This is going to be a three-part series defining the following: One, what our Founders (and others of their time) thought about democracy; two, how and why they thought it would fail; three, the kind of government and society they really wanted; and four, the role that feminism has played in destroying American democracy. The Founders didn’t foresee the fourth point, but they weren’t prophets and couldn’t predict everything. They knew history, though, and women have never done to any society what feminists have done to America. There is really no historical parallel. I’ll discuss that later.
I have a lot of quotes here (I can’t get them all in one 1,000-word article), some rather lengthy, some not so long, but all very interesting to those who enjoy history and want to know what our Founding Fathers intended for America. One thing we can be certain of is that they did not intend for the country to be a democracy. To wit, my first quote:
1. “Democracy is the most vile form of government.” – James Madison
This is from the “Father of our Constitution,” and is pretty clear. Democracy is not just a “vile” form of government; it is the “most vile.” Why did Madison think that?
Madison’s reading of history suggested to him that only a “small number of citizens” could truly operate a democracy—it would be a total failure among large societies—but democracy will even fail in the “small societies.” Quote two below for his explanation.
2. “A pure Democracy, by which I mean a Society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole…and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party...Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” – James Madison
It doesn’t matter how small the citizenship is, factions will always arise among the majority, and “sacrifice the weaker (minority).” John Adams fully agreed.
3. “We may appeal to every page of history...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 by an uncontrollable power. The majority has eternally, and without any one exception, usurped over the rights of the minority.” – John Adams
Look at his last statement, and any good historian will tell you it is the absolute truth: “The majority has eternally, and without any one exception, usurped over the rights of the minority.” Anybody who knows the first thing about the history of our country knows that this is true for “American democracy” as well. “Jim Crow” laws were written by the majority to deny minorities equal rights. Our Constitution was written to prevent that. Madison again: “The purpose of the Constitution is to restrict the majority's ability to harm a minority.” But, sadly, our government has never paid strict attention to the Constitution (especially after the War Between the States), and it doesn’t do it today, either. And indeed, “equal rights,” “protection of the minority from (democracy’s) majority” has been bastardized in our nation now to mean DEI, that is, special privileges for favored classes of constituent voters. “Equal rights” has come to mean “equal results.”
Our Founding Fathers established the principle of “equality before the law,” but they didn’t truly live by it, and subsequent generations of Americans have never been able to do it, either. “Factions,” Madison said. Democracy produces factions that destroy it. “Most vile.”
The greatest “factions” in American history have been political parties. We’ve had them, almost since the very beginning. George Washington warned against political parties, and our Constitution says nothing about them. There is a very good reason why our Constitution is silent on political parties: the Founders didn’t foresee them or want them. The federal government is supposed to be neutral, the government for EVERY American equally, not a political football kicked back and forth between factions. Look at the powers given to Congress in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. They are neutral, applying to every American equally, majority and minority. Our Founders never intended for one political party, one faction, to gain control of the government and pass laws and benefits for their coalition, forcing the other faction to submit to their agenda and pay for things they didn’t believe in. That’s not freedom, that’s tyranny, and that’s what our Founders tried to prevent by creating a federal government that would be beneficial to every single American equally. That’s the way it was supposed to work.
But…democracy.
4. “When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” – Benjamin Franklin
18th-century historian Sir Alexander Fraser Tytler agreed.
5. “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.” – Sir Alexander Fraser Tytler
The majority votes for “the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury.” That’s history. That’s democracy. That’s America today. It heralds the “end of the republic.” That’s why, to our Founders, it was “vile.”
What kind of government and society did the Founders intend for the United States? Stay tuned for part two.
My substacks are a little unique. Not just current events, but history, our Founding Fathers, what America was meant to be, and Biblical exegesis. Check them out. “Mark It Down! (mklewis929.substack.com) and “Mark It Down! Bible Substack” (mklbibless.substack.com). Both free. Follow me on “X”: @thailandmkl. Read my western novels, "Whitewater," "River Bend," "Return to River Bend," and "Allie’s Dilemma," all available on Amazon.
Editor’s Note: New York City is now facing the consequences of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist takeover.
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