American Democracy

rom the point of its founding, democratic government in the United States of America has faced the challenging need to overcome certain obstacles inherent in both its organization and general structure before many of its basic assumptions could be actualized. Learned and astute observers of the founding and development of American democracy noted the threatening nature of a number of these obstacles during the early days of the new republic. The study proposed here finds its importance and justification in the concept that several of the original problems of American democracy have endured with increasing ominous consequences for the full realization of democratic government in the United States. In particular, two of the most crucial

What is hoped for here is an examination of specific responses and events related to the aforementioned major problems that is capable of shedding an enlightening beacon of light on the nature and progression of maladies related to these problems and what is thereby portended for American society in terms of present results and future possibilities. There is, in other words, the intent to forge an analysis capable of informing and instructing those who are devoted to and must continue to grapple with these outstanding problems, problems in need of being resolved if ever democratic government in America is to achieve any degree of substance consistent with its theoretical suppositions and ideals.

The first problem in American democracy set forth here was offered the summary justification by the Founding Fathers that it was a "limited" representative or republican form of democracy that was best suited and most desirable for the new

Such campaigns were tragically successful in too many cases for too many years before

Americans began to realize the true extent of the victimization.

It is a fundamental assertion of this study that the majority society, in its fear-provoked zeal to maintain and assure its inequitable position in American society, flirted with and came dangerously close to total abandonment of the particular freedom upon which all others are ultimately dependent, the right to disagree. Moreover, it is an ancillary claim of this study that the danger has not yet passed, for few if any of society's major problems have been solved, and a large number of Americans seem yet inclined to believe that special treatment and different rules can be applied to Americans who dare to disagree without consequence for those who are in agreement with the powers and policies that