play on their easily conjured resentments, and a sense of injustice that “the world owes me a living”. Most of these tramps were quickly and easily warned to get out of town. That there would be an occasional innocent victim needs no proof. It’s a fallen world, and true injustice does exist.
And women? You are right, wives didn’t vote, but of course she had influence, and anyway voting to her made little difference. The average woman back then had eight pregnancies in her lifetime. Living on a farm, she simply could not make the day-long trip to the nearest polling place with her husband. If she was expecting a baby, it was dangerous. If she was nursing, it was barely possible, and late autumn weather was an obvious hazard. There were kids to monitor at home, chickens to feed, food to cook. The older children certainly helped when Dad was away. Her hard-working husband knew her opinions. What he was actually doing on election day was casting a household vote.
When women began to demand the franchise, it was always in a town or city, where the polling place was right down the street. The husband earned a non-agricultural livelihood. And when they did get the franchise, by and large husband and wife thought alike. When the 19th amendment was passed (at precisely the time when the majority of Americans were no longer farmers), electoral outcomes did not change drastically.
Feminists will grind their teeth and hiss, but the reason women did not vote in the 18th and 19th centuries was because they couldn’t, and did not need to. And as soon as the majority of society became urbanized in 1920, they won the franchise.
And happily, race was justly erased as a qualification.
But there was and is the political class … as in the bureaucracy. It is always in their vested interest to expand government services, create new departments and ensure their own perpetual livelihood.
Go ahead and be shocked, but someone should ask: should state employees be allowed to vote in state elections? Borough employees in borough elections? Teachers and school staff in school board elections? (They already cannot run for the school board as active teachers.) Or federal employees in federal elections? (See the Hatch Act about promotional activities in federal contests.)
Any conservatives who fall into these categories might have their feelings hurt. Years back, I was one myself, but I would not have complained about being prohibited to vote for school board candidates. These are built-in constituencies to promote socialistic tendencies, and while there are exceptions, of course, most government employees know on which side their bread is buttered: with the “more government” party and its candidates. If you are puzzled as to why anyone would vote for the lunatic asylum that the Democratic Party has become, there is your answer.
But I maintain that we need to re-institute a criteria for voting eligibility, to begin restricting it to the productive and responsible classes, and to make sure that the bureaucracy does not feather its own nest.
And if you want a different opinion on these demographic truths, you can always enroll in a local college course or purchase a textbook authored by Gloria Steinem.
Then think for yourself.
Conservative talk radio host Bob Bird anchors the “Talk of the Kenai” show for KSRM, and was named the 2025 Broadcaster of the Year by the Alaska Broadcasters Association. He was chairman of the former Alaskan Independence Party.
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12 thoughts on “Bob Bird: Democracy-schmocracy — America is a republic”
The notion that a woman in the 19th century could never leave home and hearth because she had children is utter nonsense. Women could and did do a great deal outside of child-rearing, and I doubt sincerely that it was just impossible for them to go into town to vote. Women got the vote in Wyoming in 1869, when Wyoming became a state, and you can bet most people there were in agriculture, as my ancestors were. My great grandmother not only taught school in a one room school house, she raised 8 children, helped run the family dairy farm, did the finances certainly, and organized the Temperance movement among other political causes. Please try not to equate women of the 19th century with helpless females. They certainly were not.
Bob, normally your essays are well reasoned. For some reason, this one falls far below your usual standards. It’s downright silly. By your reasoning in recent essays, military members and anyone receiving government benefits should also be disenfranchised. I guess you would include government retirees, people receiving Social Security and Medicare. In the end, only the wealthy vote in your republic.
Where did your pioneer woman fantasy originate? History teaches us that women in the 18th and 19th centuries were not home-bound baby makers. As for the franchise, my female Scandinavian ancestors voted in the Althings without their society collapsing. My US female ancestors mostly graduated from college in the 19th century and were quite competent about politics. My great great grandmother gave a rousing speech rallying some townspeople who feared rumors of Morgan’s Raiders while she was leading a contingent of wives on a visit from Illinois to visit their soldier husbands in Tennessee. My 2-year-old great grandmother accompanied her on the trip. Obviously this was in the 1860s.
I’ve been sympathetic to the scheme where only veterans have the franchise, because they committed their lives for the republic. Robert Heinlein among others suggested this. Preferable to only the rich guys vote.
Time for your grandkids to take away your car keys, Bob. Your understanding of women in history is revisionist at best.
Totally Agree! … “ we need to re-institute a criteria for voting eligibility, to begin restricting it to the productive and responsible classes.” There’s a growing portion of the population that literally have no skin-in-the-game and completely muck-up the system.
Additionally, as we have ‘allowed’ ourselves to be drawn into a “destructive” process, specifically a 3-part process:
TOLERANCE … Basically tolerating the re-defining our form of Guv’ment to be known as democracy.
