James Madison’s Plan to Stop Tyranny | Founding Fathers Series Part 4

What did James Madison fear most about democracy?

Madison believed tyranny could come not only from kings and dictators, but from the majority itself when power goes unchecked.

In this episode, I reveal Madison’s plan to stop tyranny, protect individual rights, and design a Constitution strong enough to control government—and force government to control itself.

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Dinesh D'Souza is an author and filmmaker.  A graduate of Dartmouth College, he was a senior domestic policy analyst in the Reagan administration.  He also served as a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.  

He is the author of many bestselling books, including "Illiberal Education," "What's So Great About Christianity," "America: Imagine a World Without Her," "The Roots of Obama's Rage," "Death of a Nation," and "United States of Socialism."  

His documentary films "2016: Obama's America," "America," "Hillary's America," "Death of a Nation," and "Trump Card" are among the highest-grossing political documentaries of all time. He and his wife Debbie are also executive producers of the acclaimed feature film "Infidel."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
The preamble to the American Constitution begins with the phrase
we the People. But could the people of America be
counted on to do the right thing all or even
most of the time. The principal architect of the Constitution,
James Madison, gave this question a great deal of thought.
His answer was a decided no quote. Whenever there is

(00:36):
an interest and power to do wrong, he said, wrong
will generally be done. 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. In

(00:56):
a democratic society, the threat of tyranny comes from the
people themselves. The founders called this the tyranny of the majority.
The majority will if it can, put its own interests
above those of the minority, and generally not hesitate to
deprive it of its rights and freedoms. This is why
Madison was preoccupied with the problem of what he called faction,

(01:19):
the word he used for any kind of organized pressure group.
Madison deemed both minority and majority factions dangerous. Yet of
the two types of factions, he considered a majority faction
to be more dangerous. Why because minority factions can be
curbed by the power of the majority. But who will

(01:40):
curb the majority? This is the central purpose of the Constitution,
to limit, frustrate, and in some cases, block majority rule.
As Madison put it, the great task was to devise
a document that would quote first, enable the government to
control the governed and quote in the next place, oblige

(02:01):
it to control itself. How to do this, Madison had
a plan. First, the Constitution had to be written down.
We're so accustomed today to national constitutions. We need to
remember that prior to the American Constitution, no country in
the world had won. And since the adoption of the
US Constitution, many countries have had constitutions that came and went,

(02:21):
some lasting just a few years. Yet the American Constitution
has now endured for two and a half centuries. The
original document was written on four pieces of parchment and
is four five hundred and forty three words long. Its
remarkable brevity perfectly matches its purpose to create a framework
for limited government. To Madison, this meant that the authority

(02:44):
of the federal government should cover certain listed or enumerated areas,
but outside those areas, the government has no authority. Second,
the rights of the citizens had to be clearly spelled out.
That's why the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known
as the Bill of Rights, contain a series of limitations
on government. The Rights and the Bill of Rights typically

(03:06):
begin quote, Congress shall make no law. Congress shall make
no law restricting free speech or freedom of the press,
or the free exercise of religion. Third, the concept of
representative government had to be clearly defined. Representative government means
that the people do not rule directly, their rule by
electing representatives who govern in their stead. Madison counted this

(03:29):
practice a radical departure from the direct democracy of the
ancient Athenians. As the distinguishing mark between democracy and the republic,
a large and extended society, Madison argued, can function effectively
only as a republic, and a republic is a much
better guard against tyranny of the majority than a democracy,

(03:50):
in which, by definition, the majority can do whatever it wants. Fourth,
the power within the government must be divided. The Constitution
separates power between an elected legislature charged with making laws,
an elected executive charge with enforcing them, and an appointed
judiciary empowered with resolving legal disputes. A further division happens

(04:13):
between the national government and the states, so that some
powers that exercise at the national level others at the
state and local level. Fifth, mutual oversight, checks and balances
was necessary to restrain the power of the individual branches.
Because Madison understood how easy it is for a country
to devolve into tyranny, he ensured that each of the

(04:34):
three branches of government act as a check on the
power of the other two. Congress as the power to
make laws, but the president can veto them, and vetos
can be overridden only by congressional super majorities. The president
and the executive branch enforce the laws, but there is
congressional and judicial oversight. The judiciary interprets the constitution and laws,

(04:55):
but judges are nominated by the president and confirmed by
the Senate. This is not complete list, but it gives
a clear picture of Madison's ambition to give America a
political system that would promote freedom by making it very
hard for the human appetite for power over others to
ever be realized. He succeeded thus far,