A Democracy derives its power from the will of the majority.  Individuals and/or groups of individuals have no protection from that will and have no rights outside what the majority grants them.  In a Democracy, whether direct or representative, the majority has absolute and unlimited power.  Even the courts are subjugated to its rule.  Our Founding Fathers feared this unchecked power.  They sought to protect the unalienable rights of the individual, and a Democracy could not provide this protection.

The Declaration of Independence clearly states: “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  Now, the Declaration of Independence took effect in 1776, but the Constitution was not fully ratified until 1788.  That means that there was approximately 12 years before our Founding Fathers framed our system of government.  Shortly after the Declaration was signed, the framers noted that the unalienable rights they had fought so hard for were being trampled by the State Legislatures.  The will of the majority was simply overpowering the rights of the individual, and because there weren’t any state constitutions limiting this power, there was no way to prevent it.   Laws were subject to the will of the masses where raw passion influenced their creation and/or enforcement. Private property was continuously threatened.  Anarchy, discontent, abuse, corruption and fear resulted.

Thomas Jefferson called these abuses the “excesses of democracy” and said: “an elective despotism was not the government that we fought for.” Referring to the Virginia Legislature: “All the powers of government, legislative, executive, judiciary, result to the legislative body.  The concentrating these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government.  It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one.  173 despots would surely be as oppressive as one.”  James Madison agreed: “Repeated violations of those parchment barriers have been committed by overbearing majorities in every State. I n Virginia I have seen the bill of rights violated in every instance where it has been opposed to a popular current."

The framer’s priority was protecting the basic rights of the individual.  They did not want a system of government controlled by mobs through direct rule or laws subject to the whim and will of the masses.

They settled on a Representative Republic defined by Constitutional Attorney and Historian, Hamilton Long as: “a constitutionally limited government of the representative type, created by a written Constitution--adopted by the people and changeable (from its original meaning) by them only by its amendment--with its powers divided between three separate Branches: Executive, Legislative and Judicial. Here the term ‘the people’ means, of course, the electorate.”

In order to create a successful Republic, a Constitution that creates and then limits the power and scope of government and its branches must be negotiated and ratified by the very people governed by it.  This was accomplished through a Constitutional Convention. John Adams commented on this in his autobiography in 1775: “By conventions of representatives, freely, fairly, and proportionately chosen . . . the convention may send out their project of a constitution, to the people in their several towns, counties, or districts, and the people may make the acceptance of it their own act."

It was very important that Convention representatives were specifically chosen for this task and that it was not left to the Legislature or other current governing body.  Hamilton Long explains: “This system of Constitution-making, for the purpose of establishing constitutionally limited government, is designed to put into practice the principle of the Declaration of Independence: that the people form their governments and grant to them only ‘just powers’, limited powers, in order primarily to secure (to make and keep secure) their God-given, unalienable rights.  The American philosophy and system of government thus bar equally the ‘snob-rule’ of a governing Elite and the ‘mob-rule’ of an Omnipotent Majority.  This is designed, above all else, to preclude the existence in America of any governmental power capable of being misused so as to violate The Individual’s rights--to endanger the people’s liberties.”

So there you have it. Our Founding Fathers not only gave us a Republic to avoid the excesses of Democracy, they gave us a Constitution that governs it and by doing so ensured the protection of our liberties, private property, system of justice, and individual rights.  They gave us a Republic.  It’s up to us to keep it.

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