Our system of government is designed, not to stop the majority, but just to slow it down so it has time to think things through.
NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE
W
e have lately had a lively debate around here about democracy — what it is good for, what are its limits, and how that should shape its structure. As usual, that debate involves some different perspectives among my colleagues, as well as a bunch of left-wing critics willfully misreading those perspectives and ascribing them to National Review as a single, monolithic, permanent institutional point of view. Let me step back and ask the fundamental question: What is democracy for?
The American Way
There are four basic pillars to the American experiment:
- Republicanism: government without a monarch.
- Democracy: government chosen by, and accountable to,
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