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To: SeekAndFind
The founders were wise enough to realize that too much democracy was just as dangerous as too little. In fact if you read many of their early writings, they were deeply suspicious of giving voters too much power. They created a system where the people had could get rid of bad leadership, but not so much that every elected official felt compelled to bow to every public whim. We see what happens when you have a party (the democrats) who have built a majority out of catering to various interest groups and the good of the nation overall be damned.
6 posted on 03/01/2013 7:38:16 AM PST by apillar
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To: apillar
The Democrats do not have a built in majorty ~ what happens here is the single member district controls everything whether it's a township, precinct, ward, county, state, ...... to win you need only 50%+1 votes so there's a powerful incentive for a party to develop that gets that amount regularly on a widespread basis.

There will, of course, be insiders who don't get their piece of the power so they will gravitate to another party that also seeks 50%+1 votes ~ over time this will become THE SYSTEM and as the parties divide up the affiliated factions over minor issues, they will even begin to look like each other.

If you want to change America you create multi-member districts and you will move coalition politics into the Congress and the state legislatures. Within weeks you will have 50 to 1000 political parties.

If you reflect on what you said you are looking back nostalgically to the Federalist point of view ~ they imagined that if only men of property and education selected the officers of government everything would be just peachy ~ for them ~ forever.

Jefferson knocked that idea in the head and the Federalists faded from the political scene!.

10 posted on 03/01/2013 7:58:40 AM PST by muawiyah
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To: apillar
The founders were wise enough to realize that too much democracy was just as dangerous as too little.

As James Madison posited a month before the Constitutional Convention:

"The great desideratum in Government is such a modification of the Sovereignty as will render it sufficiently neutral between the different interests and factions, to control one part of the Society from invading the rights of another, and at the same time sufficiently controlled itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the whole Society."

17 posted on 03/02/2013 3:24:41 PM PST by Jacquerie ("How few were left who had seen the republic!" - Tacitus, The Annals)
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