The French jurist and philosopher Charles de Montesquieu (1689-1755) influenced our Constitution’s framers considerably. He maintained there are two categories of republics: aristocracy and democracy. Thomas Jefferson, who is credited with creating the nation’s very first Republican Party, felt Republican government must represent the people; he maintained the U.S. Senate was “scarcely Republican” and he denounced the electoral college as “the worst blot on the U.S. Constitution” because both those institutions thwart and block the will of the people.

“The fundamental maxim of Republican government,” declared Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper No. 22, “requires the sense of the majority should prevail.” Moreover, he states, with an emphasis rare in his writing, that the fabric of this nation “ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE.” (The capitals are Hamilton’s.) These definitions and principles are entirely consistent with our seminal Declaration of Independence, which fully embraces equality and requires governments to have the consent of the governed.

While there can be debate about American values — since this nation has sometimes failed to live up to its professed values — our ideals are crystal clear and it is un-American to oppose American ideals. It is silly to claim this country should be a republic, but not a democracy. As Montesquieu maintained, a democracy is a republic. According to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, it is relatively easy to be considered just a republic without being a democracy. The CIA considers Iran, hardly a model of human rights, a “theocratic republic.” Syria, which has killed tens of thousands of its own people, is considered a “presidential republic.” At the time the U.S. invaded the Republic of Iraq in 2003, the CIA considered that nation a “republic.” Certainly, there have been various definitions of republics going back to Plato, three centuries before Christ.

Drawing on the insights of the 18th century, writers cast our political situation in a new light:

1. Employing Jefferson’s and Hamilton’s concepts, Trump and those who supported him after Jan. 6 are un-American RINOs (Republicans in name only). Ostensibly, they call themselves Republicans, but they do not support the “fundamental maxim of Republican government.” After Joe Biden received a clear majority (51.3%) of the votes, Trump went to great lengths, including putting at risk the life of his vice president, to thwart and countermand the will of the people. Trump is no more a true Republican than the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) is a republic.

2. Montesquieu held that there “are three species of government: republican, monarchical and despotic.” He stressed that fear is the foundation of despotic governments. The enormous fear that Trump has generated (he has proposed televised military tribunals for Liz Cheney and others) suggests he is laying the foundation for a despotic government. Because so many of Trump’s ideas lack an evidentiary basis — such as global climate change is a Chinese hoax — he will always be inclined, like some ideologists, religionists and despotic states, to advance his views with force and violence. No one is safe from his violent temperament: When Trump was informed that Mike Pence — who served him with the utmost loyalty for years — was in mortal danger, he responded, “So what?” Democracy is predicated on the idea that minds can be changed with empirical evidence and reasoning and without bribes or violence. The idea that Trump is anything but a RINO is preposterous.

3. RINOs pose a threat to the checks and balances (which Montesquieu inspired) enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Checks and balances will only exist if those in Congress carefully protect the prerogatives of Congress; their first loyalty must be to Congress and not to a political party. If Congress allows the president to usurp their prerogatives because they support his party, then our system is undermined. Our checks and balances were greatly damaged when our very corrupt Supreme Court generated junk jurisprudence allowing presidents to evade accountability and conferring on them unprecedented new powers. Our checks and balances are more precarious now than ever with this Supreme Court and this Congress full of individuals whose greatest fear is being excommunicated from the Trump cult.

4. Utah’s ruling class is dominated by RINOs who are more extreme than the majority. In 2018, Utah’s majority of voters passed an anti-gerrymandering proposition. Yet the Legislature disregarded the will of the people. When the Utah Supreme Court sided with the people, legislative leaders tried to trick people so as to preserve their prerogatives to gerrymander. Their purpose of Utah’s gerrymandering is to prioritize the needs of the Republican Party and its donors over the people. The effective slogan of Utah leaders is: all power to the party. Utah’s party ideologues seek a doctrinal purity that most moderates and middle of the road voters reject. Therefore, Utah’s ruling class uses gerrymandering to create elections without representation.

With respect to advancing American ideals, the Democrats and Republicans have crisscrossed. In Lincoln’s time, the Republican Party was clearly the champion of Republican ideals: Lincoln stressed equality anticipating “a new birth of freedom.” The Democrats of that time used the Constitution to preserve slavery and the injustices that states rights perpetrated by allowing bigots, white supremacists and authoritarians to completely disregard the Bill of Rights and make racial minorities voiceless. In 1962, a liberal Supreme Court gave a win to Republican ideals over states rights; it took jurisdiction over Tennessee’s making one white vote worth 19 black votes. Before that decade concluded, Republicans had aligned themselves with states rights advocates. Liberal Democrats then became the champions of American ideals by trying to curtail the injustices of state power. The GOP moved away from supporting American ideals as it courted the states that once comprised the Confederacy.

The constant feature of American politics, since the nation’s inception, has been that the biggest opposition to American ideals has always come from the proponents of states rights. In Lincoln’s time, the Democrats were the strongest advocates of states rights, but today, it’s the Republicans. The Trump family’s hostile takeover of the GOP has only deepened the RINO tendencies of the party. Unless the RINOs are challenged with the common-sense appeal of American ideals, their power might grow. This election will test this nation’s commitments to our founding ideals and principles; it is a rare opportunity to defeat a philosophy so profoundly antagonistic to American ideals.

Rick Jones is a retired adjunct teacher of economics from Weber State University.