pat buchanan has a lot of things to say about 'our democracy', which isn't, and i think he's spot on;

“What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people.”

What did John Adams mean when he wrote this to Thomas Jefferson in 1815, after both had served as president?

Adams was saying that America, the country that took up arms and fought for its independence from the British, was already a nation — before 1775.

America preexisted the Constitution, Adams is saying. America had been conceived and born before he and Jefferson began to write its Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776. America had come into being even before Lexington and Concord in 1775.

A corollary of what Adams wrote is that America, and the republic created by the Constitution, are not the same thing.

While America is a country, a republic is the form of government created for that country in Philadelphia in 1787.

“A republic if you can keep it,” said Ben Franklin to the lady who had asked what kind of government they had created for the already existing nation, when he emerged from that constitutional convention.

What, then, are our elites bewailing when they say that populists, rightists and Trumpists have put “our democracy” at risk?

Answer: It is not America the country or America the nation they are referring to, but our political system as it has evolved.

And what is the nature of the threat they see?.........read more..........