COMMENT on the above - a repeat of a prior comment with additional quotes:
Although there are democratic elements to our system of government, we are not a democracy. Our government is structured for power to be fractured into branches and separate levels - into a federal composite system, so as not to concentrate power. It is structured intentionally to protect the individual from the "tyranny of the majority," (which is exactly what "democracy" is all about.) The central ("federal") government has been delegated only specific, enumerated authorities to limit its power. The Bill of Rights prohibits regulation over individual retained rights.
Our system differs from socialism or democratic socialism in that the individual does not surrender his natural individual rights to the common good, in exchange for "civil rights" conferred by government.
If we are not as efficient or quick to change or respond to a crisis as a top down system, it is by intention. Efforts to restructure and streamline the United States into a democracy under central government is with the sacrifice of our individual liberty. So when all those Democrats harp about "
our democracy" (and as Matt Dowd ranted on MSNBC - "the tyranny of the minority,") know that they are talking about their agenda of "fundamental transformation" from our Constitutional system to entirely something else.
Additional reference:
COMPACT:
Our political/social relationship of one to another is in the form of a "compact" - an equal standing of individuals. A "Republic" (representative) form of government limited by a written constitutional delegation of authority flows from the compact. The Essex Result 1778
Republican Government: The Essex Result
Reference:
Blackstone's Commentaries, "View of the Constitution of the United States," Section 1 - Nature of U.S. Constitution; manner of its adoption as annotated by St. George Tucker, William Young Birch and Abraham Small, c1803, on the nature of a "compact":
"It is a
compact; by which it is distinguished from a charter, or grant; which is either the act of a superior to an inferior; or is founded upon some consideration moving from one of the parties, to the other, and operates as an exchange, or sale: but here the contracting parties, whether considered as states, in their politic capacity and character; or as individuals, are
all equal; nor is there any thing granted from one to another: but each stipulates to part with, and to receive the same thing, precisely, without any distinction or difference in favor of any of the parties....."
Declared Justice Chase for the Court in
Calder v. Bull, 3 U.S. 386 (1798)
"...I cannot subscribe to the omnipotence of a State Legislature, or that it is absolute and without control; although its authority should not be expressly restrained by the Constitution, or fundamental law, of the State. The people of the United States erected their Constitutions, or forms of government, to establish justice, to promote the general welfare, to secure the blessings of liberty; and to protect their persons and property from violence.
The purposes for which men enter into society will determine the nature and terms of the social compact; and as they are the foundation of the legislative power, they will decide what are the proper objects of it: The nature, and ends of legislative power will limit the exercise of it. This fundamental principle flows from the very nature of our free Republican governments, that no man should be compelled to do what the laws do not require; nor to refrain from acts which the laws permit.
There are acts which the Federal, or State, Legislature cannot do, without exceeding their authority. There are certain vital principles in our free Republican governments, which will determine and over-rule an apparent and flagrant abuse of legislative power; as to authorize manifest injustice by positive law; or to take away that security for personal liberty, or private property, for the protection whereof of the government was established.
An ACT of the Legislature (for I cannot call it a law) contrary to the great first principles of the social compact, cannot be considered a rightful exercise of legislative authority. The obligation of a law in governments established on express compact, and on republican principles, must be determined by the nature of the power, on which it is founded."
FACTION - The Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 10 (attributed to James Madison)
https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/coretexts/_files/resources/texts/c/1787 Federalist No 10.pdf
"...The inference to which we are brought, is, that
the causes of faction cannot be removed; and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controling its effects."
"If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote: It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government on the other hand enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest, both the public good and the rights of other citizens
. To secure the public good, and private rights, against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the forms of popular government, is then the great object to which our enquiries are directed..."
"...From this view of the subject, it may be concluded, that a pure Democracy, by which I mean, a Society, consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths...."
"A Republic, by which I mean a Government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure Democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure, and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union."
"...The two great points of difference between a Democracy and a Republic are, first, the
delegation of the Government, in the latter,
to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater spheres of country over which the latter may be extended."
