City Tutoring Discussion Forum

Democracy is one of the most influential political ideas of the modern era, yet there remains considerable disagreement about its proper scope and limits.

Should democratic majorities be able to decide every political question, or are there certain principles, institutions, and traditions that ought to remain beyond the reach of public opinion? Should the Church play a larger role?

Can a democratic society preserve stability and continuity if every issue is subject to constant revision and debate?

Throughout history, political thinkers have offered very different answers. Some have viewed democracy as the highest expression of political freedom, while others have argued that democracy functions best when constrained by religion, law, custom, constitutional limits, and intermediate institutions.

A related question concerns the relationship between democracy and truth. Are majorities necessarily wise? Can public opinion determine moral questions, or are there truths and obligations that exist independently of popular consent?

As our founder Mr. Cromwell says, every society ultimately rests upon certain fundamental assumptions. If everything is perpetually open to dispute, what remains to provide order, authority, and coherence? He believes that we should move toward a society where the Church takes on a much greater role in government and daily public life.

Participants are invited to discuss:

• The proper role of democratic government
• Constitutional limits on majority rule
• The relationship between democracy, tradition, and religion
• Whether some questions should remain beyond ordinary political contestation


You should support arguments with historical examples, philosophical reasoning, legal principles, or other relevant evidence whenever possible.

Due to the number of decisions that need to be made in governing, representatives usually get elected and you end up with with a republic which is often supposed to adhere to a constitution. But in the U.S., politicians make promises, get elected, and neither obey the constitution nor the will of the people, yet retain power for the span of their term. There is no mechanism of accountability in place and the democratic principle fails to be upheld.
The principles of democracy are most effective when the people of a nation are united behind a primary identity or set of ideas, which is why western nations are being overrun and out bred by foreigners, by design of the globalists.
Democracies are also limited by the education, wisdom, and knowledge the population possess, which has been made to regress. They are also susceptible to propaganda and lies. One also has to question the legitimacy of who's counting the votes.
I agree that a society should hold certain ideas that are fundamental and not up for debate. Any serious civilization would not be discussing questions such as "what is a woman?" or "ought we murder the unborn".
Ultimately I see democracy as a deeply flawed form of government, and the only legitimate governance in this world is the righteous kingship of Jesus Christ. The establishment of anything less will fall short.

Living in a place like NYC that is so awful in every way, I completely agree with what you've said here. This country has become a total joke at this point. I think there should be more unitary ideas, but in order to have something like that a country needs to have a majority of people who share the same background and religion. Like you say, right now we are being overrun and out bred by the foreigners.

I'm curious to know what Mr. Cromwell's views on how he envisions a more authoritative church in society.

I agree with Wolfgang’s view here, and I generally believe that democracy, at least the American variety, is not compatible with the ideal Christian form of government. The State ought to give due recognition to God and exist in order such that a man can raise a family in a state of peace and security, with taxation being reasonably levied to support the common defense and welfare for the nation. The democratic regime is completely subject to the will of the populace and not (rightly) the will of God, so it begins to decay in correlation with decay of the culture at large.

I would like to also invite some thoughts on the historical perspective regarding the Framers of the Constitution as pertaining to democracy in the US. John Adams famously said “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other”. Although he was not at the Constitutional Convention, Adams was a fervent defender of constitutionalism and his writings greatly influenced the Convention. The standard interpretation of this quote would be that the men who drafted the Constitution did so in full light of the American people’s faith, which provided the necessary principles and foundations to function under a Constitution that would provide liberty. This of course suggests that the Framers were acutely grounded in Social Contract theory, which many Americans today neither believe in nor uphold except in whatever will prevent them from being thrown in prison. Although I agree with Social Contract theory, I take the perspective that Adams did not actually mean “The Constitution is for believing Christians” but rather something to the effect of “The Constitution is for anyone who holds to Christian values and morals”. After all, Adams himself was a Unitarian and there is evidence that he (taking with a grain of salt as I have not fully investigated) denied the divinity of Christ. He did not believe in basic Christian orthodoxy. At best we could call him a heretical Christian. Thus, his view excludes the quality of actual correct belief and at a minimum is tolerant of the nominal Christian who has received Christian culture and values passed down through the centuries. The great issue here, as everyone should hopefully know, is that nominal Christianity is extremely easy to infiltrate and undermine as has been done to the majority of Mainline Protestant denominations in the US. Therefore I find Adam’s justification in the quote an inadequate defense.

I think this gets at a deeper problem with the common appeal to John Adams' famous quote.

The question is not simply whether a society possesses "morality" in the abstract. Every society possesses a moral system of some kind. The real question is which moral system serves as the foundation of public life.

