Democracy Is Another Form of Tyranny

Democracy Is Another Form of Tyranny https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/01/29/democracy-is-another-...
POLITICS COMMENTARY
Democracy Is Another Form of Tyranny

Walter E. Williams / @WE_Williams / January 29, 2020
 COMMENTARY BY
Walter E. Williams @WE_Williams
Walter E. Williams is a columnist for The Daily Signal and a professor of economics
at George Mason University.
During President Donald 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rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the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
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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privileges and permissions that are granted by government and can be rescinded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.”
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said that “in tracing
these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of
democracy.”
Alexander Hamilton agreed, saying: “We are now forming a republican government.
[Liberty] is found not in “the extremes of democracy but in moderate governments.
… If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy.”
John Adams reminded us: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes,
exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit
suicide.”
John Marshall, the highly respected fourth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court,
observed, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like
that between order and chaos.”
Thomas Paine said, “A Democracy is the vilest form of Government there is.”
The framers gave us a Constitution replete with undemocratic mechanisms. One

constitutional provision that has come in for recent criticism is the Electoral
College. In their wisdom, the framers gave us the Electoral College as a means of
deciding presidential elections. That means heavily populated states can’t run
roughshod over small, less-populated states.
Were we to choose the president and vice president under a popular vote, the
outcome of presidential races would always be decided by a few highly populated
states, namely California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania,
which contain 134.3 million people, or 41% of our population.
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Presidential candidates could safely ignore the interests of the citizens of Wyoming,
Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Delaware. Why? They
have only 5.58 million Americans, or 1.7% of the U.S. population.
We would no longer be a government “of the people.” Instead, our government

would be put in power by and accountable to the leaders and citizens of a few
highly populated states. It would be the kind of tyranny the framers feared.
It’s Congress that poses the greatest threat to our liberties. The framers’ distrust is
seen in the negative language of our Bill of Rights such as: Congress “shall not
abridge, infringe, deny, disparage, and shall not be violated, nor be denied.”
When we die and if at our next destination we see anything like a Bill of Rights, we
know that we’re in hell because a Bill of Rights in heaven would suggest that God
couldn’t be trusted.
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Democracy Is Another Form of Tyranny https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/01/29/democracy-is-another-...

Democracy Is Another Form of Tyranny

Walter E. Williams @WE_Williams

If we’ve become a democracy, it would represent a deep betrayal of our Founders,

Contrast the framers’ vision of a republic with that of a democracy. In a democracy,

The framers gave us a Constitution replete with undemocratic mechanisms. One

We would no longer be a government “of the people.” Instead, our government

COPYRIGHT 2020 CREATORS.COM

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