A Liberal Dose, June 13, 2025 "A Brief History of Democracy, Part 2"

 

A Liberal Dose

A Brief History of Democracy part 2

Troy D. Smith

 

Last week I wrote a little about how the Revolutionary generation viewed the word “democracy.” They equated it with “mob rule,” such as ran rampant in the French Revolution, and so worked to keep the common people from having too much power -primarily by having property requirements to vote. This meant that even free white men aged twenty-one or over could not vote unless they were worth a certain amount of money. That was the norm at the time, and is no doubt what the Framers had in mind when they drafted the Constitution. Of course, they also had in mind women and people of color not voting.

A handful of states removed property requirements in the 1790s and early 1800s. Vermont, at #14 the first new state, gave the vote to all adult males regardless of wealth or race. The majority, though, still had those requirements in place by 1820. But when the Panic of 1819 collapsed the economy, working class men started agitating for their voting rights. By the end of the 1820s, almost all states had removed wealth as a qualification to vote… which led to the election of Andrew Jackson, a populist who had grown up poor and presented as a man of the people. It also led to a reconfiguring of the word “democracy”, which started to carry a positive connotation, associated with social equality of the working class. In fact, by the 1820s the Federalist Party had collapsed, leaving the Democratic-Republican party of Jefferson and Madison as the only remaining political party… and during the Jackson era, they started being called simply “Democrats,” which they made official by changing their name in 1844.    

In the 1830s, a French traveler named Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a book (originally in French) called Democracy in America, which examined the character of Americans and sought to determine why their experiment with democracy had gone so much better than that of France. One thing he noted was that Americans love money, and generally hope to make more of it; that they don’t mind when an individual gets rich, but that they hate the idea of a handful of families, via generational wealth, becoming an aristocracy. He also noted that, unlike in Europe, you could not determine someone’s social status by how they dressed -in America poor people often dress well, so as not to appear poor, and rich people often dress like slobs so as not to be viewed as hoity-toity (not his exact words, of course). In other words, a social expectation of equality.

He did warn of two dangers to American democracy. First, the “tyranny of the majority” in which a majority group, having the most votes, can impinge on the rights of minorities. This danger was countermanded by things like the Bill of Rights, which protect individual liberties. Second, he warned of “soft despotism”, in which the government finagles a series of regulations to make voters FEEL LIKE they are participating, but which actually blind them to how they are being controlled and led to authoritarianism.

And that brings us to today, June 13. Tomorrow is Flag Day… and it is also Trump’s birthday, and the day of his massive military parade in his honor… and the date of over 1,800 planned “No King” demonstrations around the country. It also happens to be my wife’s and my anniversary (married on Flag Day!). There could be no better events to demonstrate the dangers facing democracy in America today from a militaristic authoritarian bully, and the American tradition -going back to the Boston Tea Party -of massive protest against tyranny. We are also seeing how, by ignoring the Constitution (and being allowed to get away with it), the current administration is imposing the tyranny of the majority -many of whom they have taken control of via soft despotism (which seems to be getting harder by the day).

The Constitution and its Bill of Rights. Those are our defense against tyranny. That is why military personnel and politicians pledge an oath to defend the Constitution, not to obey a president (or a king). The whole of U.S. history has revolved around trying “to make a more perfect union” by expanding rights, especially voting rights, to more and more people, not fewer and fewer.

This weekend, let our mantra be -not MAGA -but TAFA: Take American Forward Again.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, June 6, 2025 "A Brief History of Democracy, part 1"

 

A Liberal Dose

A Very Brief History of Democracy, Part 1

Troy D. Smith

 

I’m going to step away for a moment from my weekly monologue about how Trump is ruining the economy and address a specific question someone asked me. There is a meme going around social media saying, in effect, the U.S. has never been a democracy but is instead a constitutional republic, designed to protect common folk from being ruled by a tyrannical elite. The quote on that meme is actually pulled, out of context, from a long Facebook rant by an ultra-libertarian, anti-vax, Jews-are-secretly-running-the-world conspiracy theorist. That information provides a lot of context. However, the stark divide in the comparison reminds me of something else I’ve been hearing for about a decade now from conservative friends: “America is not a democracy, it is a republic.” While all the statements I have quoted are true on some levels, the framing of them in the context used by people citing them is “Democrats are bad.” In the latter case the contrast is offered that “Republicans are good.” The ultra-libertarian view is that both parties, and indeed the very concept of parties, or of government, is evil. Either way, I realize that most folks have never done a deep-dive into democracy (or populism), and can find these sorts of random quotes, when pulled out of context, confusing.

