He thinks that America is about democracy? I sure hope not.
The founders were well-educated to the Aristotelian theorem that Democracy was, in fact one of the worst forms of Government because it led to tyranny of the apparent majority or I would say tyranny of the bullies, since often the appearance of “majority” is just that.
The idea is a constitutional government that respects individual rights and liberty.
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/375927/print
When the Democrats have the White House, this is a democracy. When a Republican has the White House, it is a constitutional republic.
The perpetual perfidy of Democrats.
I agree with the first comment: you need to reread the article, since you clearly missed Will’s point.
I suggest you read again what George Will said,
“Government, the Framers said, is instituted to improve upon the state of nature, in which the individual is at the mercy of the strong. But when democracy, meaning the process of majority rule, is the supreme value — when it is elevated to the status of what the Constitution is “basically about” — the individual is again at the mercy of the strong, the strength of mere numbers.” (My emphasis.)
The Russian word “Bolshevik” means “member of the majority”. And “Bolshevism” is the philosophical idea that democracy means majority rule.
That is what also concerned Alexis de Tocqueville in his book American Democracy. He believed that democracy has a tendency towards “soft despotism” and tyranny of the majority.
George Orwell can be read the same way but until now the state did not have the technology of control that made Orwell’s books so horrifying.
The US Constitution is still a bulwark, but for how long when a justice of the Supreme Court can interpret the “and” in “cruel and unusual punishment” as to permit cruel punishments so long as the cruel punishments are not unusual.
I understand that in English common law, “cruel and unusual” still has the original meaning by which “and unusual” does not stand as a conjunction that specifies a second separate condition.
So the Constitution of the US is only as good a bulwark to tyranny as Presidents wish it to be when they nominate the justices.