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+ {"source_url": "https://www.greenwichtime.com", "url": "https://www.greenwichtime.com/opinion/article/Why-demagogues-were-the-Founding-Fathers-14942031.php", "title": "Why demagogues were the Founding Fathers\u2019 greatest fear", "top_image": "https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/07/62/76/18821001/3/rawImage.jpg", "meta_img": "https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/07/62/76/18821001/3/rawImage.jpg", "images": ["https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/07/63/04/18821386/7/core_thumbnail_list.jpg", "https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/07/62/76/18821001/3/rawImage.jpg", "https://www.greenwichtime.com/img/print-footer-logo.png", "https://www.greenwichtime.com/img/print-header-logo.png", "https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/07/62/76/18821001/3/920x920.jpg"], "movies": [], "text": "Opinion\n\nWhy demagogues were the Founding Fathers\u2019 greatest fear\n\nWhile dressed as founding father Alexander Hamilton during a demonstration in part of a national impeachment rally, at the Federal Building in San Francisco on Dec. 17, event organizer Steven Rapport addresses the crowd. Protesters around the nation participated in \u201cNobody is Above the Law\u201d rallies on the eve of a historic Trump impeachment vote in the U. S. House of Representatives. less While dressed as founding father Alexander Hamilton during a demonstration in part of a national impeachment rally, at the Federal Building in San Francisco on Dec. 17, event organizer Steven Rapport addresses ... more Photo: PHILIP PACHECO / AFP Via Getty Images Photo: PHILIP PACHECO / AFP Via Getty Images Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Why demagogues were the Founding Fathers\u2019 greatest fear 1 / 1 Back to Gallery\n\nThere has been much talk lately among both Democrats and Republicans of the intents of the founders in the writing of the Constitution, especially involving the powers of impeachment and removal from office.\n\nWhat has been sorely lacking from this conversation is an awareness of the framers\u2019 overwhelming conviction that there was nothing more poisonous to constitutional democracies than demagogues \u2014 which to them meant a very specific kind of threat.\n\nLess than two weeks after the start of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, George Washington wrote to his friend, the Marquis de Lafayette, on June 6, 1787, explaining that his critical purpose in attending the convention was to prevent a demagogue from gaining power in the politically unstable young nation and thus destroying it.\n\nWashington described how he was pulled out of retirement by an urgent risk to the United States. \u201cAnarchy and confusion\u201d were threatening the security of the American people and the rule of constitutional law. But this was only half the danger.\n\nThe deeper risk, he wrote that early June, was that the political chaos created fertile ground for exploitation \u201cby some aspiring demagogue who will not consult the interest of his country so much as his own ambitious views.\u201d\n\nIn a letter written three weeks later to David Stuart, a Virginia politician and distant family relation, Washington lamented that the widespread denigration of the Articles of Confederation, and the federal government it created, had rendered \u201cthe situation of this great country weak, inefficient and disgraceful.\u201d He concluded the letter to Stuart by again stating that the political crisis made possible demagogues who pose a dire threat to the United States.\n\nWashington\u2019s greatest fear that summer of decision in Philadelphia was that unwise, self-seeking politicians \u2014 even if fairly elected to public office \u2014 would tear down the central government and its constitutional laws for the sake of their own advancement and glorification.\n\nWashington, like his peers, did not use the word \u201cdemagogue\u201d as an insult or epithet. He did not employ it as ammunition against those he identified as his political opponents. For the steady, rational Washington, \u201cdemagogue\u201d was a forensic term that described a well-known class of political actors, known since Greek and Roman times, who obtain power through emotional appeals to prejudice, distrust and fear.\n\nIrrespective of party affiliation, demagogues were a distinct personality type that knew no bounds of politics except fiery self-aggrandizement.\n\nWashington, of course, was not the only framer who viewed our Constitution largely as a bulwark against demagogues. In the surviving records of the speeches given at the Constitutional Convention, the word \u201cdemagogue\u201d was used 21 times by the framers as they crafted the Constitution\u2019s essential checks and balances against despotism and tyranny.\n\n\u201cDemagogues are the great pests of our government,\u201d said Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts during the convention, \u201cand have occasioned most of our distresses.\u201d\n\nGerry further described demagogues as \u201cpretended patriots,\u201d unprincipled politicians who steer the people toward \u201cbaneful measures\u201d through \u201cfalse reports.