A constitutional republic is a state in which the head of state and other officials are representatives of the people and must govern according to existing constitutional law that limits the government's power over all of its citizens. Because the head of the state is elected, it is a republic and not a monarchy.

In a constitutional republic, executive, legislative, and judicial powers can be separated into distinct branches.^[1]

The fact that a constitution exists that limits the government's power makes the state constitutional. That the head(s) of state and other officials are chosen by election, rather than inheriting their positions, and that their decisions are subject to judicial review makes the state a republic.

Purpose and scope[link]

John Adams defined a republic as "a government of laws, and not of men."^[2] Constitutional republics attempt to weaken the threat of majoritarianism and protect dissenting individuals and minority groups from the "tyranny of the majority" by placing checks on the power of the majority of the population.^[3] The power of the majority of the people is limited to electing representatives who legislate within the limits of an overarching constitutional law that a simple majority cannot modify.

No single individual is allowed to exercise executive, legislative and judicial powers. Instead, these powers are separated into distinct branches that serve as a check and balance on each other. In a constitutional republic, "no person or group [can] rise to absolute power."^[4]

The notion of the constitutional republic originates with Aristotle's Politics and his theory of a fifth type of government called the polity. He contrasts the polity of republican government with democracy and oligarchy in book 3, chapter 6 of Politics. Polity can refer to the political organizational system that is being used by a group, be it a tribe, a city-state, an empire, a corporation, etc. Aristotle also envisioned a polity to be a combination of what he thought were the best characteristics of oligarchy (rule by the wealthy) and democracy (rule by the poor). The polity government would be ruled by the many in the best interests of the country.

Oligarchies favored the wealthy members of society and featured elected leadership positions. Democracies favored the poor and middle-class members, of which there are generally greater numbers, and had features such as legislative assemblies open to citizens of voting age. Aristotle believed that, when used correctly, the polity would be the most ideal government possible because it could take input from community members of all levels and rule fairly in the interests of the whole community and not just the majority.

Constitutional republics were first advocated in the 18th and 19th centuries by classical liberals, who were engaged at the time in a political and ideological conflict against conservative supporters of traditional monarchy. An early experiment was the Corsican Republic, founded in 1755 by Pasquale Paoli but annexed by France in 1769. Since the beginning of the 20th century, constitutional republics have entered the political mainstream and have gathered the support of many other ideologies in addition to liberalism.

According to James Woodburn, in The American Republic and Its Government, "the constitutional republic with its limitations on popular government is clearly involved in the United States Constitution, as seen in the election of the President, the election of the Senate and the appointment of the Supreme Court." That is, the ability of the people to choose officials in government is checked by not allowing them to elect Supreme Court justices. Such justices are appointed by the popularly elected president, and approved by the popularly-elected Senate. Woodburn says that in a republic, as distinguished from a democracy, the people are not only checked in choosing officials but also in making laws.^[5]

A Bill of Rights exists in the U.S. Constitution which protects certain individual rights. The rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights cannot be infringed upon by the majority of citizens. Removing the protection of these rights from the Constitution would require the proposal of a Constitutional amendment by a two-thirds majority of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states.

However, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and others, held that the federal government was not the sole or final judge of its own authority, holding that this would "make it, and not the Constitution, the judge of its powers."^{[citation needed]} Rather, in the Virginia Resolutions, the Kentucky Resolutions and elsewhere, various individuals stipulated that the people of the individual states were the final check on federal power to ensure compliance with the Constitution, holding that the people of any given state had the final power to "interpose" for the purpose of maintaining the Constitution against federal abuses thereof.

Though a constitutional republic is not a pure democracy it necessarily has some democratic elements, such as the ability of the people to elect a president (in the U.S. the majority of the population is checked here too, as the popular vote of the people does not necessarily decide the winner). Nations where the head of state is not elected, as in a monarchy, as not elected but has a parliament with elected representatives that govern according to constitutional law protecting individual rights are called constitutional, democratic monarchies). Both are considered liberal democracies because they protect individual liberty from majority and minority forces, while retaining some democratic elements.

