Deciding What Kind of Democracy

OF THE THREE basic forms of government; government by a single person (autocracy), government by a small group of people (oligarchy), or government by the people (democracy), democracy is by far the most cumbersome create and maintain, the most difficult to operate, to function properly. Historically democracy doesn't dneure: it is always ripped apart, frittered away, dragged down by combinations of dark, undemocratic forces. Democracies seem doomed to devolve into authoritatian dictatorships. In any democracy, the big, single question being constantly asked and answered is: how much democracy should we have? A little bit, or a whole lot? The ancient Greeks and Romans confronted and dealt with this basic question in a variety of ways and in both instances, democracy devolved to tyranny. The "founders" of the United stats, by whom we usually mean the people (wealthy, educated, land owning white men) who designed and implemented the American system of government, wrestled unendingly with thiw question, and left of a system within which we continue the wrestling today. The essential questions are: how strong to make the central government, and, how much actual power to give the people in general? America's founders tried to answer both questions by striking a balance between possible extreme answers. The American constitition, our constitution, gives very little actual power to the American people, by design. James Madison, the main author of the constitution, firmly beleived that ninety nine percent of Americans were insufficiently intelligent and educated to govern themselves, and probably always would be. After the constitution was ratified, each state was free to establish its own voting requirements and election systems. Benjamin Franklin was chosen to design the system for Pennsylvania, and he eliminated the requirment that a man must own land to vote, written into the federal constitution by Madison, the first state ever to do this. In his famous parable of the man and the jackass, Franklin cleverly demonstrated that land ownerwhip requirments for voting in essence made land, and the jackasses on them, not men, the actual voters. John Adams was chosen to design the constitution in Massachusetts, and was thoroughy appallad at the idea of eliminating land ownership voting requirments. He claimed that allowing more people to vote by making it easier to vote would be a slippery slope down which the new country must never go; eventually, people with no money or education would be voting, or, very young people, or, horror of horrors, women. Mob rule would be the result, exactly what the founders were most afraid of. What the founders were most afraid of was true democracy. Thus, they created a democratic republic. Throughout American history Americans have been arguing about how much democracy to have; women's voting rights and African-American voting rights and eighteen year old people's voting rights have been hotly debated, and still are. We are currently experiencing yet another wave of big tent democracy versus small tent republican democracy, asking ourselves how many people do we want to vote, how large or how small we want our American democracy to be; in all states controlled by Republcians laws are being passed making it more difficult to vote, with more obstacles and barriers. If these laws go into effect and are not eliminated by Congress, which has the constitutional right to override state voting laws to prevent states from infringing on voting rights, then, fewer people will vote, which is the intention of the laws being promulgated by Republicans, thoguh they usually claim otherwise. We the American people must force Congress to protect our voting rights, or we will lose them, again.