Posted on 09/04/2026 5:50:06 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Democracy invites despotism. When understood as majority rule, democracy means that fifty-one of every hundred citizens can have their way with the other forty-nine.
“But I want to keep my possessions, weapons, and children.” Too bad, the majority have decided to redistribute your property to those lazy bums over there, disarm you before you can do anything about it, and indoctrinate your children in public schools, so that they learn to resent you and love the State.
Democracy is dangerous without guardrails. Unless a society has a strong sense of moral virtue that fosters personal discipline, duty, and honor, base selfishness becomes the driving motivation behind all political action. Unless certain constitutional protections exist to safeguard each individual’s inviolable rights, democratic majorities devour those rights whenever expedient.
This should surprise no-one. Political philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke described humans’ pre-government “state of nature” as a chaotic, violent clash of self-interest. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” regards self-interest as the engine of free markets. Consequently, it is easy to understand why forms of democracy that are unshackled from both moral and constitutional restraints prompt a society to descend back into a state of nature in which humanity’s worst impulses are again indulged.
When Western leaders speak adoringly of “our democracy,” citizens should prepare to guard their freedoms. My goodness, there is nothing inherently virtuous about democracy. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un runs the most repressive regime on the planet, but his country is known officially as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea! China’s Xi Jinping is the general secretary of the oppressive Chinese Communist Party, but his nation remains officially the People’s Republic of China! Dictatorships around the globe claim to govern in the name of the people.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
The founders were very cognizant of the perils of pure democracy or the “tyranny of the majority” they were well aware of how Athens suffered and was fatally weakened by the foolish wars and polies implemented by the majority elected officials. They therefore founded a Republic with rational checks and balances. Note that the manic Democrats want to destroy those checks and balances ( the Supreme Court, the Electoral College, even the Senate itself), all in the power hungry assault in the name of “democracy”.
The Roman Republic
in democracy in Democratic institutions
At about the same time that popular government was introduced in Greece, it also appeared on the Italian Peninsula in the city of Rome. The Romans called their system a rēspūblica, or republic, from the Latin rēs, meaning thing or affair, and pūblicus or pūblica, meaning public—thus, a republic was the thing that belonged to the Roman people, the populus romanus.
Like Athens, Rome was originally a city-state. Although it expanded rapidly by conquest and annexation far beyond its original borders to encompass all the Mediterranean world and much of western Europe, its government remained, in its basic features, that of a moderately large city-state. Indeed, throughout the republican era (until roughly the end of the first century bc), Roman assemblies were held in the very small Forum at the centre of the city.
Who constituted the Roman dēmos? Although Roman citizenship was conferred by birth, it was also granted by naturalization and by manumission of slaves. As the Roman Republic expanded, it conferred citizenship in varying degrees to many of those within its enlarged boundaries. Because Roman assemblies continued to meet in the Forum, however, most citizens who did not live in or near the city itself were unable to participate and were thus effectively excluded from the dēmos. Despite their reputation for practicality and creativity, and notwithstanding many changes in the structure of Roman government over the course of centuries, the Romans never solved this problem. Two millennia later, the solution—electing representatives to a Roman legislature—would seem obvious (see below A democratic dilemma).
As they adapted to the special features of their society, including its rapidly increasing size, the Romans created a political structure so complex and idiosyncratic that later democratic leaders chose not to emulate it. The Romans used not only an extremely powerful Senate but also four assemblies, each called comitia (“assembly”) or concilium (“council”). The Comitia Curiata was composed of 30 curiae, or local groups, drawn from three ancient tribus, or tribes; the Comitia Centuriata consisted of 193 centuries, or military units; the Concilium Plebis was drawn from the ranks of the plebes, or plebeians (common people); and the Comitia Tributa, like the Athenian Assembly, was open to all citizens. In all the assemblies, votes were counted by units (centuries or tribes) rather than by individuals; thus, insofar as a majority prevailed in voting, it would have been a majority of units, not of citizens.
Although they collectively represented all Roman citizens, the assemblies were not sovereign. Throughout the entire period of the republic, the Senate—an institution inherited from the earlier era of the Roman monarchy—continued to exercise great power. Senators were chosen indirectly by the Comitia Centuriata; during the monarchy, they were drawn exclusively from the privileged patrician class, though later, during the republic, members of certain plebeian families were also admitted.
