A Constitution Founded For The Elite. Elitism is defined by Webster’s dictionary as, “leadership or rule by an elite.” I think this is a perfect definition of our constitution. When you take an in depth look at who created our constitution and their intentions, you can see that our constitution was created with the elites as top priority. Therefore, making the power elite theory, the best theory to describe the constitution. The names you think of when you think about the founding of the constitution are, John Locke, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson, to name a few. All these men were members of the elite class, at the time, in America. I believe the reason the constitution was made to favor the elite, because it was establish by the elite. One of delegates …show more content…
They were apprehensive of a government ruled by the people. “The delegates wished to represent the public through better-educated, wealthier, and more experienced leaders- men like themselves” (Morone, 58). A horrifying but true representation of what the founders had envisioned for America. The most blatant act of elitism shows in the way they organized our voting system. Only white males who owned land were granted the right to vote. Even though they preferred the idea of the “well educated” elite to be the only citizen with the right to vote, they didn’t feel they could put full dependence on these men either. So they created the Electoral College so if the people “made a mistake” the electors could fix it, again taking the power away from the people and resting it back to the elite. They also created polices that were purely to benefitted the wealthy, like the three-fifths compromise. A policy that benefitted wealthy slave owners by counting each slave as three-fifths of a person in order to give them more seats in the house of representatives. Therefore, giving the elite even more power in