LIBERTY'S SECRETS
THE TYRANNY OF UNRESTRICTED DEMOCRACY
Exclusive: Joshua Charles highlights Founders' commitment to balance of power
We continue with our series on government according to the Founders, taken from clips of my latest book, “Liberty’s Secrets: The Lost Wisdom of America’s Founders.”
While the Founders asserted that “the people” were the source of all legitimate authority, they said this with the understanding that the people (the one, the few, and the many) were virtuous, for as noted earlier, virtue was for them the foundation of a republic, and the single best guarantee that the rights of all would be defended under law, not just the rights of the wealthy and the powerful.
But, as is common today as well, many in their own day were prone to flattering the “democratic” portion of society (i.e., regular people) at the expense of the one or the many, which many of the Founders eschewed. This is precisely why they never intended for the United States to be a “democracy,” for a democracy by definition was rule by majority at all times, which they saw as essentially the rule of the mob. A “democracy,” for the Founders, had no need of a constitution, for its one and only rule was that the majority always rule, which is incompatible with a constitution that limits and specifies governmental powers.
Cicero best articulated the Founders’ objection to “democracy”: “There is no form of government to which I should more readily deny the definition of a state than one which is entirely under the control of the masses. … [M]ass government … is just as tyrannical as if a single person were the ruler, and indeed an even nastier despot, because there is nothing more disgusting than the sort of monstrosity which fictitiously assumes the name and guise of the people.”
It was precisely this usurpation over the rights of one party by another that the Founders sought to avoid. This included the many oppressing the one and the few, for they were citizens as equally entitled to the protection of their rights as the “regular guy,” for whom the Founders tended to have no particular affection simply because he was “regular.”
However, Adams quite forcefully indicted all three parties, and made a case that none should be completely or even mostly trusted compared to the others: “Despotical, monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical fury, have all been employed in this work of destruction of everything that could give us true light, and a clear insight of antiquity. For every one of these parties, when possessed of power, or when they have been undermost [sic], and struggling to get uppermost, has been equally prone to every species of fraud and violence and usurpation.” He made the very same case in his famous “Defence”:
“It is very easy to flatter the democratical portion of society by making such distinctions between them and the monarchical and aristocratical. But flattery is as base an artifice and as pernicious a vice when offered to the people as when given to the others. There is no reason to believe the one much honester [sic] or wiser than the other. They are all of the same clay, their minds and bodies are alike. The two latter have more knowledge and sagacity, derived from education, and more advantages for acquiring wisdom and virtue. As to usurping others’ rights, they are all three equally guilty when unlimited in power. No wise man will trust either with an opportunity, and every judicious legislator will set all three to watch and control each other. We may appeal to every page of history we have hitherto turned over, for proofs irrefragable, that the people, when they have been unchecked, have been as unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous, and cruel as any king or senate possessed of uncontrollable power. The majority has eternally and without one exception usurped over the rights of the minority.”
Whenever a majority engaged in such oppression, it was acting according to might, not right. Jefferson believed that “the majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.” He explained in his 1801 inaugural address: “Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.”
Thus, such majorities needed to be checked and balanced in some way, for the Founders were attempting to construct a government that, wrote Madison, would “protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful,” with laws that were “not to be varied in particular cases, but to have one rule for rich and poor, for the favorite at court, and the country man at plough,” as Locke said. If the many had all power, what would prevent them from oppressing the few? If the few had all power, what would prevent them from doing the same to the many? And likewise with the one? The unanimous and unequivocal answer of history was that nothing would stop them. Hence Adams’s observation:
“Longitude, and the philosopher’s stone, have not been sought with more earnestness by philosophers than a guardian of the laws has been studied by legislators from Plato to Montesquieu. But every project has been found to be no better than committing the lamb to the custody of the wolf, except that one which is called a balance of power.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/02/the-tyranny-of-unrestricted-democracy/#GPPAo6h30FmcF2wx.99My comments: No form of Government devised by men will Work. Nothing devised by men will Work, because the only thing that will Work among men is the Law of Christ Jesus, the Creator of all that exists. WHY? Because He is the Only Way, the Only Truth and the Only LIFE. There is No other Way, No other Truth, and No Other LIFE. This Wicked World is Ruled by Satan [1 John 5:19]--The kingdoms of the World belong to him [Luke 4:6]. Satan seeks to send Everyone to Hell, and the only thing that stops him is a person with Faith in Christ Jesus. The World Hates Christ Jesus because He tells them that what they do is Evil. (John 7:7) America's Republic only works for a people who Honor God.
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