ABSTRACT
Over the centuries, the meaning of the word democracy has undergone a fundamental transformation. The Founders and Framers of the American experiment were, by and large, opponents of democracy, equating it to chaos and “mob rule”. They were forming a republic, modeled on Ancient Rome, which nominally derived its authority from a segment of the population, but was distinctly not about democratic “self-rule”, as in Athens. James Madison wrote in the Federalist Paper No. 10: “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths” (Madison 1787b).
