Who said democracy is mob rule

Then they came for me … and by that time, there was no one to speak up for anyone. True peace is justice, true peace is freedom. And true peace dictates the recognition of human rights. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. It must not be a distant thing, someone else's business, but they must see how every cog in the wheel of a democracy is important and bears its share of responsibility for the smooth running of the entire machine.

The nation looked to government but the government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines!

Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that government is best which is most indifferent. For nearly four years you have had an administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up. We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it, the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it, these forces met their master.

There they have no superiors. There they have no masters save their own minds and consciences. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right.

Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about anyone else. A good American is one who is loyal to this country and to our creed of liberty and democracy.

It has become the dominant tempo of modern history, especially of the history of Europe. The good citizen is a patriot. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.

They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.

Doubtless some people say they are, but this world is grievously given to lying. At the same time nothing on earth can stop man from feeling himself born for liberty. Never, whatever may happen, can he accept servitude; for he is a thinking creature.

In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People. If we want to enjoy it, we must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or poor, whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the color of their skin.

Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance.

The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it. In an environment of sharp political polarization, this decentralized system is less and less able to represent majority interests and gives excessive representation to the views of interest groups and activist organizations that collectively do not add up to a sovereign American people.

A corporation is not a citizen with a right to vote or take a hand otherwise in politics. It is an artificial creation, brought into existence by favor of the State solely to perform the functions allowed by its charter. Interference by it with the state and attempts by it to exercise rights of citizens are fundamentally a perversion of its power.

Its stockholders, no matter how wise or how rich, should be forced to exercise their political influence as individuals on an equality with other men. That is the basic principle of democracy. They must either join the avowed disciples of aristocracy, oligarchy or monarchy, or look for a utopia exhibiting a perfect homogeneousness of interests, opinions and feelings nowhere yet to be found in civilized communities.

Whether all doctrines of natural rights of man died with the French Revolution or were killed by the historical learning of the nineteenth century, everyone who enjoys the consciousness of being enlightened knows that they are, and by right ought to be, dead. The attempt to defend a doctrine of natural rights before historians and political scientists would be treated very much like an attempt to defend the belief in witchcraft.

It would be regarded as emanating only from the intellectual underworld. Cohen, Reason and Nature, This site is brought to you by the Center for Civic Education. The Center's mission is to promote an enlightened and responsible citizenry committed to democratic principles and actively engaged in the practice of democracy.

The Center has reached more than 30 million students and their teachers since Learn more. Email: web civiced. Media Inquiries: cce civiced. Website: www. About This site is brought to you by the Center for Civic Education.

Subscribe to Newsletter. We use cookies to improve your experience on our website. By browsing this website, you agree to our use of cookies. Plato would have capped the number of citizens capable of self-government at 5, He believed that the ease of communication in small republics was precisely what had allowed hastily formed majorities to oppress minorities. Their dangerous energy would burn out before it could inflame others.

The popular press of the 18th and early 19th centuries was highly partisan—the National Gazette , where Madison himself published his thoughts on the media, was, since its founding in , an organ of the Democratic-Republican Party and often viciously attacked the Federalists.

James Madison died at Montpelier, his Virginia estate, in , one of the few Founding Fathers to survive into the democratic age of Andrew Jackson. What would Madison make of American democracy today, an era in which Jacksonian populism looks restrained by comparison? The polarization of Congress, reflecting an electorate that has not been this divided since about the time of the Civil War, has led to ideological warfare between parties that directly channels the passions of their most extreme constituents and donors—precisely the type of factionalism the Founders abhorred.

The executive branch, meanwhile, has been transformed by the spectacle of tweeting presidents, though the presidency had broken from its constitutional restraints long before the advent of social media. During the election of , the progressive populists Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson insisted that the president derived his authority directly from the people.

Since then, the office has moved in precisely the direction the Founders had hoped to avoid: Presidents now make emotional appeals, communicate directly with voters, and pander to the mob. Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms have accelerated public discourse to warp speed, creating virtual versions of the mob.

Inflammatory posts based on passion travel farther and faster than arguments based on reason. Rather than encouraging deliberation, mass media undermine it by creating bubbles and echo chambers in which citizens see only those opinions they already embrace.

We are living, in short, in a Madisonian nightmare. How did we get here, and how can we escape? After the election of , the Electoral College, envisioned as a group of independent sages, became little more than a rubber stamp for the presidential nominees of the newly emergent political parties.

The first parties played an unexpected cooling function, uniting diverse economic and regional interests through shared constitutional visions. As the historian Sean Wilentz has noted, the great movements for constitutional and social change in the 19th century—from the abolition of slavery to the Progressive movement—were the product of strong and diverse political parties.

Whatever benefits the parties offered in the 19th and early 20th centuries, however, have long since disappeared. The moderating effects of parties were undermined by a series of populist reforms, including the direct election of senators, the popular-ballot initiative, and direct primaries in presidential elections, which became widespread in the s. More recently, geographical and political self-sorting has produced voters and representatives who are willing to support the party line at all costs.

After the Republicans took both chambers of Congress in , the House of Representatives, under Speaker Newt Gingrich, adjusted its rules to enforce party discipline, taking power away from committee chairs and making it easier for leadership to push bills into law with little debate or support from across the aisle.

The rise of what the presidential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Speeding in the subways under your feet. Crawling up in elevators through vertical cracks around you. Jolting past you in every bus. Your masters, Gail Wynand. There is a net - longer than the cables that coil through the walls of this city, larger than the mesh of pipes that carry water, gas and refuse - there is another hidden net around you; it is strapped to you, and the wires lead to every hand in the city.

They jerked the wires and you moved. You were a ruler of men. You held a leash. A leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends. In principle, no freedom is safe in a democracy, every aspect of the individual's life is potentially subject to government control. At the end of the day, the minority is completely at the mercy of the whims of the majority. Even if a democracy has a constitution limiting the powers of the government, this constitution too can be amended by the majority.

The only fundamental right you have in a democracy, besides running for office, is the right to vote for a political party. With that solitary vote you hand over your independence and your freedom to the will of the majority.

That isn't democracy, it is mob rule.