The Constitution of the United States is a vehemently anti-democratic document. It was designed to prevent a democracy from taking hold, and it specifically limits the sovereign power of the group collective over the individual. The Bill of Rights was specifically written to preclude certain rights from the political lawmaking process.
Justice Antonin Scalia, in so many words, stated that the Constitution takes certain subjects off the table. As I mentioned in previous musings, the United States in not a democracy because the Constitution removes the political lawmaking process away from the hands of the people, and gives it to a group of representatives. The Constitution also removes the judicial process, the execution of the law, and finally, a non-exhaustive list of rights.
The purpose of the Constitution is restrictive in nature. The Constitution does not bestow rights or responsibilities, but rather it dictates rules that prevent certain actions by certain groups. For example, it is not a right of the judiciary to dictate what a law means; that is the purpose of the legislature. It is not a right of the legislature to hold a judicial proceeding, the judiciary has the sole discretion to hold judicial proceedings. The intended purpose is to keep the various functions of society “in their lanes”.
This leads us to the “democratic process”. There really is not any sort of process that could be considered democratic. While anyone can run without a party affiliation, unless you’re running for a local position, or have incredible name recognition, the likelihood of winning the election without party affiliation is low. The political parties have internal rules and regulations, and each State has laws determining how candidate selections occur. In some States, only the members of the party can select which candidate runs. If the Constitution was at all “democratic”, why would it not just plainly state that representatives are directly selected by the voting base?
Even the Bill of Rights (in theory) removes the ability for the political process to regulate how those rights are exercised. Of course the practical application of Constitutional rights has been sullied by an ever growing block of people who believe that rights are just a privilege granted by the government (or even the Constitution). However, the Constitution as it is plainly written functions like a rule book, and as such should be understood to be a rule book, with the Bill of Rights acting as a list of rights that cannot be abridged by any law whatsoever. In the rock-paper-scissors game of rights vs law, rights beat law every single time.
The previously mentioned block of people believing that rights are privileges, and that America is a democracy, is a growing block. This terrifies me, as this group of people will ignore the rules in which our society functions, and will use power to enact their will. In nature, there are no rules but power. We ought not want to live that way, as power has inconsistent rules, and is by its core tyrannical. We should strive to build a system that has a consistent set and application of universally understood rules. I would go as far to say that the lack of understanding as to why the United States is not a democracy, is a key example as to the ignorance of the inheritors of this system. The only solution that I can see to this is discussion and education as to how our country came to be, and why it was written as such.