Republics & Democracies

In September 1961, Robert Welch rose before a Chicago audience and delivered a speech that has lost none of its urgency. Republics and Democracies begins not in Washington, but in Athens, where Solon’s reforms laid the groundwork for a revolutionary idea: government bound by written law, with rulers themselves subject to it. Welch seized on that lesson to remind Americans of what set their Republic apart from the fleeting democracies of history.

Welch indicted democracy as a system that promises popular control but delivers chaos. Athens, Rome, Florence, and countless others burned out in cycles of instability, class conflict, and mob violence. Again and again, democracy’s collapse opened the door to dictatorship. By contrast, a republic — anchored in law, restrained power, and the rule of principle rather than numbers — offered stability and liberty. Welch named the American experiment as the culmination of that inheritance, but warned it would endure only so long as its people understood the distinction.

Drawing on classical history, constitutional tradition, and the insights of Will Durant, Welch confronted the fashionable idolatry of “democracy.” He pressed home the axiom that “the people obey the rulers, and the rulers obey the laws.” In an era when democracy was praised as an American creed, Welch dared to call it what it was: the destroyer of republics.

For readers seeking to defend constitutional liberty, Welch’s words serve both as history lesson and battle cry. His argument pierces political maxims to recover a truth essential for our time: America was founded as a republic, and only by preserving that form of government can freedom survive. (2021ed, 34pp, pb)