The Italian republics from the 12th century to the Renaissance
“Constitutional oligarchies”
After the western Roman Empire collapsed in 476, the Italian Peninsula broke up into a congeries of smaller political entities. About six centuries later, in northern Italy, some of these entities developed into more or less independent city-states and inaugurated systems of government based on wider—though not fully popular—participation and on the election of leaders for limited periods of time. In this respect, their governments may be viewed as small-scale precursors of later representative systems. Such governments flourished for two centuries or more in a number of cities, including Venice, Florence, Siena, and Pisa.
Drawing on Latin rather than Greek, the Italians called their city-states republics, not democracies. Although membership in the dēmos was at first restricted mainly to the nobility and large landowners, in some republics in the first half of the 13th century groups from lower social and economic classes—such as the newly rich, small merchants and bankers, skilled craftsmen organized in guilds, and foot soldiers commanded by knights—began to demand the right to participate in government at some level. Because they were more numerous than the upper classes and because they threatened (and sometimes carried out) violent uprisings, some of these groups were successful. Even with these additions, however, the dēmos in the republics remained only a tiny fraction of the total population, ranging from 12 percent in 14th-century Bologna to 2 percent or less in 15th- and 16th-century Venice, where admission to the ruling nobility had been permanently closed during the 14th century. Thus, whether judged by the standards of Classical Greece or those of Europe and the United States in the 18th century and later, the Italian republics were not democracies. A more accurate characterization, proposed by the historian Lauro Martines, is “constitutional oligarchies.”
After about the mid-14th century, the conditions that had favoured the existence of independent city-states and wider participation in government—particularly their economic growth and the civic loyalty of their populations—gradually disappeared. Economic decline, corruption, factional disputes, civil wars, and wars with other states led to the weakening of some republican governments and their eventual replacement by authoritarian rulers, whether monarchs, princes, or soldiers.
A democratic dilemma
The Greeks, the Romans, and the leaders of the Italian republics were pioneers in creating popular governments, and their philosophers and commentators exercised enormous influence on later political thought. Yet their political institutions were not emulated by the later founders of democratic governments in the nation-states of northern Europe and North America. As the expansion of Rome had already demonstrated, these institutions were simply not suited to political associations significantly larger than the city-state.
The enormous difference in size between a city-state and a nation-state points to a fundamental dilemma. By limiting the size of a city-state, citizens can in principle, if not always in practice, directly influence the conduct of their government—e.g., by participating in an assembly. But limiting size comes at a cost: important problems—notably defense against larger and more powerful states and the regulation of trade and finance—will remain beyond the capacity of the government to deal with effectively. Alternatively, by increasing the size of the city-state—i.e., by enlarging its geographic area and population—citizens can increase the capacity of the government to deal with important problems, but only at the cost of reducing their opportunities to influence the government directly through assemblies or other means.
Many city-states responded to this dilemma by forming alliances or confederations with other city-states and with larger political associations. But the problem would not finally be solved until the development of representative government, which first appeared in northern Europe in the 18th century.
Toward representative democracy: Europe and North America to the 19th century
Until the 17th century, democratic theorists and political leaders largely ignored the possibility that a legislature might consist neither of the entire body of citizens, as in Greece and Rome, nor of representatives chosen by and from a tiny oligarchy or hereditary aristocracy, as in the Italian republics. An important break in the prevailing orthodoxy occurred during and after the English Civil Wars (1642–51), when the Levelers and other radical followers of Puritanism demanded broader representation in Parliament, expanded powers for Parliament’s lower house, the House of Commons, and universal manhood suffrage (see below England). As with many political innovations, representative government resulted less from philosophical speculation than from a search for practical solutions to a fairly self-evident problem. Nevertheless, the complete assimilation of representation into the theory and practice of democracy was still more than a century away.
Regional developments
Continental Europe
About 800 ce, freemen and nobles in various parts of northern continental Europe began to participate directly in local assemblies, to which were later added regional and national assemblies consisting of representatives, some or all of whom came to be elected. In the mountain valleys of the Alps, such assemblies developed into self-governing cantons, leading eventually to the founding of the Swiss Confederation in the 13th century. By 900, local assemblies of Vikings were meeting in many areas of Scandinavia. Eventually the Vikings realized that to deal with certain larger problems they needed more-inclusive associations, and in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark regional assemblies developed. In 930 Viking descendants in Iceland created the first example of what today would be called a national assembly, legislature, or parliament—the Althing (see thing). In later centuries, representative institutions also were established in the emerging nation-states of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/democracy/The-Roman-Republic
Sometimes people talk about a “high trust” society as if it were a kind of luxury or an ideal to aspire to, or maybe one of those “nice things to have”.