ACCEPTANCE … Basically accepting our form of Guv’ment to be known as democracy.
PROMOTING … Basically to promoting our form of Guv’ment to be known as democracy.
That 3-part process needs to be DESTROYED immediately, as well as anything // anyone associated with it, as it is very damaging to society. The sooner it’s destroyed, the better!
The Founders created a brilliant Republic. For a moral people. We no longer are.
It’s an imperfect world. Exceptions always existed. The examples of the comments’ criticisms do not fall into the time when the vast majority of Americans were farmers, but that is when the Constitution was written, and what Jefferson foresaw would be needed to preserve freedom. The transitional changes were already occurring by the 1830s. The NORM was what women could do on a farming family. Sorry to disagree, but devotion to family was NOT being “a helpless female”. It was performing the noblest of professions: raising God-fearing human beings. Like I said, the Gloria Steinem books certainly hated that. Wasn’t she a great influence on the way we think? I know it is hard to scrub feminist propaganda that has infected us since the 60s. And recipients of state or federal welfare were unheard of in the 18th and 19th centuries. It fell to charities and churches, so it was not part of the equation like it is today. And we kept a very small standing army until the 20th century. One can now better understand the demonic brilliance of changing America into a warfare/welfare state. Like I said, if you wonder why Democrats control things, THERE is your answer. I don’t think the critics of this column understand these things. But I do not fault their opinions. It is good to disturb the comfort of the status quo. Hasn’t Covid has taught us THAT? I won’t insult their intelligence, like they have mine. We need to sharpen our thoughts only by disagreement, not by a perpetuation of a thoughtless consensus. Truly, even today’s self-identified conservatives have forfeited important principles. And few would argue that our culture is any longer a Christian one, and perhaps that is the #1 reality of why we are in this fix. You cannot improve a boxer — or a culture — without sparring.
I’m sorry if you think I insulted your intelligence, Bob, but I do believe you are misinformed about the historical roles of women in society, particularly in agrarian regions. I likewise doubt that my great grandmother was a special case who acted outside of any accepted roles of women at the time. She also loaded up her 8 kids into a Conestoga wagon and drove them to see Yellowstone, rather far from Laramie where they farmed, and then wrote a book about the trip including illustrations. Breastfeeding did not tie her to the house any more than it does for women today. All of her children, including the women, went to college in some form or another, even though she had an eighth grade education. The notion that childcare, which is in fact a noble profession, consumed the entirety of a woman’s time and intellect is, as I said above, utter nonsense.
The United States of America is in fact REPUBLIC. And each State is guaranteed a REPUBLICAN form of government, as clearly stated in the Constitution, per Article iv Section 4. Please do not take my word for it, read it with your own eyes, as you should.
Those who advocate democracy, sharia and communism are committing acts of Sedition. Folks really need to read the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, as they are the founding documents of our Republic, as well as the Law from which all of our Laws come. They are not a suicide pact.
Stopped reading after: “Those who advocate democracy, sharia and communism are committing acts of Sedition.”
Everyone knows what you’ve fallen for. It’s a shame you don’t understand the problems of sharia and communism.
Those who stop reading accelerate their ignorance. That’d be fine except for the fact that your vote can take the rest of us down with you.
Evan would do well for America if he’d stay away from the voting booths.
It is too bad that the majority of the voting public is so ignorant of the Constitutional documents. Bob is absolutely correct in stating that we are a Representative Republic. There are elements of a democracy in certain aspects of the voting process, in certain elections, and in certain States, but to simply throw the word “democracy”word around in everyday commentary, as in “A threat to our democracy” or “Our Democracy”, is either an obvious sign of the speakers ignorance, and or an intentional manipulation to influence the voting public. The people that are using this tactic are hoping the rest of us will just go along with it. The fact that the public education students do not know these differences by the time they leave K-12, is another obvious failure of the public education system. Everyone really should read the State and Federal Constitutional documents, take the time to understand how a Representative Republic operates, and to know how their required participation in it fits into the process.
Secondly, I have been promoting that idea of limiting the government employee’s ability to vote in certain elections for some time now. The reason is obvious as well. Government employees have a direct conflict of interest in bond propositions, ordinances, and law. The government proposes these things for a specific reason. We the citizen are supposed to be involved enough to know why government wants these added measures, and then decide to allow it, or not. But it is not working that way. Government is cooking up the proposal and then voting on it with limited public involvement. When one couples that fact with election manipulation like what we have here in Anchorage in the spring elections, the government will prevail every time, unless there is a concerted effort to get people to vote in the spring election cycle. It is a know fact that the voting public does not come to vote in the same numbers that they vote in the fall election cycle.
Government will always vote for more tax, more government, more regulation, and less liberty.
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