Posted on 11/26/2018 6:24:36 PM PST by TBP
Governments are created to protect person and property, and to ensure liberty. Democracy is a partial means to that end, not the end in itself. Simple majoritarian democracies have a record of running over rights of minorities, including economic minorities. From the time of the ancient Greek city-states, democracies have been established from time to time, but have never lasted. Those longer-lived modern democracies have all restricted the voter franchise in one way or another until recent years. In the United States, originally, the voting franchise was limited to male property owners. Finland was the first country to give women the right to vote back in 1906, and those very democratic Swiss did not give the women the right to vote until 1971.
Under unrestrained democracy, majorities can tax or regulate minorities almost out of existence, or vote for people who destroy the democracy — as did the Germans in voting for Hitler, and the Venezuelans in voting for Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. The American Founding Fathers were well aware of the failures of previous attempts to create democracies, which is why they established the United States as a constitutional federal republic rather than a direct democracy.
A constitution that limits the powers of the state, contains checks and balances, and can only be amended by super-majorities is fundamentally an undemocratic document. The Founders’ contemporary, Scottish historian Alexander Tytler, noted: “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.”
Political jurisdictions most often lose their democratic independence because of the unsustainable spending and debt. probably is only a matter of time before judges, rather than elected officials, are running these states.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
When the founders' constituted the country it was not the business of the Federal Government who could vote.
AFAIAC, ‘republic’ is a subset of democracy, not a stand alone creation. Saying we are a republic and not a democracy is like saying crickets aren’t insects.
Sure - so the states did it.
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