\u201d\n\nJames Madison of Virginia twice alluded to \u201cthe danger of demagogues.\u201d Alexander Hamilton of New York spoke of this peril of democracy more than any other delegate, naming it seven times. Demagogues, Hamilton said on the floor of Independence Hall in late June 1787, \u201chate the controul of the Genl. Government.\u201d\n\nLater, Hamilton went on to predict an ominous decline in republics from demagoguery to tyranny. As he put it in Federalist No. 1: \u201cHistory will teach us that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.\u201d\n\nOther framers who raised the red flag of demagoguery during the Constitutional Convention were Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, Pierce Butler of South Carolina and Edmund Randolph and George Mason of Virginia. Mason declared outright that \u201cthe mischievous influence of demagogues\u201d was one of the top two \u201cevils\u201d that can befall republican forms of government.\n\nThis destructive risk of demagogues is one reason the 55 framers of the Constitution adopted the power of impeachment during the historic convention of 1787.\n\nThey believed uniformly that some men, though elected by the people, would be temperamentally incapable of serving the public interest under the Constitution. Therefore, they offered Congress the remedy of impeachment and removal from office.\n\nThe framers did not view the exercise of this remedy to be an anti-democratic act of nullifying elections. To the contrary, they provided the people and their representatives with these emergency powers for the specific purpose of rescuing our democracy and Constitution from harm and destruction at the hands of demagogues.\n\nEli Merritt is a visiting scholar in the department of history at Vanderbilt University. Twitter: @elimerritt", "keywords": [], "meta_keywords": [""], "tags": [], "authors": ["Robert Marchant", "Ken Borsuk", "Jo Kroeker", "Karen Tensa", "Liz Teitz", "Eli Merritt"], "publish_date": null, "summary": "", "article_html": "", "meta_description": "", "meta_lang": "", "meta_favicon": "/favicon.ico", "meta_data": {"format-detection": "telephone=no", "viewport": "width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0", "ispremium": 0, "dc.date": "2020-01-02T02:00:00Z", "article": {"published_time": "2020-01-02T02:00:00Z", "modified_time": "2020-01-02T02:00:41Z", "opinion": "true"}, "SKYPE_TOOLBAR": "SKYPE_TOOLBAR_PARSER_COMPATIBLE", "news_keywords": "George Washington, Founding Fathers, David Stuart, Marquis de Lafayette, Democrats, Republicans, Alexander Hamilton, Eli Merritt, Elbridge Gerry, Stuart, George Mason, Pierce Butler, Gouverneur Morris, Edmund Randolph, @elimerritt, James Madison, Washington, Virginia, United States, Philadelphia, Roman, Greek, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, New York, Independence Hall, Congress, Vanderbilt University, Constitutional Convention, Constitution, Articles of Confederation, Twitter, Genl, Federalist No. 1", "nlpOrganization": "Washington, Congress, Vanderbilt University", "nlpPerson": "George Washington, Founding Fathers, David Stuart, Marquis de Lafayette, Democrats, Republicans, Alexander Hamilton, Eli Merritt, Elbridge Gerry, Stuart, George Mason, Pierce Butler, Gouverneur Morris, Edmund Randolph, @elimerritt, James Madison", "nlpLocation": "Washington, Virginia, United States, Philadelphia, Roman, Greek, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, New York, Independence Hall", "nlpWorkOfArt": "Constitution, Articles of Confederation", "nlpEvent": "Constitutional Convention", "nlpOther": "Twitter, Genl, Federalist No. 1", "nlpCategories": "%2FNews%2FPolitics,%2FLaw+%26+Government%2FGovernment", "og": {"title": "Why demagogues were the Founding Fathers\u2019 greatest fear", "description": "Opinion: The framers of the Constitution included impeachment not as a political tool, but as a way to deal with demagogues.", "type": "article", "url": "https://www.greenwichtime.com/opinion/article/Why-demagogues-were-the-Founding-Fathers-14942031.php", "image": "https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/07/62/76/18821001/3/rawImage.jpg", "site_name": "GreenwichTime"}, "twitter": {"card": "summary_large_image", "site": "@GreenwichTime"}, "fb": {"admins": 100006394927810, "app_id": 666270996736144, "pages": "105702905593,307851324523,12852567813,480760515417232,288240529145,316774245761,984197758297116,7457442370,207033189701,207346283795,222959748728,207042068180,72983690774,339413234035,343689323559,345828366626,234821559861394,335699426867,10150105039485602,338983127562,364516539001,337922332042,115637335153191,372011535931,333376634908,127590790608884,141923885872653,655037391286291,320774811368833,1740489152861748,469700473093040,386754203367,556449374478585,340999853450,350771491032,1120648627959218,342017778245,338463361591,138772706196968,1641688532739111,326312697536,353120110016,343366744658,335009494554,347261603104,350924013892,257724773860,361203926417,367174215398,284154645394,334501182354,350279743224,154340691263654,147848678611852,361381078011,362831597677,10150095255780118"}, "msvalidate.01": "9451CA04ABC9D1D5C6419C73B4C4F7B7"}, "canonical_link": "https://www.newstimes.com/opinion/article/Why-demagogues-were-the-Founding-Fathers-14942031.php"}