A meme? A talking point?

A republic, not a democracy.

We hear with increasing frequency from conservative sources that the Framers feared democracy and gave us a republic instead of a democracy.

In the sense of a direct, participatory democracy the republic they gave us was certainly not that.

Nor did anyone want such a thing.

Nor is the republic we have now, needless to say.

But most of the Framers and all of the big names among them insisted the new republic designed at Philadelphia had to have at least minimal democratic features and nearly all of them thought that meant the members of at least one chamber of the legislature ought to be directly elected by the people.

And all but the obviously self-interested small states thought representation in both chambers ought to be proportionate to population.

According to his notes, Madison, for example, was quite snippy about it, demanding of a Delaware representative who complained his state would be crushed in both houses of the new legislature by the men of the more populous New York and Virginia how his state would fare with no union at all, or out of the union while the large states were in.

And all but those from slave states thought that, for purposes of calculating a state’s representation in the legislature, slaves resident in that state ought not to count at all as part of the population because counting them only enhanced the power of their owners.

As for fear of the demos, Madison and Hamilton were pretty clear they dreaded efforts of the poor and ordinary folk to “impair the rights of property,” to pass laws favoring debtors over creditors, etc.

Though Wilson and others spoke up strongly for democracy, and the convention as a whole was more concerned of danger on the right than on the left.

Hence the new constitution would take the trouble to expressly forbid both to the federal government and the states creation of a new nobility, and would guarantee the states a republican - meaning non-monarchical, non-aristocratic, non-hereditary, non-caste - form of government.

There were no such guarantees against too much democracy in the states, though there were against domestic tumult and insurrection.

All the same, it might be argued this convention of grandees, slavocrats, and property-owners nowhere gave the federal government the authority or the federal congress the power to do any such thing as “spread the wealth around” through a food stamp program, or federally supported welfare, or a school lunch program, or Medicaid, or etc.

On the whole, I think, this fellow is right.

Larry Elder on the Welfare State

All the same, as Dan on Night Court used to ask, “What’s your point?”