After agonizingly hot summer days spent in argument and compromise, the nearly impossible happened. Delegates from the various states, with different interests, backgrounds, religions, opinions, and constituencies, had agreed on a framework of government. Ratification by each state's legislature was still necessary, and would be no easy task, but the very fact that the Constitution of the United States had been written and agreed to in some form was perhaps the high point in the history of world government.
The story is told of an elderly lady approaching Benjamin Franklin as he emerged from the final session of the Constitutional Convention, at which time she asked him the question, "What sort of government do we have, doctor?" to which he famously answered, "A Republic, if you can keep it."
The United States of America is not a Democracy. Ask any school-aged child, and most of his or her parents, however, and they will ape the word "democracy" as though it is the most obvious and pure thing in the world. This is where it is so dangerous that we do not know our history, nor understand our government. The United States of America is MOST CERTAINLY NOT a democracy, and if it ever becomes one, as it has been trending towards for seven decades, it will correspondingly cease to be free. Instead, the United States is a Republic. This is a vastly different thing from a democracy, and the distinction is extremely important.
The founders of our country were terrified of democratic rule, a situation in which the masses or majority of men vote for whatever they like in direct assault on the minorities. Protecting minority interests and the rights of the individual was the bedrock upon which the Constitution was founded. The great concern was how to allow a people to be free, how to construct a government "of the people, for the people, by the people," without allowing the passions that grip a people to take over. To do this, the Constitution of the United States, and the accompanying Bill of Rights, established very strong checks and balances and something called The Rule of Law. The Rule of Law is the concept that there are basic freedoms and rights any individual has claim to, and no matter what the desires of the majority or "masses," those individual rights must always be protected. These restrictions, so clearly outlined in those documents, are also meant to bind the government from trampling on the rights of the people, while distributing power across many leaders and branches of government. This concept has worked, and the government of the United States is the oldest government on the planet.
We must get away from the strange belief that whatever the mass of people want is in the country's best interest. U.S. governance is not simply a matter of asking, "What do most of the people want?" As if a poll could indicate righteousness. Just because a majority of people want something is no indication that it is the right thing to do. This is why it is so important to have a representative government, where the people pick the leaders and give them the power to decide policy according to the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and therefore, the Rule of Law, and not according to the will of the masses. After all, the common man is commonly wrong. Our government and system of laws is there to protect us as much from him as anything or anyone else.
Just why were Franklin's words so prescient that day? Isn't it interesting how he chose to answer the lady's question? Why did he say, "If you can keep it" after telling her it was to be a Republic? Perhaps the wise old statesman knew a thing or two about human nature after all his years as a diplomat, negotiator, and legislator. Perhaps he knew that the temptation would be great for a people to take over their own government and undermine its laws of protection for the individual in the name of interest for self. Perhaps he could see how the elaborate system of government he'd helped craft could be slowly dismantled over time to serve the masses.
And what of those masses? In the early 1930's Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote an instant classic entitled The Revolt of the Masses, in which he predicted the doom in Europe that was soon to follow. Ortega coined the term "mass man" to describe the type of person that comprised these waves of the majority; the majority that would vote for its crazy passions, the majority that had employed the guillotine in the French Revolution, the majority that would elect Hitler and the Nazi party to power, the majority that would bring us the Taliban. You see, any time majority rules, individuals suffer. It is the end of freedom. Whenever the "mass man" is given too much power, he always uses it against the individual and those in minority. Ortega said of the mass man:
"Previously, even for the rich and powerful, the world was a place of poverty, difficulty and danger. However rich an individual might be in relation to his fellows, as the world in its totality was poor, the sphere of conveniences and commodities with which his wealth furnished him was very limited. The life of the average man to day is easier, more convenient and safer than that of the most powerful of another age. The common man, finding himself in a world so excellent, technically and socially, believes that it has been produced by nature, and never thinks of the personal efforts of highly-endowed individuals which the creation of this new world presupposed. Still less will he admit the notion that all these facilities still require the support of certain difficult human virtues, the least failure of which would cause the rapid disappearance of the whole magnificent edifice. . . . free expansion of his vital desires . . . his radical ingratitude towards all that has made the ease of his existence . . . the impression that everything is permitted to him and that he has no obligations. . . these spoiled masses are unintelligent enough to believe that the material and social organization, placed at their disposition like the air, is of the same origin, since apparently it never fails them. . . . has caused the masses benefited therby to consider it, not as an organised, but as a natural system . Thus is explained and defined the absurd state of mind revealed by these masses; they are only concerned with their own well-being, and at the same time they remain alien to the cause of that well-being. They imagine their role is limited to demanding these benefits peremptorily, as if they were natural rights."
This is the man of whom Dr. Franklin warned us, then, and this is the man gaining control in the politics of America today. He eats his food, drinks his water, drives on the roads, and consumes everything and anything he wants without ever considering the vast structure of the Rule of Law and the sacrifices of others necessary to set him up so nicely. He does not read, he does not study nor even attempt to understand his history, nor consider the fount of his blessings, and votes accordingly. Placing his vote behind whomever promises to deliver him the most. And in this way, duplicated over millions of such "mass men," a Republic slips towards Democracy and the desolation that always follows.
"If you can keep it," indeed.
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