The true principle of a republic is that the people should choose whom they please to govern them. Representation is imperfect, in proportion as the current of popular favor is checked. The great source of free government, popular election, should be perfectly pure, and the most unbounded liberty allowed.
Interpretation
A republic thrives when citizens freely elect their leaders, ensuring true representation.
Alexander Hamilton emphasizes the fundamental principle of a republic, which is that citizens have the right to choose their leaders without external influences. He argues that true representation occurs when elections are free from manipulation and that the purity of the electoral process is vital for the integrity of a government that is accountable to its people.
In practice
During a civic education class discussing the importance of fair elections.
When men, engaged in unjustifiable pursuits, are aware that obstructions may come from a quarter which bare apprehension of opposition from doing what they would with eagerness rush into if no such external impediments were to be feared.
The tendency of a national bank is to increase public and private credit. The former gives power to the state, for the protection of its rights and interests: and the latter facilitates and extends the operations of commerce among individuals. Industry is increased, commodities are multiplied, agriculture and manufacturers flourish: and herein consists the true wealth and prosperity of a state.
It's not tyranny we desire; it's a just, limited, federal government.
The Achaeans soon experienced, as often happens, that a victorious and powerful ally is but another name for a master.
The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge right or make good decision.
Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature....Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind.
Politics is the art of the possible; creativity is the art of the impossible.
Those looking for ideology in the White House should consider this: For the men who rule our world, rules are for other people.
Here we are the way politics ought to be in America; the politics of happiness, the politics of purpose and the politics of joy.
Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting?
What the poor, the weak, and the inarticulate desperately require is power, organization, and a sense of identity and purpose, not rarefied advice of political scientists.
Democracy cannot be static. Whatever is static is dead.
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