Democracia e Liberalismo

"(...)For its part, political democracy long had critical thinkers.

Plato, for example, cited democracy in his The Republic (c. 370 B.C.) as "a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a kind of equality to equals and unequals alike."

Aristotle in his Rhetoric (c. 322 B.C.) hit democracy as "when put to the strain, grows weak, and is supplanted by oligarchy."

Later thinker George Bernard Shaw hit democracy for "election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."

H. L. Mencken defined an election as "an advance auction of stolen goods." (Stolen from whom?)

Or, see how America’s Founders themselves saw political democracy courting self-ruin as many voters join "factions" or special interests which cut into liberty.

James Madison spoke for his peers in Federalist Paper No. 10 (1787), to nail democracies as "spectacles of turbulence and contention, [which] 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."

No wonder the word democracy is not to be found in the entire Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and U.S. Constitution.

Or look how sternly anti-democratic are the first five words of the 1st Amendment on bills abridging religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition: "Congress shall pass no law [my emphasis]...."

Or how the Framers, fearful of democracy, tied up our Constitution with checks and balances from federalism (set back by the Civil War, the 14th Amendment of 1868, and the 17th Amendment of 1913) to the stop on an income tax (undone by the 16th Amendment also of 1913). Recall Ben Franklin, asked what kind of state the Framers had set in 1787, raising a classic proviso: "A republic, if you can keep it." Big if.

I think Old Ben was warning us: As political democracy swells, the individual shrinks.(...)"

The End or the Beginning of History? by William H. Peterson