Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

“[In a pure democracy], [a] common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such 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.”

-James Madison, The Federalist No. 10

Think about what’s happening to you in Ohio, “obnoxious individuals”. Think about your “personal security”, homosexuals. Think about your “rights of property”, smokers. Individual citizens voting to make law via state referendum and the idea of direct democracy is the mob mentality the great minds of two centuries ago realized was, and would be, poisonous to the Federal government, the government of the combined states. “Because I want it!” isn’t reason enough to make law at any level. It’s sad we’re such lousy students of our own history and origin.