Fourth of July
Barack Obama claims that the “Fourth of July is about celebrating the big, bold, inclusive experiment that is our American democracy.”
IN FACT, the founding fathers emphasized that they formed a “republic” and not a “democracy” because the latter inevitably violates people’s rights.
Early during the convention at which the Constitution was written, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, declared that new government they were creating must provide “more effectually for the security of private rights and the steady dispensation of Justice.” He said that violations of these ideals “had more perhaps than any thing else, produced this convention.”
Madison then singled out “democracy” as the cause of those abuses and pointed out that all societies are “divided into different Sects, Factions, and interests,” and “where a majority are united by a common interest or passion, the rights of the minority are in danger.” He stressed that:
- this is “verified by the histories of every country, ancient and modern.”
- this is the cause of slavery, “the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.”
- it is the duty of the convention to “frame a republican system” of government that will better protect the rights of the minority from the will of the majority.
Other delegates to the Constitutional Convention concurred with Madison. Edmund Randolph of Virginia observed “that the general object was to provide a cure for the evils under which the U.S. labored; that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy….” Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts stated: “The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy.”
For the purpose of curbing such evils, Madison and the other framers of the Constitution developed a system of checks and balances on the powers of the government that they formed.
In the words of Madison, these provisions were to “guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part” and “will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States.”
