On democracy, republicanism, populism and the tyranny of the majority The most fundamental principle of democracy is majority rule as determined by a majority of the people voting in the affirmative for a candidate or issue. Gaining a majority of the popular vote using the rule of one-person-one-vote provides an
As I wrote earlier, the word “democracy” is derived from demokratia, a Greek word with a clear etymological history describing a form of self-rule as practiced in ancient Athens. By showing that even a pure democracy excludes some of the population within an association of people, most notably young children,
My previous post about democracy ended with the question: Are we really in jeopardy of losing our democracy? Answering this question requires me to search for and establish what single, immutable quality, if any, must be the foundational bedrock of democracy, without which it would be or become something entirely
It is neither rhetorical nor an exercise in semantics to ask, “What is democracy?” Recently, the word has come to occupy an outsized and frequent presence in our lexicon, most often in the context of something that is in danger of being lost due to the divisive political climate. To
Of Structures and Systems The American Revolution was the violent expression of 18th century republican sentiment “to resist and overthrow tyranny.”[i] After living under the oppression of the British monarchy and successfully throwing off its shackles on July 4, 1776, many of the founding fathers who framed the U.
After the U.S. Constitution was drafted in June 1787, it was sent to the "several states" for ratification (acceptance and approval) by special conventions organized expressly for that purpose. Immediately thereafter, some supporters of the new Constitution, known as federalists, began writing persuasive articles to convince people