American Conservatives love to claim that the Founding Fathers would be on their side. They often refer to the U.S. Constitution, claiming that we need to adhere to every word in the founding document. Indeed, the Republican Party is calling itself the Party of the Constitution.
The Huffington Post begs to differ with them, though.
According to the article in the HuffPo, when the famous Founding Fathers created this nation after the American Revolution, they intended to set up a republic, but they were wary of open democracy.
When asked what kind of government had been proposed in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Ben Franklin answered:
“A republic, if you can keep it.”
What did Franklin mean by this statement?
He meant that the writers of the Constitution of the United States were worried about corruption. They had seen the government of England becoming corrupted as the King controlled the markets.
They were also worried about the rise of populist demagogues who could sway the opinions of average citizens. At this time, in the late 18th century, political philosophers warned about the end of monarchies. This was the age of reason, the Age of Enlightenment. They feared that with the end of monarchy the world would see an age of irrational mob rule.
The belief at the time was that republics could be constructed based on knowledge and reason. This meant that the men who founded the United States worried about the rise of men who could use the power of oratory to basically fool people into believing in irrational promises and fears.
Does this sound at all familiar?
One of the reasons why the Founding Fathers created a system of representative democracy instead of direct democracy was because they feared that the uneducated could be influenced by impassioned speakers. They didn’t want the average man on the street to be able to listen to some smooth talker who would get them to vote against their own self interests.
Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, even the populist Thomas Jefferson, feared that a republic might be brought down by the emotionalism of a smooth talking populist.
These guys, these Founding Fathers, would absolutely be in the #NeverTrump camp.
Check out this video for a deeper perspective on the issue:
Featured image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr. Available through Creative Commons Attribution Generic 2.0 license.
