Walter Williams: America Isn't a Democracy. In Fact, the Founders Feared Democracy

During President Donald J. Trump's impeachment trial, we'll hear a lot of talk about our rules for governing. One frequent claim is that our nation is a democracy. If we've become a democracy, it would represent a deep betrayal of our founders, who saw democracy as another form of tyranny. In fact, the word democracy appears nowhere in our nation's two most fundamental documents, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The founders laid the ground rules for a republic as written in the Constitution's Article IV, Section 4, which guarantees "to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government."

John Adams captured the essence of the difference between a democracy and republic when he said, "You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe." Contrast the framers' vision of a republic with that of a democracy. In a democracy, the majority rules either directly or through its elected representatives. As in a monarchy, the law is whatever the government determines it to be. Laws do not represent reason. They represent power. The restraint is upon the individual instead of the government. Unlike that envisioned under a republican form of government, rights are seen as privileges and permissions that are granted by government and can be rescinded by government.

Here are a few quotations that demonstrate the contempt that our founders held for a democracy. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, wrote that in a pure democracy, "there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual."

Walter Williams: America Isn't a Democracy. In Fact, the Founders Feared Democracy

 

IMHO, this is one of the most intelligent & wise individuals of today!!

 

Yep. We are a Constitutional Republic. We are definitely not a democracy, but we are not a true republic either.

 

Democracy only comes in to play when we have elections, and even then it is tempered in the Federal election process for the presidency by the Electoral College. One of the worst things ever done was the constitutional amendment for the direct election of the Senate - that watered down the power of the individual sovereign states that make up the nation. That showed the danger that is a democracy once again and was an affront to our Federalist system of government.