That is why they did not want a 'pure' democracy. The system that they gave us is a constitutional, democratic, federal republic. I happen to believe that each of those four words is crucial in describing our system of government. I also happen to believe that it is the best form of government ever devised by the mind of man. If you can think of something better, I am all ears. Our government, and indeed our society, has been 'taken over' by a powerful and self-serving financial oligarchy. That is the current 'flaw', I believe, and it may be that nothing short of a revolution would overthrow them. [I was hoping Obama could bring it about peacefully---no such luck, evidently.]

Sometimes simple majority rule is wrong, and even dangerously wrong. The public is fickle. Sometimes the public is an ass. During World War II, the public would have been very much in favor of FDR's internment of loyal Japanese-American citizens. Even though we now understand that those actions were decidedly unconstitutional, and have felt compelled to apologize, and even offer monetary restitution. I have seen polls in which a large percentage of the public would be willing to throw out the Bill of Rights. Too much freedom of speech in this country, apparently. I have seen videos of people being shown the Bill of Rights, and thinking it was some kind of subversive Communist document. Very frightening to someone like me, who values his constitutional rights. At times, a majority of Americans would have been willing to imprison homosexuals and atheists. Should we obey their wishes???

The Founding Fathers did (wisely) provide a method for amending the Constitution. They also (wisely) made that procedure very difficult, precisely to prevent a fickle public from amending the document in a willy-nilly fashion. We have come close to having an amendment that would make reciting the Pledge of Allegiance mandatory in public schools. If that amendment had passed, it would have been the first time we would have seen fit to amend the Bill of Rights. Such demagogic and populist notions can be exceptionally dangerous.

On the other hand, I agree with Phil's proposed amendment to declare that corporations are NOT 'persons', and have none of the constitutional rights pertaining to individuals. The chances of such an amendment passing, of course, are very minimal.

I still see no reason to withdraw my argument that a new constitutional convention would bring out ALL the crazies, and that it is to be feared.