Also, a representative democracy may or may not be a constitutional republic. For example, "the United States relies on representative democracy, but [its] system of government is much more complex than that. [It is] not a simple representative democracy, but a constitutional republic in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law."^[6]

Support and Criticism[link]

Alexander Tsesis, in The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History says, to him, a constitutional republic means "a representative polity established on fundamental law, each person has the right to pursue and fulfill his or her unobtrusive vision of the good life. In such a society, the common good is the cumulative product of free and equal individuals who pursue meaningful aims."^[7]

Karl Marx claimed that a constitutional republic is a protective legal framework for what he considered to be "capitalist exploitation." In "Outline of the Critique of Political Economy," Marx's stated that "All the bourgeois economists are aware of is that production can be carried on better under the modern police than e.g. on the principle of might makes right. They forget only that this principle is also a legal relation, and that the right of the stronger prevails in their 'constitutional republics' as well, only in another form."

Contrast[link]

• Direct democracy

See also[link]

• Constitution
• Constitutionalism
• Constitutional monarchy
• Constitutional economics
• Rechtsstaat
• Constitutional law

References[link]

Aaron Russo
Russo promoting his film America: Freedom to Fascism
Born	February 14, 1943 Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Died	August 24, 2007(2007-08-24) (aged 64) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Known for	Music Manager, Film producer, libertarian politician and activist
Religion	Judaism[citation needed]

Aaron Russo (February 14, 1943 - August 24, 2007) was an American entertainment businessman, film producer and director, and political activist. He was best known for producing such movies as Trading Places, Wise Guys, and The Rose. Later in life, he created various Libertarian-leaning political documentaries including Mad as Hell and America: Freedom to Fascism. After a six-year battle with bladder cancer, Russo died on August 24, 2007.

Early life[link]

Aaron Russo was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1943. Growing up on Long Island, Russo worked for his family's undergarment business.

Entertainment career[link]

In April 1968, Russo opened the nightclub Kinetic Playground in Chicago, Illinois, originally naming it the Electric Theater. He booked numerous prominent rock groups and musicians at the club such as The Grateful Dead, Iron Butterfly, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Rotary Connection, and The Who.

In addition to owning his own nightclub, Russo managed several musical acts throughout the 1970s including The Manhattan Transfer and Bette Midler.^[1]

Russo then moved into producing and directing movies, six of them receiving Academy Award nominations and two receiving Golden Globe Award nominations.^[2] His final film would be America: Freedom to Fascism, a political documentary critical of the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Reserve System and warning about the coming of the New World Order.

Political career[link]

Russo became involved in political issues in the early-1990s when he produced and starred in the documentary entitled Mad As Hell in which he criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the federal government's War on Drugs, the concept of a National Identity Card, and government regulation of alternative medicine.^{[citation needed]}

In 1998, Russo took his political interests to a higher level, running for governor of the state of Nevada as a Republican. Placing second in the Republican primary with 26% of the vote to candidate Kenny Guinn, Russo later endorsed the Democratic nominee, then-Las Vegas mayor Jan Laverty Jones, who would eventually lose to Republican nominee Kenny Guinn.^{[citation needed]} Russo was planning to run again for Nevada governor in 2002 as either an independent or Libertarian but was sidelined by cancer.

In January 2004, Russo declared his candidacy for the President of the United States initially as an independent but then as a Libertarian. At the Libertarian National Convention in May 2004, Russo received 258 votes to Michael Badnarik's 256 votes and Gary Nolan's 246 votes, short of the majority required to receive the presidential nomination. Russo would eventually lose the nomination on the convention's third and final ballot to Badnarik by a vote of 423-344.

On January 14, 2007, Russo announced his full support for US Congressman Ron Paul's candidacy for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.^[3]

Later in 2007, Russo created the political grassroots organization, Restore the Republic (restoretherepublic.com), to fulfill the political ambitions laid out in his final movie documentary, America: Freedom to Fascism. Regarding the organization, Russo said his goal was to "try and get the word out to the public about what's happening to America -- and give them an opportunity to try to change things".

Death[link]

On August 24, 2007, Russo died at the age of 64 of bladder cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.^[4]

References[link]

External links[link]

• America: Freedom to Fascism, Russo's last film
• Visit Aaron Russo' Virtual Memorial
• Aaron Russo at the Internet Movie Database

Mark Levin
Levin speaks at an Americans for Prosperity conference in 2011
Birth name	Mark Reed Levin
Born	(1957-09-21) September 21, 1957 (age 54) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Show	The Mark Levin Show
Station(s)	WABC
Network	Cumulus Media Networks
Time slot	6-9 p.m. EST
Style	Talk radio
Country	United States
Website	marklevinshow.com

