Breaking news from beyond the grave: James Madison wants you to know he's been grossly misquoted for 250 years.
Apparently when he wrote about government "deriving all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people," what he really meant was that 30% of the population should control 70% of the government. He just forgot to mention that detail at the Constitutional Convention.
At least, that's what his modern-day ghost writers would have us believe.
You've heard them: the folks who pop up whenever voting rights or election results get discussed, armed with their gotcha phrase: "We're not a democracy, we're a constitutional republic!"
They deliver this line with the smug satisfaction of someone who thinks they've just solved the Da Vinci Code, apparently unaware that they're parroting a talking point that originated with opponents of FDR's New Deal and later became a favorite of the John Birch Society.
These amateur historians have somehow discovered that the Founding Fathers were secretly anti-democratic all along. Never mind that pesky detail about Abraham Lincoln (you know, the Republican president) describing our government as "of the people, by the people, for the people."
Honest Abe clearly didn't get the memo that democracy was supposed to be a dirty word.
Here in Wyoming, this historical revisionism is particularly rich.
Our state exists because of democratic principles; we literally voted ourselves into statehood. Our constitution begins with "We, the people of the State of Wyoming," but apparently our territorial founders were just as confused as Madison about what kind of government they were creating.
Maybe they should have consulted a modern Facebook constitutional scholar first.
The irony runs deeper when you consider Wyoming's democratic traditions.
We were the first territory to grant women the right to vote, a radical expansion of democracy that conservatives at the time opposed with arguments remarkably similar to those deployed by today's "republic not democracy" crowd.
Were our suffragette ancestors simply mistaken about living in a democracy?
The most amusing part of this semantic sleight-of-hand is watching people who run small businesses, fix transmissions, and deliver Sunday sermons suddenly become baffled by the concept that something can be two things at once. These same folks understand that a Hereford is both a cow and a specific breed, that a pickup truck is both a vehicle and a Ford F-150, but somehow can't grasp that a constitutional republic is a type of democracy.
The timing of these constitutional lectures is suspiciously convenient.
Notice how Wyoming gets flooded with amateur civics teachers only when election results and voting access become topics of discussion. Apparently, the distinction between democracy and republic only matters when democracy might produce outcomes they don't like.
What these historical fan-fiction writers miss is that the founders weren't rejecting democracy; they were trying to perfect it. They designed a system with checks and balances not to thwart the will of the people, but to refine and stabilize it.
Madison himself warned that if government derives power from "an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class," it would be oppressive, not republican.
The founders used "democracy" and "republic" interchangeably in many contexts because they understood what our modern ghost writers apparently don't: that a republic IS a form of democracy. When Alexander Hamilton wrote about our "representative democracy," he wasn't having a senior moment.
But here's the real kicker: this whole "republic not democracy" routine has become the political equivalent of a participation trophy. It's what you say when you can't win majority support but still want to feel legitimate about wielding power.
Lincoln understood something our modern constitutional revisionists seem to have forgotten: "the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible." The Constitution seeks balance (majority rule with safeguards), not minority autocracy wrapped in fancy Latin phrases.
So the next time someone tries to lecture you about how we're "not a democracy," ask them why Wyoming's motto includes "Equal Rights" if majority rule is so terrible.
Ask them why our ancestors fought for statehood if they were afraid of people having a say in government. Ask them why they only remember this constitutional tidbit when democracy produces results they don't like.
Better yet, remind them that if they want to honor the Founding Fathers, they should try reading what those men actually wrote instead of what the revisionists wish they'd written. Spoiler alert: those guys were pretty fond of that whole "government by the people" thing.
The ghost writers can take their revisionist history and file it under fiction.
Readers may reach Cowboy State Daily columnist Gail Symons at Gailsymons@mac.com
