American Exceptionalism runs so deep that sometimes it’s hard to admit when our democracy fails to uphold the values laid out in the Constitution. And at first glance it may appear as though Benjamin Franklin’s quotation regarding the relationships between Democracy and Liberty with minorities buys into this traditional pro-democracy, pro-American narrative that gets perpetuated by mainstream academia. By asserting that “liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote,” Franklin provides an optimistic view that the lamb, the political minority, has the opportunity to stand out against the majority and have its rights protected. But in truth, his quotation speaks louder about his pessimistic view of the role of democracy as a silencing agent
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Therefore, from this analysis of Franklin’s quotation, I conclude that democracy isn’t the precursor to liberty, but rather liberty is the means to its own end and the ability to act in pursuit of liberty is a liberty in and of itself. In order to understand the relationship between democracy and liberty, we must first evaluate the circumstances that brought forth the US Constitution as we know it and recognize that while it speaks highly of the democratic process as the primary mode of achieving liberty, the creation of the Constitution wasn’t exactly a democratic process in and of itself. It’s important to remember that the contents of every debate and conversation during the Constitutional conventions were secret. In fact, the framers …show more content…
However, if the United States established itself as the sovereign rulers of the new territories won from Spain, but refused to give them the right to vote, how can these people ever hope to achieve any form of liberty against the American government? That’s where democracy fails again, because where there is no avenue to vote, voting obviously cannot be used to guarantee the protection of liberty against the ruling majority. The displeasure of granting citizenship to the new territories ran so deeply that when Isabel Gonzales took the issue all the way to the Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Williams (1904), the justices couldn’t even bring themselves to rule on the issue but rather chose to passively remark that Puerto Ricans were simply not aliens of the United States, preferring to leave the core issue of citizenship up to Congress to decide at a later point in time. So in 1916, 12 years after Gonzales v. Williams, Munoz Rivera stood before Congress and declared that Puerto Ricans demanded full
Therefore, from this analysis of Franklin’s quotation, I conclude that democracy isn’t the precursor to liberty, but rather liberty is the means to its own end and the ability to act in pursuit of liberty is a liberty in and of itself. In order to understand the relationship between democracy and liberty, we must first evaluate the circumstances that brought forth the US Constitution as we know it and recognize that while it speaks highly of the democratic process as the primary mode of achieving liberty, the creation of the Constitution wasn’t exactly a democratic process in and of itself. It’s important to remember that the contents of every debate and conversation during the Constitutional conventions were secret. In fact, the framers …show more content…
However, if the United States established itself as the sovereign rulers of the new territories won from Spain, but refused to give them the right to vote, how can these people ever hope to achieve any form of liberty against the American government? That’s where democracy fails again, because where there is no avenue to vote, voting obviously cannot be used to guarantee the protection of liberty against the ruling majority. The displeasure of granting citizenship to the new territories ran so deeply that when Isabel Gonzales took the issue all the way to the Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Williams (1904), the justices couldn’t even bring themselves to rule on the issue but rather chose to passively remark that Puerto Ricans were simply not aliens of the United States, preferring to leave the core issue of citizenship up to Congress to decide at a later point in time. So in 1916, 12 years after Gonzales v. Williams, Munoz Rivera stood before Congress and declared that Puerto Ricans demanded full