That’s all wrong. It’s a requirement, a pre-requisite to a functioning society.
We are turning into Yugoslavia.
Once again, the writer is mis-using the term “Freedom.”
What they actually mean is “Liberty.”
Freedom is a natural state. Liberty is the constraints that the government puts on that freedom.
We wish to be free of those constraints.
I couldn’t agree more.
The essay is nonsense.
Absent democracy, there is no freedom
——
That sounds like one of those 1950s overseas AFRS public service commercials. They have some real howlers, I listen to old time radio programs where these are played along with Gunsmoke or Paladin. Another one is “In a democracy, a dictator can’t take over, the people won’t allow it”.
The ancient Greeks had democracy and slavery. Right? In fact slavery is sort of the default human condition, not the exception.
You consider this drivel? This is fundamental to the underpinnings of our Republic. I am guessing that in good FR tradition you did not read the piece.
“Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, the right to self-defense — these rights and other natural liberties do not come into existence because of majority rule. Our natural rights exist despite majority rule. As the Founding Fathers articulated in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” We aren’t equal because of democracy; we are equal despite any democratic vote that might claim otherwise. Our lives, personal liberties, and connections to God exist because of His will, not the government’s.”
A Constitutional Monarchy (where the power of the monarch is limited by parliament and courts) is a more benevolent system of government than a "democracy". The more prescient founding fathers wanted to establish a the equivalent of the British constitutional monarchy but with an (indirectly) elected rather than hereditary executive.
True democracy, like socialism and communism, has always failed wherever and whenever it has been tried.
It was once cut in stone and understood that our Constitutional Republic and Constitution was designed to protect the one individual from the masses and majority. This has been brainwashed out of ignorant shallow minds. Not even Republicans understand this anymore. They too have fallen into the “Majority dictates” trap of misconception... Example, full submission of rights in the name of “For the safety of the children” or “For better law enforcement and safer communities”. If it denies the rights of even just one individual it is unconstitutional and unacceptable.
Well, that’s the plan obviously. Or 1930s Spain. Things can and do change quick. Sarajevo hosted the Olympics, and then just a couple years later was a dystopian hellscape under artillery siege and sniper fire.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner.
“Not to put too fine a point on it: but whenever a lawfare ninja of the Democratic Party utters the phrase “our democracy,” you must know that they are completely full of s**t. For sure, they do not mean anything remotely related to an American commonweal, as understood by people of sound mind and good faith. What they mean by “our democracy” is the state as a racketeering operation run for the sole benefit of their party members, along with the ruthless power to annihilate their opponents and critics.” - James Howard Kunstler
Even if you subscribe to idiotic notions of “Democracy”, flooding the nation with millions of illegal aliens (voters) is Treason. That’s a big part of what this is about, to overwhelm existing agreed upon systems of government and finance and everything else.
Nobody voted for this. How is that “democratic”?
The Founders of America’s government understood human nature far better than the pygmies who edited its Constitution.
The original structure has merely slowed the degeneration of Liberty.
No. We have a Constitution. There are so many things in it, especially the Bill of Rights, which are outside of "democracy." The government may not pass laws limiting our access to guns, it may not limit our speech, it may not illegally search our homes and persons without strong evidence.
Yet the mob has voted "democratically" for many limitations on exactly those rights.
I'll throw out the old cliche - Hitler's first act a Chancellor (appointed in a democratic system) was to have the Reichtag (Parliament) vote to cede himself and his cabinet far greater power and to eliminate most of the checks and balances in the Weimar Constitution
Democracy in action!
That is why the US is a Republic, although even that isn't working correctly at this time.
Its why America needs radical de-centralization
especially since the rise of progressivism, and funded by printed money and massive debt, federal government, centered in DC, has grown to be a massive part of the economy, and to have a hand in literally every part of American life and civil society.
It’s why politics are so toxic. Extreme centralization makes those at the top, intel agencies and those controlling money our masters. marxists, ideologues and psychopaths need only take control of the levers of power, and they will control everything
How do Americans bring about radical decentralization?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.