Our founding fathers opposed democracy as evidenced in their vehement and relentless warnings about the same and the American longstanding constitutional republic. Again, both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution did not mention "democracy." Further, the Bill of Rights and the Articles of Confederation do not consider democracy in the American ruling system since it has long stood on Republic. Therefore, the founding fathers opposed democracy on condition that it would ultimately degenerate into despotism. Sensibly, they rejected democracy because of its inherent flawlessness since it demanded that every wealth had to be shared. This led to injustices since some people could be given money for nothing while those giving had no freedom to spend their finances in their best interests.
Ideally, those who opposed democracy feared that it would undo the upper-class status of selected few in terms of their privilege and power as regards the obligation to share the wealth with the undeserving lower classes. The Electoral College depicts how the upper class who worked in the plantations in the North and the South did not want to compromise their influence; thus, advocated indirect methods of presidential elections. Generally, democracy is undermined in the US because oligarchy controls the system based on the past corrupt antithesis of their republic, which is associated with corporatism, elitism, and aristocracy. Therefore, despite the benefits of democracy as regards the principles of majority rules and optional elections held regularly, it did not protect wealthy individuals from the redistribution of wealth philosophy. The issue of contention in this concept involves the fact that the less productive members of the society could get money for nothing. Resultantly, the founding fathers opposed democracy and greatly supported a republic because the latter caters for individual differences instead of absolute equality.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Practically, democracy brings people together to share their diverse opinions and ideas towards making a common decision for the good of everyone. The founding fathers saw to it that the process of achieving the common goal is slow, flawed, and frustrating. Therefore, founding fathers like Winston Churchill pronounced that democracy is the worst form of government that has ever existed in time, except the others like a republic. This implies that democracy makes the citizens doubt the very system of government that they profess to back up.
Furthermore, since the founding fathers considered civility as the functional democracy, it required that everyone must be treated with courtesy, dignity, and respect although this proves to be a lynchpin to the upper class. Ideally, a democratic government advocates the exercise of restraint and recognition of a common trust in the future to overcome individual differences to attain a common good effectively. Additionally, leaders must listen to various concerns from and different opinions and give acknowledgments to prosper in a democratic government. This means that even though the founding fathers united to listen to different opinions, they did not believe in prospering together because the democratic “wealth sharing” philosophy could thwart their future ambitions. Still, the democratic processes are long, slow, and exhausting despite its benefits that result in solutions. Hence, the founding fathers believed that only demagogues used democracy to hoodwink individuals to incite the crowd without achieving simplistic solutions to complex societal challenges.
The Constitution as an anti-democratic document
The constitution was undemocratic in the manner in which the founding fathers established a republican form of government to moderate some of the excesses of democracy. As a result, they came up with the Electoral College, the Senate, checks and balances and the unelected courts to act as safeguard institutions in America. In most democratic governments, voters have the freedom to select their leaders on a one-man, one-vote basis, which is contrary to the US constitutional requirements relying on the Electoral College when electing the president. This implies that the constitution was established undemocratically particularly due to the distrust of the majoritarian democracies. Therefore, the college limits the rights of the majority since only a fraction of voters from each state were allowed to select the president on the presumption that a direct election wouldn’t work perfectly. The assertions prove that indeed the constitution was an anti-democratic document in the American history.
Additionally, the constitution provided for a democratic election of the members of the House of Representatives. However, there were disagreements concerning the excess power of this House because the founding fathers thought that it could go overboard due to the emergence of the tyranny of the majority. This implies that only 51% of the whole population had the legal mandate to control all authorities of the US government. As a result, they did set up the Senate to check the prospective tyranny within the House. Therefore, the constitution proves to be undemocratic since the Senators were individually appointed by each state’s legislature to cushion them from the direct interests of the voters.
Finally, most democratic governments decide their course of action through the majority opinions. This fact is contrary to the US government, which introduced a careful system of checks and balances intended to thwart majority rule. A typical example is the authority of the Congress to oversee the president’s decisions and either approve or reject as is in the case of signing treaties or the appointment of top government officials. Therefore, the back-and-forth system restrains the government and curtails any single faction from dominating; thus, the fear of the founding fathers that make the constitution an undemocratic government.
