Bruce Thornton
. . . "By the time of the Constitutional convention in 1787, this distrust of the masses had long been a staple of political philosophy. Roger Sherman, a lawyer and future Senator from Massachusetts, who opposed letting the people directly elect members of the House of Representatives, typified the antidemocratic sentiment of many delegates. He argued that the people “should have as little to do as may be about the government,” for “they want information and are constantly liable to be misled.”
. . . "By the time of the Constitutional convention in 1787, this distrust of the masses had long been a staple of political philosophy. Roger Sherman, a lawyer and future Senator from Massachusetts, who opposed letting the people directly elect members of the House of Representatives, typified the antidemocratic sentiment of many delegates. He argued that the people “should have as little to do as may be about the government,” for “they want information and are constantly liable to be misled.”
"Most of the delegates in Philadelphia were not quite as wary as Sherman of giving the people too much direct power, but in the end they allowed them to elect directly only the House of Representatives. Such sentiments were also frequently heard in the state conventions that ratified the Constitution, where the antifederalists’ charge of a “democracy deficit” in the Constitution were met with protestations that the document was designed to protect, as John Dickinson of Delaware put it, “the worthy against the licentious,” the men of position, education, and property against the volatile, ignorant masses." . . .
OYVAYBLOG: The Ignorance of the Obama Voter
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