Adams correctly recognized that constitutional government requires a people capable of self-restraint. No constitution can survive if citizens and rulers alike don't share that. If Christianity is reduced to a set of cultural values detached from theological truth, those values gradually lose their foundation. A merely nominal Christianity may preserve Christian moral habits for a time, but over generations those habits tend to erode because the beliefs that originally justified them are no longer firmly held.

History repeatedly shows that theological error is not confined to the realm of abstract doctrine. Religious ideas shape moral assumptions, and moral assumptions shape political institutions. Once Christianity is transformed into a vague civil religion, it becomes vulnerable to continual reinterpretation and eventually replacement. I'm also very skeptical of unrestricted democracy.

In fact, this may point toward a larger role for the Church within society. Historically, Christian civilizations did not treat religious truth as a purely private matter. The Church served as a guardian of doctrine, moral teaching, and social order, helping to preserve a common understanding of truth across generations. One of the recurring lessons of history is that heresy rarely remains confined to theology. Errors concerning the nature of God, man, authority, and morality inevitably produce social and political consequences. When the Church ceases to defend orthodoxy with confidence, competing ideologies rush in to fill the vacuum. What begins as theological confusion often ends as cultural and political disorder.

For this reason, I am increasingly sympathetic to the view that the Church should exercise a more visible and authoritative role in public life. A healthy society requires institutions capable of identifying, confronting, and correcting doctrinal error before it becomes embedded in the culture. A civilization that treats truth and falsehood as equally legitimate viewpoints eventually loses the ability to defend the principles upon which it rests.

In this post, I will argue in favour of a constitutional liberal democratic-republic with appropriate limitations and how the Church can be a force for proper ethical conduct.

Outline

1. Introduction
2. Q1: "Should democratic majorities be able to decide every political question, or are there certain principles, institutions, and traditions that ought to remain beyond the reach of public opinion? Should the Church play a larger role?"
3. Q2: "Can a democratic society preserve stability and continuity if every issue is subject to constant revision and debate?"
4. Q3: "Are majorities necessarily wise? Can public opinion determine moral questions, or are there truths and obligations that exist independently of popular consent?"
5. Conclusion
   1. Note on Quality of Response
6. References

Introduction

Democracy is a form of government that can be informally defined as the direct influence of public policy by the civilian body voting for individual policies, voting for public administrators and lawmakers to act as representatives on their behalf of policy making, or both. In the modern western world (from c.a. 1940 A.D. to the time of this writing) the superiority of a democratic form of government is taken as a "given." To name a couple of examples, former politician and neo-conservative war hawk Hillary Clinton lamented [1] that "American Democracy Is in Crisis," and The New York Times reports [2] on Zionist, career politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's remarks on the superiority of (near-)pure democracy to democratic-republicanism.

I will do my best to address the three questions posted by the City Tutoring Forums admin. To do so, and as previously stated, I will first argument in favour of a constitutional liberal democratic-republic over a purely democratic society. To "keep things simple," I will assume that a constitutional liberal-democratic republic and a purely democratic society are the only two forms of government. This is not the case, even within the system of democracy, there can be dozens, or even hundreds of variants of democratic societies (conversations with Dr. Brian Ledere; also see [3]); this is not to mention the other non-democratic forms of government. Finally, I will describe how the Church can play a role in keeping societies stable.

The following are questions asked in relation to the topic of this forum thread, and my reply to them:

Q1: "Should democratic majorities be able to decide every political question, or are there certain principles, institutions, and traditions that ought to remain beyond the reach of public opinion? Should the Church play a larger role?"

Regarding the notion of societies that are purely democratic, or, its constituents directly influencing the law by a majority vote, this may work in some instances. But a purely democratic system cannot work for every possible law or action that is to be put into motion. Hans-Hermann Hoppe argued [7] that, assuming an odd-number of constituents that make up eligible voters, it is possible for a majority subset of the voters to exploit or enslave the minority subset - what delineates people into each subset can be as arbitrary as race, gender, religion, age, or other identity categories.

To give an example of how purist democratic system can be made unstable, "BadEmpanada" uses the example of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which he accuses [9] of being an "FBI [psychological operation]." While I disagree with the Empanada's conclusion, he argues that the (near-)pure democratic status of the DSA, with no "concrete ideology" nor vetting process for signing up opens it up to subversion. While the DSA may have started out with "radical" intentions, they are now used to promote politicians associated with America's Democratic National Committee, who hardly embody the ideology of democratic socialism.

Now regarding the Church, there is an interesting sociological inquiry into the nature of a good work ethic by sociologist Max Weber. Weber argued in favour of a "Protestant work ethic" [10], which posited that religion, a variant of Christianity in particular, can be used to promote a strong work ethic. Such hard work is important in a society: the material world is what sustains a culture. Because of this, the Church can be said to play an important role in the "good moral character" of they who make up a given society.

