Hey, everyone. Welcome to the podcast edition of the Thomas Jefferson Hour.

Seated across from me is my friend, the semi-permanent guest host of the Thomas Jefferson Hour,

Mr. David Swenson. Not feeling very good. I've kind of felt like I took you and Mr. Jefferson

to some dark places. No, no, you brought up Plato and then you brought up the,

so Jefferson's attitude towards Plato, which one of our listeners asked us to talk about.

And then a simple question that doesn't get asked enough, the difference between a democracy

and a republic. So when I go give talks around the country, if I use the word democracy,

someone comes up afterwards. It's always a white male who's 60-year-old years older and he says,

we were never intended to be a democracy, we're a republic. I don't know why you don't understand

that. And then I say, I know, I know the difference, but today we actually tried to sort it out a

little bit about how a republic works. There's a very good imitation of me on a bad day. Yeah,

I was trying to do you, but I get that all the time. And it is true. We are a republic.

And the founding fathers definitely wanted a republic and not a democracy. There's no question

about that, which is why we have the electoral college, which is why we have presidential veto power,

which is why we have a Supreme Court that can strike down legislation. But as I said,

to Jefferson a couple of times, it gets to be a bit of a delicate dance when you try to explain

all of this and how it fits together and how it works. Do you, I mean, do you, David, really

want direct democracy in a small enough situation? Yeah. Yeah, small is beautiful.

But I also said that there's no direct, we have no direct vote in anything. I asked you,

we can't think of anything where there isn't a buffer between the voter and what the law is.

And the reason is, I'll tell you this happens to me. It'll happens to me all the time. Something

happens where I'm offended, affronted, hurt. And I then react. If I do what Jefferson said,

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