In the latest 5-minute video for PragerU, Dinesh D’Souza, the author and speaker, explains the ingenious structure of the Constitution, detailing how it was designed to protect against not only an overbearing monarchy, but also the tyranny of the many.
The video, part of PragerU’s five-part series on “Making America,” takes a close look at James Madison — a Virginian who is often referred to as the Father of the Constitution — and his role in shaping the early American Republic.
D’Souza begins the video by asking whether the American people could be counted on to always do the right thing, and says this was a question Madison was deeply invested in answering.
“Whenever there is an interest and power to do wrong,” Madison once said, “wrong will generally be done.”
D’Souza explains, “For his new nation, Madison wanted as much freedom as possible with as little government as possible. But he had no illusions. Tyranny, he knew, comes in many forms. It’s not confined to monarchies and dictatorships.”
One of the forms of tyranny that most concerned Madison was that of the majority, or the mob.
This recognition of the danger that people could pose to their own political liberty led Madison to look at the role of factions, or groups with shared interests, in republican government. While smaller factions would be kept in check by larger factions, Madison knew that there needed to be a way to keep the bigger factions from dominating everyone else.
“This is the central purpose of the Constitution: to limit, frustrate, and in some cases block majority rule,” D’Souza explained.
One simple yet important observation is that the Constitution needed to be written down so that everyone would know the law of the land.
D’Souza notes, “The original document was written on four pieces of parchment and is 4543 words long. Its remarkable brevity perfectly matches its purpose: to create a framework for limited government.”
Another important point about the nature of the Constitution is that rights are clearly spelled out.
And a third major component of the Constitution was that it set up a representative republic, not a direct democracy. “And a republic is a much better guard against tyranny of the majority than a democracy, in which, by definition, the majority can do whatever it wants,” D’Souza says.
The design of the Constitution also ensured that power was divided up among three branches of government. While the legislative branch had the power to write and pass laws, the executive branch was entrusted with enforcing those laws, and it was the job of an independent judiciary to then resolve legal disputes about those laws.
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