Democracy and mob rule

Even those most sympathetic to popular government among the men who wrote and adopted the US Constitution generally shared the view of the ancients – and everybody else up to their own time – that actual democracy, literal rule by the people at large, is mob rule.

Quoting Plato against democratic idealism, Hamilton reputedly once said (though I forget the occasion), “Your people, sir, is a great beast!”

The people are, after all, willfully ignorant, shockingly stupid, imprudent, incompetent, often malign, and led and misled only by demagogues.

Hence Madison’s pride that the republics of the states of the union and of the United States featured no assembly and gave no direct power of decision to the people.

Rule by full-time officials delegated for the purpose was supposed to avoid the down-side of popular government in the form of outright democracy.

But that can work only if the delegated officials are not in the statistical sense a representative sample of the people themselves and if they are to a degree insulated from popular influence while in office.

That is to say, this can work only if the peoples’ representatives and rulers really are their betters: more educated and intelligent, more prudent, and more competent even if not reliably less malign.

A caveat.

The greater and more direct the role of the people in selecting officials for the most important offices the more the entire process is dominated by demagogy, chicane, and what Bentham called sinister influence.

On the other hand, as the role of the people is attenuated the opportunity is improved for their rulers to exploit them mercilessly and totally neglect their interests, even as a necessary support for their loyalty and obedience to the government is diminished.

However and as to that, on the whole it is less important that the role of the people be strengthened than that the power of the few to use the government to have their way with the many be minimized.

Government can never literally be by the people.

It is always and by its nature government of the people.

The trick, for the democrat, is to make it government for the people.