Virtually all US politicians are fond of “The American People.” Indeed, as the ultimate fallback stance for any candidate or incumbent, no other quaint phrase can seem so purposeful. Interesting too, is this banal reference’s stark contrast to its original meaning.
That historic meaning was entirely negative.
Unequivocally, America’s political founding expresses general disdain for any truly serious notions of popular rule. For Edmund Randolph, the evils from which the new country was suffering originated in the “turbulence and follies of democracy.” Elbridge Gerry spoke of democracy as “the worst of all political evils,” and Roger Sherman hoped that “the people…have as little to do as may be about the government.” Hamilton, the likeable subject of today’s most popular musical on Broadway, charged that the “turbulent and changing” masses “seldom judge or determine right,” and diligently sought a “permanent” authority to “check the imprudence of democracy.”
For Hamilton, such imprudence was inherent and irremediable.
For Hamilton, the American People represented a “great beast.”
In a similar vein, George Washington soberly urged convention delegates not to produce a document solely “to please the people.” For him, as well, any search for public approval was anathema.
Today, Americans casually neglect that the country’s founders had a conspicuously deep distrust of democratic governance. Accordingly, warned the young Governeur Morris, “The mob begin to think and reason, poor reptiles . . . They bask in the sun, and ere noon they will bite, depend on it.”
Furthermore, President George Washington, in his first annual message to the Congress, revealed similarly compelling apprehensions about any genuine public participation in government. The American people, he sternly warned, “… must learn to distinguish between oppression, and the necessary exercise of lawful authority . . .”
Much as Americans might not care to admit it, the country’s founding fathers were largely correct in their expressed reservations, but probably for the wrong reasons. In the United States, “We the people” have displayed a more-or-less consistent capacity for deference to “lawful authority.” Still, this “people” has also demonstrated a more-or-less persistent unwillingness to care for itself as authentic individuals; that is, as meaningfully recognizable “good citizens.”
Now it is time for candor, especially in the Trump Era. A “mob” does effectively defile any presumed American “greatness,” but it is not the same mob once feared by Hamilton, Sherman, and Morris.
It remains a dangerous mob nonetheless.