So I’m going to talk, in the 500 words I have remaining, about Democracy in America (a full discussion might take more like 500 pages!). This is especially appropriate as today, June 6, is the anniversary of one of the largest defenses of democracy in history.

First, let’s look at the word and the concept themselves. “Democracy” is from a Greek word meaning “rule by the common people” -demos. In ancient (and/or classical) Greece, city-states like Athens were run this way: major decisions were made by a vote of all adult male citizens (of course, slaves were left out of the decision-making process, and so were women for the most part). We still see a form of this every once in a while when there is a referendum -an issue voted on by every voter in a county, or a state. That differs from a representational democracy, in which voters elect someone to represent their town, district, state, etc. in a larger voting body that makes decisions, which is what we have in the U.S. (except for those occasional referendums).

Here's something many of you probably didn’t know, because you don’t see it in pop culture representations. The vast majority of indigenous North American tribes were democracies, probably more than 95% of them (I can name some of the exceptions). Every indigenous village or town (among that 95+%) had elected, nonhereditary, leaders who served as peace chiefs (diplomats), war chiefs (military leaders), or on the tribal council. However, very often, really big decisions were made by referendum- a vote of all adult members of the tribe (usually including women). The Iroquois actually had a representative democracy centuries before Europeans arrived on the continent. There were five Iroquois Nations -later six -the Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Cayuga, and Onondaga (and later Tuscarora) nations, who all formed together into a confederacy. Each town elected representatives to speak for them at the national council (Mohawk, for example), while each nation elected people to represent their nation on the grand council of the confederacy.

Most of the “Founding Fathers” were very well-educated and were very knowledgeable about the democracies of Greece and Rome (which was a democratic republic until the Caesars turned it into an empire, a generation or two before Jesus). They knew the parts that worked, and the parts that didn’t. Some were also familiar -though no one mentioned it in their writings at the time -of the democratic nature of indigenous groups, especially the Iroquois, who were close allies of the British (and therefore of the colonists before the Revolution). They were also very aware of the thoughts of various European philosophers on the subject of government and rights, especially the Englishman John Locke, and their thoughts on government as a social contract between leaders and the governed.

Those Founders, though, were a little divided on where they thought the common people stood. Most believed that “the mob”, or the general public, were too uneducated and emotional to be trusted to make good decisions, and only people (people meaning free adult males) who owned a significant amount of property should be allowed to participate in the process. This included people like John Adams and George Washington, neither of whom trusted “mob action”. For such folks, “democracy” was almost a dirty word, because they equated it with “mob rule”. Others, like Thomas Jefferson and John’s cousin Sam Adams, were very much in favor of the common people and of group protests. When they got together for the Constitutional convention in Philadelphia, they were in agreement they wanted a representative democratic republic, but a balance had to be reached between those fearful of giving the central government too much power, and those afraid of giving the common people too much power. The balance was reached by having one part of Congress, the House of Representatives, being elected directly by the people and the other, the Senate, being appointed by state legislatures (which is how we did it for the first 130 years or so of the U.S.), as well as by the president being elected by the electoral college, not the popular vote.

