We hear much talk today about efforts to “spread democracy” in the Middle East and elsewhere. Americans quickly and easily speak of our own country as a democracy. But the founding generation were opposed to using the same description.

   Patriots such as James Madison, Benjamin Rush, and Fisher Ames described democracies as “spectacles of turbulence and contention,” “the greatest of evils,” and a “volcano, which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction.” The delegates to the convention were concerned with free enterprise, individual liberty, limited government, and accountability, but never sought to create a pure democracy.

   They knew that such a government, in its purest form, could allow even “inflamed” majorities and “unreflective minority mob(s)” to rule. Freedom and self-government can co-exist only if devices are created to temper the momentary passions of the public, and the separation of powers of the executive office, congress,  the military, and the court under the tiered arrangement of delegated authority.

   The United States Constitution established America as a Federal Republic. It was drafted to include protections for minority interests (with regard to freedoms and protections for the individual and the collective) and small states: a Senate in which each state has equal representation, a presidential veto, and supermajority requirements for certain types of governmental action.