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I am very pleased (and surprised) to read such an article printed anywhere.

Here in America, we are inundated by our media with the words "democracy, democracy, DEMOCRACY!" In Iraq, we are "fighting for democracy". It's everywhere.

The words "individual rights" or "natural rights" are nowhere to be heard or seen. But of course the difference between a democracy and a constitutionally-limited republic is as day is to night, not that the American people understand those concepts any more...

Thanks for posting this. In return, allow me to post a little of what we colonists thought about democracy. (I have taken the liberty of emphasizing the last part):

Democracy is when the people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
--H. L. Mencken

"Democratic" in its original meaning [refers to] unlimited majority rule...a social system in which one's work, one's property, one's mind, and one's life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose.
--Ayn Rand

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.
--Winston Churchill

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.
--Gilbert K. Chesterton

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
--John Quincy Adams

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
--Bill Vaughan

Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.
--Marquis de Flers Robert and Arman de Caillavet

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.
--H. L. Mencken

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.
--Alan Coren

The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.
--Art Spander

Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is blissfully ignorant.
--John Simon

A country which proposes to make use of modern war as an instrument of policy must possess a highly centralized, all-powerful executive, hence the absurdity of talking about the defense of democracy by force of arms. A democracy which makes or effectively prepares for modern scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic.
--Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
--James Russell Lowell

Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
--Robert Byrne

The American system is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. A democracy, if you attach meaning to terms, is a system of unlimited majority rule; the classic example is ancient Athens. And the symbol of it is the fate of Socrates, who was put to death legally, because the majority didn't like what he was saying, although he had initiated no force and had violated no one's rights.
Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom....
The American system is a constitutionally limited republic, restricted to the protectrion of individual rights. In such a system, majority rule is applicable only to lesser details, such as the selection of certain personnel. But the majority has no say over the basic principles governing the government. It has no power to ask for or gain the infringement of individual rights.
--Leonard Peikfoff

"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections."
--The US Supreme Court, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 1943.