Here's a relevant passage from the book (pp. 255-56). It confirms that "republic" is an ideological, rather than a theoretical, category:
Foreign observers were impressed by the intensity of political interest among ordinary Americans. During the years from roughly the 1760s to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 an American demos began to establish a foothold and to find institutional expression, if not full realization. State constitutions were amended by provisions that broadened the suffrage, abolished property qualifications for office, and in one case instituted women's suffrage. There were also efforts to ease debtor laws, even to abolish slavery. Those "attacks" on property and the concomitant threat of demotic rule were crucial considerations prompting several outstanding politicians (Madison, Hamilton, John Adams) to organize a quiet counterrevolution aimed at institutionalizing a counterforce to challenge the prevailing decentralized system of thirteen sovereign states in which some state legislatures were controlled by "popular" forces. A new system of national power was proposed, at once centered yet with authority coextensive with the boundaries of the nation, and designed to discourage demotic power both by reducing the authority of the states, several of which had enacted legislation favorable to the lower classes, and by minimizing the role of the demos in national institutions. Only the House of Representatives would be more or less directly elected.34 The theory was this: the less the demotic presence, the more likely that the populace would defer to men of talent, judgment, and political experience--a governing class composed largely of lawyers, financiers, and plantation owners who would serve the common good although not necessarily all classes to the same extent. Thus was reborn the idea of a republican elite. The aim, which Madison, Hamilton, Adams and several other members of the emerging political class bluntly stated, was to ensure that the new regime, while abstractly based upon "the people," would be directed by the representatives of wealth, status (slave-owners), and achievement rather than of democratic majorities. Republican theory emerged as the counterforce to demotic power, thus perpetuating a dualism that had first appeared in ancient Athens. As noted earlier, republicanism promoted the notion of a governing class, an idealized aristocracy, virtuous, able, and public spirited. When the theory was transported from Britain to America, it had to accommodate to bourgeois values of wealth and competence and to acknowledge in some degree the presence of democratic ideas and practices.35 In America republicanism had to find a place for democracy, eventually even endow it with sovereignty--if only in the abstract--while contriving obstacles to popular power that simultaneously advantaged the Few (e.g., a property qualification for voting) and defined governing in ways that corresponded to the abilities of a new class of merchants, bankers, lawyers, and manufacturers.
Those "attacks" on property and the concomitant threat of demotic rule were crucial considerations prompting several outstanding politicians (Madison, Hamilton, John Adams) to organize a quiet counterrevolution aimed at institutionalizing a counterforce to challenge the prevailing decentralized system of thirteen sovereign states in which some state legislatures were controlled by "popular" forces. A new system of national power was proposed, at once centered yet with authority coextensive with the boundaries of the nation, and designed to discourage demotic power both by reducing the authority of the states, several of which had enacted legislation favorable to the lower classes, and by minimizing the role of the demos in national institutions. Only the House of Representatives would be more or less directly elected.34 The theory was this: the less the demotic presence, the more likely that the populace would defer to men of talent, judgment, and political experience--a governing class composed largely of lawyers, financiers, and plantation owners who would serve the common good although not necessarily all classes to the same extent. Thus was reborn the idea of a republican elite. The aim, which Madison, Hamilton, Adams and several other members of the emerging political class bluntly stated, was to ensure that the new regime, while abstractly based upon "the people," would be directed by the representatives of wealth, status (slave-owners), and achievement rather than of democratic majorities.
Republican theory emerged as the counterforce to demotic power, thus perpetuating a dualism that had first appeared in ancient Athens. As noted earlier, republicanism promoted the notion of a governing class, an idealized aristocracy, virtuous, able, and public spirited. When the theory was transported from Britain to America, it had to accommodate to bourgeois values of wealth and competence and to acknowledge in some degree the presence of democratic ideas and practices.35 In America republicanism had to find a place for democracy, eventually even endow it with sovereignty--if only in the abstract--while contriving obstacles to popular power that simultaneously advantaged the Few (e.g., a property qualification for voting) and defined governing in ways that corresponded to the abilities of a new class of merchants, bankers, lawyers, and manufacturers.
The theory was this: the less the demotic presence, the more likely that the populace would defer to men of talent, judgment, and political experience--a governing class composed largely of lawyers, financiers, and plantation owners who would serve the common good although not necessarily all classes to the same extent. Thus was reborn the idea of a republican elite. The aim, which Madison, Hamilton, Adams and several other members of the emerging political class bluntly stated, was to ensure that the new regime, while abstractly based upon "the people," would be directed by the representatives of wealth, status (slave-owners), and achievement rather than of democratic majorities.
Emperor Joseph II said, "Everything for the people, nothing by the people."
It was inevitable that, given how the constitution was designed to prevent a majority from emerging, the US would end up where it is today, a plutocracy. The only remedy against the political power that comes from great wealth is a vigorous democracy.
Of course, democracy is in a weakened state in Europe as well:
Ruling the Void? The Hollowing of Western Democracy
But at least European countries are not subject to the corrupting effects of running an empire. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
The start of capitalism depends on the definition, with some definitions it well predates Absolutism.
It is hard for despots to be enlightened and progress-minded if they have to deal with powerful monied interests.
Absolutism was a restoration of royal power against both powerful feudal and monied interests. Earlier kings were already dependent on bankiers to fight their wars. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Democracy, by and large, was a convenient ideology to foment a revolution when the plutocrats and the nobility ceased to be coterminous.
Liberty and freedom and individual inalienable rights and all that jazz just piggybacked on that trend.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
But, starting with the Reagan presidency, a new kind of anti-democratic system began to emerge, one grounded in the US's being a superpower.
I don't think this is new at all. I see echoes of Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine all over it...
Also, what I was thinking of was that during the Reagan presidency, the press changed, becoming postmodern. The idea that journalists could be objective observers of reality was given up. Any position became just a point of view, with the new journalistic standard being that "both sides of the story" need to be told.
I remember watching a discussion about Star Wars on the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour in the early 80s, and thinking I was seeing something new. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
This tendency had been kept mostly in check during the early postwar period, by a variety of different institutional, social and legal constraints (anti-trust laws, comparatively strong newsie labour unions, fairness doctrines, the comparative lack of political polarisation and many others). Those constraints were either withering or being actively dismantled in the early 80's and late '70s, and so the press returned to its earlier role as propagandist (of course, on those matters where the political consensus departed from reality - most notably in matters of foreign policy and "The Cold War" - this role had never really been abandoned in the first place...).
There were three crucial differences this time around, though: The absence of any kind of organised labour with the capacity to underwrite their own news organisations, the existence of a large, organised propaganda industry and the comparative affluence of modern society, which to a large extent enable us to insulate ourselves from the consequences of wrong-headed policies until they are deeply entrenched and have already done considerable damage.
(Television didn't do public discourse any favours either, nor did the fact that these developments coincided with the decision by one of your major political parties to take leave of its senses...)