Mark Reed Levin (born September 21, 1957) is a lawyer, author and the host of American syndicated radio show The Mark Levin Show. Levin served in the administration of President Ronald Reagan and was a chief of staff for Attorney General Edwin Meese. He is president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, has authored bestselling books and contributes commentary to various media outlets such as National Review Online.^[1]

Biography[link]

Mark Reed Levin was born to a Jewish family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Cheltenham Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Cheltenham High School after three years.^[2][3] After high school, Levin enrolled at Temple University Ambler including summer classes and graduated in 1977 at age 19, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.^[4] He also earned a juris doctorate from Temple University Beasley School of Law in 1980.^[5]

Beginning in 1981, Levin served as advisor to several members of President Ronald Reagan's cabinet, eventually becoming Associate Director of Presidential Personnel and ultimately Chief of Staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese; Levin also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education, and Deputy Solicitor of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

He practiced law in the private sector and is president of Landmark Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm founded in 1976 and based in Leesburg, Virginia.

Levin is married to Kendall Levin.^[6] They have two children, Lauren (born 1988) and Chase (born 1991).^[7]

Levin has participated in Freedom Concerts, an annual benefit concert to aid families of fallen soldiers, and he uses his radio program to promote same.^[8][9] Levin is also involved with Troopathon, a charity which sends care packages to soldiers serving overseas.^[10]

In 2001, the American Conservative Union awarded Levin its Ronald Reagan Award.^[11]

Radio broadcasting[link]

Levin began his broadcast career as a guest on conservative talk radio programs. For many years he was a frequent contributor of legal opinions to The Rush Limbaugh Show, where Limbaugh referred to him on-air as "F. Lee Levin," a tongue-in-cheek reference to the famous defense attorney F. Lee Bailey. He was also a contributor to The Sean Hannity Show and eventually got a radio slot of his own on WABC, following Sean Hannity's program. Hannity has nicknamed Mark Levin "The Great One".^[12] Levin and Hannity remain frequent contributors to each other's programs.

Writer[link]

[edit] Men In Black: How The Supreme Court is Destroying America

Levin authored the 2005 book Men In Black: How The Supreme Court Is Destroying America, in which he advanced his thesis that activist judges on the Supreme Court (from all parts of the political spectrum) have "legislated from the bench." In her review of Men in Black, Slate magazine's legal correspondent and journalist Dahlia Lithwick wrote that "no serious scholar of the court or the Constitution, on the ideological left or right, is going to waste their time engaging Levin's arguments once they've read this book."^[13] In contrast, a review in the Defense Counsel Journal described Men in Black as "a forceful indictment of what Levin identifies as an increasingly 'activist' court for amending our national Constitution in the guise of construing it."^[14]

[edit] Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish

In 2007, Levin released a book about his dogs, Pepsi and Sprite. Specifically, the book was about Sprite, a Spaniel mix that his wife and son persuaded him to adopt from the local shelter in 2004. The book was titled Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish. Rescuing Sprite chronicles Sprite’s health deterioration in 2006 and how Levin and his family dealt with their loss.

[edit] Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto

Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto was released on March 24, 2009, and became a No. 1 New York Times best seller for eleven of twelve weeks,^[15] as well as No. 1 on Nielsen's BookScan.^[16] It comes in at No. 2 on Amazon.com's list of bestselling books of 2009.^[17] The book includes discussion of a variety of issues that, according to Levin, need to be addressed in the United States. Liberty and Tyranny has sold over one million copies according to Threshold Editions, the book's publisher.^[18] Former federal prosecutor and fellow National Review Online author Andrew C. McCarthy wrote of Liberty and Tyranny in The New Criterion:

We are in the high tide of America’s Leftist ascendancy: the Obama evisceration of individual freedom and installation of authoritarian collectivism—at warp speed, driven by an ambition that would have made Woodrow Wilson and FDR blush. Against this tidal wave, Levin offers not so much a defense as a plan of attack, a clarion call to roll back the seas of Change.^[19]

Taking a contrary view, Steve Almond of Salon wrote that

... the tantalizing beauty of a Mark Levin text resides precisely in this ability to attribute any crisis of State to its nefarious indulgences. The current economic meltdown, for instance, should not be blamed on the psychotic greed of Wall Street, but on the State's deranged need to throw money at the poor and undeserving.^[20]

[edit] Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America

Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America was released January 17, 2012. Amazon's publication notes describe this book as exploring "the psychology, motivations, and history of the utopian movement, its architects, and its modern day disciples – and how the individual and American society are being devoured by it."^[21]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Mark Levin Show, The Official Mark Levin Website
• marklevinshow Twitter feed
• Mark Levin on Facebook
• The Official Mark Levin Show Audio Rewind
• Landmark Legal Foundation
• Mark Levin is on the air from NationalReview.com
• C-SPAN Q&A interview with Levin, October 19, 2008

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2007)

Howard Drummond Smoot (October 5, 1913, in East Prairie, Missouri – July 24, 2003, in Tyler, Texas), better known as Dan Smoot, was an FBI agent and a conservative political activist. From the 1950s to 1971, he published The Dan Smoot Report, which chronicled alleged communist infiltration in various sectors of American government and society.