So that was the situation when the Constitution went into effect in 1788. However, in the 1820s there was a sea change in how people looked at democracy. We’ll look at that next time -depending on the news cycle, who knows what might come up between now and next week.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, May 30, 2025 "Our National Tradition of Opposing Kings and Aristocracies"

 

A Liberal Dose

Our National Tradition of Opposing Kings and Aristocracies

Troy D. Smith

 

Did you know that, since he was elected six months ago, the size of Donald Trump’s fortune has doubled? DOUBLED. From 2.5 billion to 5 billion. And I hear people say “oh that wonderful man, he’s sacrificed so much to be president- he doesn’t even accept a salary!” He doesn’t NEED to accept a paltry public service salary -not when he can charge billionaires from around the world to come to his private parties to celebrate the “Trump bitcoin”, or when he can arrange for visiting dignitaries and their (large) retinues to have meetings where they have to pay HIM a fortune to stay at his ritzy hotels, or when new Trump hotels are suddenly going up in every country that wants to do backroom deals with him, or even when he can have taxpayers foot the travel bill (millions and millions of dollars so far) for him to spend every weekend golfing at his own private clubs… where he literally charges the small army of secret service agents protecting him to stay at his pricy resorts, and the taxpayer pays for it.

Did you know that there are only about 800 billionaires in America… and they have as much money as the “bottom” half of Americans put together? That’s about 170 million people (and you are probably one of them). In other words, every billionaire -on the average -has as much money as a quarter-of-a-million working class people. And yet, Trump’s “big beautiful bill” that passed the House of Representatives this week is going to -through massive tax cuts to billionaires and millionaires -add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. And that is AFTER all the cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and other programs that the bill calls for (and which will be impacting people you know, and maybe you personally). It is being called by economists the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in American history. To say noting of the tariffs, which some are calling the largest tax hike in American history -because tariffs are ultimately paid by YOU, the consumer, NOT foreign countries. Many economists are warning of, not just an imminent recession, but the biggest depression in history… which, they say, will ruin most Americans but will make the super-wealthy even wealthier. And in the midst of this, Trump wants to raise the debt ceiling -so as to incur even MORE national debt, and further imperil America’s economic standing in the world… all to lower taxes on billionaires like himself. To enable people who already have more money than they could ever spend in 100 lifetimes to make MORE. And all that “waste and fraud” being cut by DOGE -which are mostly vital programs for the wellbeing of the citizens of the country, things to “promote the general welfare” -well, all of it put together is only a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the debts about to be incurred by these robber baron tax cuts.

So no, Trump has not “sacrificed so much” -at least not from his own pocket. He has sacrificed, instead, the poor of this country, and then the working class of this country, and he is about to sacrifice the middle class -including many of you reading this that might have voted for him. The whole point, for the entire crowd, is to tear everything down and destroy the ability of the country to function -and then swoop in and buy everything that is left, cheap. And thereby turn YOU into a permanent serf class… barons must own their peasants, after all. And so far, many of you have just been handing it over to them… but it is about to start hurting YOU.

You’ve probably heard the word “oligarchy” thrown around lately… it means “rule by a small group of people”. Well, there’s another word for it: aristocracy. That is literally what “barons” are, titled members of an aristocracy. Our country was FOUNDED on refusing to be ruled by an aristocracy or a king; on everyone being equal and having a fair shot. Well, that fair shot is dwindling day-by-day in this still-young administration… and the elements our country’s founders expected to resist such a turn of events are floundering. The press is afraid to speak out. Education is being crippled. Republicans who hold a majority in Congress go along with everything the president tells them to, either in fear of Trump’s supporters in the primary or, literally, in fear for their own families’ safety. Lower courts have been standing up, but the Supreme Court is a very mixed bag. How thick the irony that SCOTUS is now complaining that Trump is ignoring everything they tell him to do -when they themselves, less than a year ago, ruled that as president he can literally do anything he wants to and be immune from consequences.

Know who it is all coming down to? YOU. I am talking to independents, fence-sitters, people who don’t follow the news, traditional conservatives who have not gone full-MAGA (and maybe some that have). You’ve been sold down the river along with everyone else. Something has to be done to rein this insanity in… and that means you’re going to have to hold your nose and elect some Democrats to Congress so they can check his power. And while you’re at it, to our own state’s legislature.

Sure the libs are being “owned” and a bunch of social issues that do not directly affect you are being reversed… but very soon, your wallet is going to inform you that this is not what you voted for, and you’re going to have to do something about it.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE