To tread the narrow path between the rule of the mob and the tyranny of Caesar, the framers were never deceived by Bernie Sanders' notion that the vote was more precious than the ultimate goal of a good representative government.
Hence, the framers had no qualms about limiting the franchise to whites, to men, the property owners and to citizens. They were quite at ease to deny the vote to slaves, females, non-freeholders. Their object was not pure democracy but a representative government of interests, always checked and balanced.
The idea that the object of our great experiment is democracy alone is wrongheaded. The object of our constitutional Republic is good government in which the tendency toward tyranny is checked by democracy (in the House of Representatives) and the tendency toward mob rule is checked by the Senate, the college of electors, title III courts, and division of powers, not only on the federal level but between the federal level and the states.
There can be no more clear definition of "the mob" than the occupants of prison. Why would we risk our Republic, our checks and balances, our carefully but precariously balanced government to criminals? Why would we risk our system under the rule of law to convicted lawbreakers?
The reason, of course, is that our modern-day neo-communists are essentially Jacobins who fervently want to pitch this country into the hands of the mob. History tells us that the man on horseback succeeds the mob. So the Jacobins were followed by Napoleon and, equally, this experiment in mobocracy will lead inevitably first to terror and then to tyranny.
Leftists are by nature God players, who reflexively exempt themselves from the ravages of their own policies. In this case they assume that they will emerge in the saddle.
