While the source of the danger is hotly disputed, one thing pundits across the political spectrum agree upon is that “our democracy is in danger.” Liberals believe former President Trump is the culprit based on his contention, right or wrong, that the votes in the 2020 election weren’t counted correctly. Tucker Carlson makes the equally obtuse claim that repression of free speech on private property is a threat to democracy.
The latter argument is doubly wrong since democracy has been a recognized danger to free speech since the drafting of the Constitution. Thus, the insistence upon a Bill of Rights that defended free speech against the democratically elected Congress.
At the risk of burying the lede, and for the sake of readers who may wish to make a thoughtful comment without scrolling past vast megabytes of midwittery to do so, I will address the republic-not-a-democracy thing before getting to my main point.
No, neither the United States nor any of its constituent states have ever been “a democracy.” The U.S. Constitution created a republic, with both democratic and anti-democratic elements. One could argue most of the document is anti-democratic – the bicameral legislature, the presidential veto, the appointed judiciary, and the enumerated powers. These are all there to protect us from democracy.
The Bill of Rights is wholly anti-democratic.
In fact, even the notion that elected representatives are supposed to do “the will of the people” is incorrect. The representatives are supposed to do what they think best for the public, regardless of the public’s wishes. “The people” are merely invested with the power to decide who decides. The framers believed this would work.
So, they built their Constitution to allow “the people” to directly elect one house of the bicameral legislature and then put a bunch of roadblocks in place to try and limit the damage such a preposterous plan would do to the property (life, liberty, possessions) of anyone who had anything to lose.
The 20th century saw systematic destruction of those roadblocks, beginning with the direct election of senators, denuding the state governments of any power to oppose the federal. It was during this period that Americans ceased calling their system of government “republic” and began imprecisely calling it “a democracy.” Today’s “our democracy” styling adds a quasi-religious and simultaneously childish connotation, appropriate to the population it governs.
Putting all of the above aside and just accepting that the republic can just as well be called “a democracy,” even that ended for all intents and purposes in the 1930s. The abominable FDR offered a “New Deal,” inspired by Mussolini, whom Roosevelt constantly referred to as “that estimable Italian gentleman,” or words to that effect, until his advisors told him to knock it off for reasons obvious with hindsight.
This New Deal proposed that the rules “the people” had to live under would no longer be made by legislators they elected. That made it too difficult to “get anything done.” No, under this new deal, unelected bureaucrats would make the rules, ostensibly at the direction of the elected president, but in practice wholly at their own discretion.
Americans not only liked the idea; they demanded it. So there would be no confusion on this, they elected the maniac who proposed it four consecutive times. So much for “our democracy.”
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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?
