By Chris Kremidas-Courtney
Democracy is the voice of the people and the republic is the structure that carries it into action. America was built to hold both in tension, but that balance is now being twisted into a shield for minority rule.
America was founded in tension, born of two ancient legacies that were never meant to fully align: the democratic spirit of Athens and the republican order of Rome.
Athens stood for democracy, the audacious idea that ordinary citizens could shape their own destiny through direct participation. Rome stood for the republic, a structure of institutions designed to refine, balance, and sometimes restrain the people’s passions. Put together, this hybrid form became America’s most radical innovation: a democratic republic.
The framers understood this tension intimately. James Madison warned in Federalist No. 10 that pure democracies like Athens “have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention,” while John Adams cautioned that “democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.” Yet they also revered the Athenian spirit of civic participation. To them, the challenge was to channel Athens’s passion through Rome’s structure, creating what Madison in Federalist No. 39 called “a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people.”
That balance was never meant to be resolved. The United States was designed as an experiment in tension. Athens pulled the system toward inclusion as witnessed by the expansion of suffrage, Progressive-era reforms, and the Civil Rights movement. Rome held the frame steady through institutions illustrated by the Reconstruction amendments, the New Deal’s regulatory state, the growth of federal courts as guardians of rights.
Even the two dominant parties absorbed this dual inheritance in their names. The Democratic Party wrapped itself in Athens’s mantle, a faith in popular sovereignty however imperfectly realized. The Republican Party evoked Rome, defending the republic as a lawful order larger than faction. Over the centuries, their platforms shifted and they even swapped places on major issues, but the symbolism mattered. Together they embodied the two halves of America’s design.
Today, that balance is faltering. The Republican Party increasingly uses “republic” not as a stabilizing principle but as a shield against democracy itself. The phrase “we are a republic, not a democracy” has been repurposed from a civics reminder into a justification for minority rule.
The tactics are plain to see; extreme gerrymandering, voter suppression laws, disinformation campaigns, and efforts to overturn certified elections. These are not defenses of republican order. They are instruments of dominance. Rome’s scaffolding which was meant to hold democracy upright, is being bent into a cage around it.
We saw the consequences on January 6th, 2021, when a right-wing mob stormed the Capitol to block the peaceful transfer of power. That day was not only an attack on a building. It was an assault on the fragile synthesis of Athens and Rome that defines the American system.
We have also seen it in quieter, more systematic ways. Recent Supreme Court rulings narrowing the reach of the Voting Rights Act have made it easier for states to dilute the voices of minority communities. State-level maps being redrawn to ensure permanent supermajorities for one party, even when that party wins fewer votes, tilt the system further from Athens. In key battleground states, partisan officials now maneuver to seize control over election certification processes themselves.
These are not isolated events. They form a deliberate strategy to claim the language of “republic” while hollowing out its democratic core. The founders foresaw this danger too. They had studied how the Roman Republic decayed when its institutions no longer served the people. Hamilton warned that even the most elegant constitutions could be “transformed into instruments of tyranny” if faction overtook virtue. The question was never whether America would choose Athens or Rome, but whether it could keep both alive in mutual restraint.
History offers a warning. In its later years, the Roman Republic ceased to be an instrument of the people’s will and instead became a façade for elite control. Institutions that were designed to channel popular participation became stage props for domination. The result was not stability but collapse as the republic slid into empire. Athens without Rome risked volatility. Rome without Athens slid into oligarchy. America is already repeating the latter.
This is not to say the Democratic Party perfectly embodies Athens. It, too, has defended exclusion and privilege in different eras. But in this moment, the drive for inclusion, pluralism, and majority rule rests more heavily on one side of the aisle, while the other pursues hegemony, not balance.
A democratic republic cannot endure if one half of its inheritance strangles the other. The United States was never meant to be purely Athenian or purely Roman. Its genius was the synthesis of a republic stable enough to endure but democratic enough to be legitimate. To preserve that balance, Americans must resist the distortion of “republic” into a mask for minority rule.
The warning has been there all along, carved into stone. Washington, DC was built in the imagery of Athens. The Capitol’s marble columns echo the Parthenon. The White House portico recalls Greek temples. The Jefferson Memorial rises like a shrine to civic virtue. These choices were deliberate. The founders borrowed Rome’s institutions but placed them under the gaze of Athens’ architecture. They wanted the republic’s machinery to be watched over by the spirit of democracy.
Washington himself was called “the American Cincinnatus,” returning to his farm after victory; a living bridge between Rome’s civic virtue and Athens’s humility before the public will. His restraint embodied the founders’ hope that republican power would always yield to democratic accountability.
The marble and Latin that fill the capital were never meant as imperial symbols but as reminders of duty; that power must remain answerable to the people. Rome is present everywhere, the eagle of the legions, the Senate, and the Latin mottos, yet the city’s visual language leans toward Greece for a reason. The Capitol’s columns echo the Parthenon; the Jefferson Memorial rises like a temple to civic reason. These choices were deliberate. The founders borrowed Rome’s institutions but set them beneath the gaze of Athens’ ideals, so that the republic’s machinery would always be watched over by the spirit of democracy.
If today’s politics allow Rome to suffocate Athens, those buildings will stand as a rebuke. They remind us that America’s founders knew the danger that institutions without democracy become cages, and democracy without institutions becomes chaos. This was always the meaning of the American experiment; a test of whether the democracy of Athens and the order of Rome could endure together in one nation.
We can already see Americans trying to restore that equilibrium in the No Kings marches held in over 2,700 cities and towns gatherings. Their message is simple; no ruler, party, nor faction stands above the people. In their handmade signs and quiet determination, they echo Athens’s faith in civic participation, walking beneath the marble architecture of Rome’s institutions to remind them of their purpose.
These marches are the living continuation of the founders’ experiment with ordinary citizens insisting the republic must once again answer to democracy. These marches are living proof that the balance between Athens and Rome is being reclaimed.
The balance between the two is fragile, but its also the only thing that has ever made the United States endure. The struggle today is not simply between two parties but between two ancient legacies and whether America can reclaim the balance that defined its founding before it collapses. The very stones of Washington plead with us not to forget Athens.