In 1970, he opposed the selection of a future U.S. President, George H. W. Bush, as the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate from Texas. He claimed that Bush's political philosophy was little different from the Democrats that he sought to oppose. Bush lost the Senate election that year to Lloyd Bentsen, of Houston and McAllen.

In 1972, Smoot opposed the reelection of Richard Nixon and served as campaign manager for American Independent Party presidential candidate John G. Schmitz of California.

Departure from the FBI[link]

Smoot was an FBI agent from 1942 to 1951, when he resigned for what he cited as professional reasons: namely, the desire to go into the field of political pamphleteering and commentary.

Rather than accept assignment to the Savannah, Georgia office, Smoot resigned because he wanted to rear his family in the Dallas area. Smoot said that several fellow agents had complained to him about the supervisor's management decisions. Smoot said that he related to the inspector what he had heard from colleagues. Then, according to Smoot, the colleagues would not back up what they had told Smoot. The supervisor hence believed that Smoot had been disloyal to him.

After Smoot left the FBI, he became a commentator and began producing Facts Forum newsletters in conjunction with Dallas oil billionaire H. L. Hunt. His salary doubled with his new assignment. From 1953-1954, Facts Forum was the source for the ABC public affairs television series, Answers for Americans.^[1]On November 15, 1956, however, Hunt withdrew his financial subsidy to the monthly Facts Forum News because the publication was not financially self-sustaining.

In 1954, Medford Evans, a sometime college professor (who had been dismissed amid a controversy at Northwestern State University (then State College) in Natchitoches, Louisiana) and a conservative critic of American Cold War policies, was described as "News Editor" and "Editor" of Facts Forum News. Mary Helen Brengel was identified as an "Associate Editor". She later worked for the Independent American, the conservative newspaper of Kent Courtney, and his wife, Phoebe Courtney.

Spreading his conservative message[link]

Thereafter, Smoot published his weekly The Dan Smoot Report. He also carried his conservative message via weekly reports over radio and television. The Report started with 3,000 paid subscribers; at its peak in 1965, it had more than 33,000 subscribers. Each newsletter usually focused on one major story. One issue, for instance, was devoted to the Alaska Mental Health Bill of 1956, which Smoot claimed was a communist conspiracy to establish concentration camps on American soil. Another issue lionized Douglas MacArthur after the Army general's death in the spring of 1964, and a later 1964 issue opposed a proposal by President Lyndon B. Johnson to transfer sovereignty of the Panama Canal to the Republic of Panama. Johnson failed in his mission, but President Jimmy Carter in 1978, with bipartisan support, convinced the Senate by a one-vote margin to give Panama control of the canal zone. It was liberal Republican support for many Democratic proposals that particularly angered Smoot, who gave up on the Republicans as a viable alternative to the majority Democrats of his day.

In 1962, Smoot wrote The Invisible Government concerning early members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Other books include The Hope of the World; The Business End of Government; and his autobiography, People Along the Way. Additionally he was associated with the John Birch Society and wrote for the society's American Opinion magazine. (Source: Smoot's autobiography and review by Jane Ingraham (1994).)

Books[link]

• The Invisible Government (1962)
• The Hope of the World (1964)
• The Business End of Government (1973)
• People Along the Way: The Autobiography of Dan Smoot (1993)

Family[link]

Grandfather of Howard Drummond Smoot, II

Great-Grandfather of Jasmine Smoot, Howard Drummond Smoot, III, and Harley Smoot

Family is currently living in Farmers Branch, Texas.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Hendershot, Heather. What's Fair on the Air? Cold War Right-Wing Broadcasting and the Public Interest (University of Chicago Press; 2011) 260 pages; covers the rise and fall of prominent far-right radio hosts: H.L. Hunt, Dan Smoot, Carl McIntire, and Billy James Hargis.
• Smoot, Dan. Invisible Government on Amazon.com