The Atlantic
The Founders Were Wrong About Democracy
The authors of the Constitution feared mass participation would unsettle government, but it’s the privileged minority that has proved destabilizing.
February 15, 2021
Getty / The Atlantic
If there was one idea shared by just about every author of the Constitution, it was the one articulated by James Madison at the convention on June 26, 1787.
The mass of the people would be susceptible to “fickleness and passion,” he warned. They would suffer from “want of information as to their true interest.” Those who must “labour under all the hardships of life” would “secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings.” Over time, as the population expanded and crowded into cities, the risk would only worsen that “the major interest might under sudden impulses be tempted to commit injustice on the minority.”
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