"...By enlarging too much the number of electors, you render the representative too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and less interests; as by reducing it too much, you render him unduly attached to these, and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and national objects.
The Federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular, to the state legislatures."
"The other point of difference is, the greater number of citizens and extent to territory which may be brought within the compass of Republican, than of Democratic Government; and it is this circumstance principally which renders factious combinations less to be dreaded in the former, than in the latter."
". ... Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it
less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other...."
THE "TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY" - Alexis
de Tocqueville Democracy in America Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, vol. 2 | Online Library of Liberty
"There are men who are not afraid to say that, in objects that concern only itself, a people could not go entirely beyond the limits of justice and reason, and that we should not be afraid, therefore, to give all power to the majority that represents a people. But that is the language of a slave.
"So what is a majority taken as a whole, if not an individual who has opinions and, most often, interests contrary to another individual called the minority. Now, if you admit that an individual vested with omnipotence can abuse it against his adversaries, why would you not admit the same thing for the majority? Have men, by gathering together, changed character? By becoming stronger, have they become more patient in the face of obstacles? As for me, I cannot believe it; and the power to do everything that I refuse to any one of my fellows, I will never grant to several."
In
Chicago, B & Q R. Co. v. McGuire, 219 U.S. 549 (1911), Justice Hughes clarified the meaning of "liberty" in respect to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution: "In
Allgeyer v. Louisiana, supra, the court, in referring to the 14th Amendment, said (p. 589): 'The liberty mentioned in that Amendment means not only the right of the citizen to be free from the mere physical restraint of his person, as by incarceration, but the term is deemed to embrace
the right of the citizen to be free in the enjoyment of all his faculties; to be free to use them in all lawful ways; to live and work where he will; to earn his livelihood by any lawful calling; to pursue any livelihood or avocation, and for that purpose to enter into all contracts which may be proper, necessary, and essential to his carrying out to a successful conclusion the purposes above mentioned...'
James Madison stated: "Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is a real danger of oppression.
In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of its constituents." (Gordon S. Wood,
The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787, W.W. Norton & Co., c1993 at 410.)
And from the House of Representatives Debates, May-June, 1789, Monday, June 8:
"...The prescriptions in favor of liberty ought to be leveled against that quarter where the greatest danger lies, namely, that which possesses the highest prerogative of power. But it is not found in either the executive or legislative departments of Government, but in the body of the people, operating by the majority against the minority." (Schwartz and Webb's The Roots of the Bill of Rights, Vol. 5, pg 1029.)
As was stated by the Court in the 1876 case of
Munn v. State of Illinois, 94 U.S. 113:
"...
When one becomes a member of society, he necessarily parts with some rights or privileges which, as an individual not affected by his relations to others, he might retain.
'A body politic,' as aptly defined in the preamble of the Constitution of Massachusetts,
'is a social compact by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.' This does not confer power upon the whole people to control rights which are purely and exclusively private,
Thorpe v. R. & B. Railroad Co., 27 Vt. 143;
but it does authorize the establishment of laws requiring each citizen to so conduct himself, and so use his own property, as not unnecessarily to injure another. This is the very essence of government, and has found expression in the maxim sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas. From this source come the police powers, which, as was said by Mr. Chief Justice Taney in the
License Cases, 5 How. 583, 'are nothing more or less than the powers of government inherent in every sovereignty, . . . that is to say, . . . the power to govern men and things.'
SEPARATION OF POWERS
Said John Taylor in "An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government":
"It is our policy to consider the people as retaining a vast share of political power, and as only investing their government with so much as they deem necessary for their own benefit...Power is first divided between the government and the people, reserving to the people, the control of the divident allotted to the government. The divident allotted to the government, is subdivided between its two branches, federal and state." Then these two portions were further broken up and "distributed in quotas still more minute" to the various departments and branches of the government... all our governments are limited agencies." "Power is divided by our policy, that people may maintain their sovereignty..."
The Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 51 (Madison)
The Avalon Project : Federalist No 51
"...In a single republic, all the power surrendered by the people is submitted to the administration of a single government; and the usurpations are guarded against by a division of the government into distinct and separate departments. In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself. Second. It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure."