Now, I still accept the notion that Church and state ought to be separated. The Church should not directly influence the government, though by the same token, the government should not tax the Church. But, through its education of one having a good moral foundation, the Church can make the constituents of a given society work hard and better themselves. Ergo, the Church has an important role in a constitutional, liberal democratic-republic.

Q2: "Can a democratic society preserve stability and continuity if every issue is subject to constant revision and debate?"

There is a massive problem with "perpetual debate culture," especially online. A blogger critiqued the notion of "debate bro" culture [], stating that such a culture give excuses for making an exchange of ideas into cheap entertainment. An extreme manifestation of this was when Ian Kochinski (a/k/a Vaush) claimed that "it is possible for an adult and a child to have a sexual relationship, and for it to have a positive outcome on the child as well" [12]. Clearly, this "perpetual debating" does not add value to society, be they pure democracies or constitutional, liberal democratic-republics, and there does need to be standards for what can and cannot be debated.

Q3: "Are majorities necessarily wise? Can public opinion determine moral questions, or are there truths and obligations that exist independently of popular consent?"

In some cases, pure-democracies can be good for society. Francis Galton demonstrated [6] that it is possible for a diverse set of analysts and practitioners, acting as voters, to estimate the weight of livestock. These analysts and practitioners "vote" by submitting their estimates (or just blind guesses) to the administrators handling the livestock, and then their guesses would be compared against the predictions made by speculators. Galton noticed that, when taking the arithmetic mean of each of the speculators predictions, it was closer to the weight of the ox than any one individual speculator.

An "argument by analogy" can be made for Galton's vox populi and voting: if the voters have enough (correct) information, are properly incentivized, are diverse, and enough come out to vote, then it is likely that society will "predict" the best candidate. Of course, I suspect that this idea is not perfect, and further inquiries will need to be made to work out how good individuals are at selecting the "best" candidates.

Conclusion

The following are what resulted from my cursory inquiries into the practicalities of democracies:

• It is possible for a "tyrannical majority" to rule over a minority in a democracy.
• Societies with a pure democracy can be easier to subvert, as in the case of the Democratic Socialists of America.
• The Church can play a role in keeping men moral--- in particular with their work ethic.
• Perpetual debates, especially in a "debate bro" type of culture, can be counterproductive.
• The aggregate of commoners can be a benefit to society.
• This response is just a cursory review of ideas and events that relate to pure-democracies versus constitutional, liberal democratic republics. More research will need to be done to solidify ideas.

Brief Note on Quality of this Response

While I do think that politics are important, I have little experience studying and practicing them, so these may not be the best arguments--- though hopefully they do inspire further inquiry and, if shown to be incorrect, that they can be used as a basis to refine better theories of society. Sadly, because of things going on in my personal life, this reply was prepared a bit "hastily," and the quick production may have decreased the quality. Furthermore, while I did my best to structure this post into something that is coherent and cohesive, the complicated nature of politics might compel me to "change the subject," as seemingly disconnected notions are, in fact, linked to one-another. I switch to different topics and subtopics not to invoke the method of a red-herring, but because it would be difficult, or even impossible, to argue the validity of the topic in hand without referencing its protagonists and antagonists.

References

1. H. Clinton, "American Democracy Is in Crisis," The Atlantic, Sept. 19, 2018, https://archive.is/20230418042152/https ... b04646a0d7 (archived Apr. 18, 2023).
2. J. Bouie, "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Understands Democracy Better Than Republicans Do," The New York Times, Aug. 27, 2019, https://archive.is/20250109033013/https ... cracy.html (archived Jan. 9, 2025).
3. M. Haas, Appendix in: Why Democracies Flounder and Fail. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/b ... 70-6/1.pdf (accessed on Jun. 9, 2026).
4. "An Introduction to Democracy," Annenberg Classroom, Jun. 13, 2018. https://www.annenbergclassroom.org/reso ... democracy/ (accessed on Jun. 9, 2026).
5. R. A. Dahl, I. Shapiro, and D. Froomkin, "Democracy," Encyclopædia Britannica. britannica, Feb. 08, 2019. Available: https://www.britannica.com/topic/democracy (accessed Jun. 9, 2026).
6. F. Galton, "Vox Populi," Nature, vol. 75, no. 1949, pp. 450–451, Mar. 1907, doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/075450a0
7. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, DEMOCRACY THE GOD THAT FAILED: the economics and politics of monarchy, democracy and natural order. 2017
8. D. Beetham, "Liberal Democracy and the Limits of Democratization," Political Studies, vol. 40, no. 1_suppl, pp. 40–53, Aug. 1992, doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1992.tb01811.x.
9. "BadEmpanada Live," "The DSA Is An FBI Psyop," Dec. 6, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67HDCZhWa04 (accessed Jun. 26, 2026).
10. "Protestant work ethic," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic (accessed Jun. 26, 2026).
11. "Insinq Datum," The curse of debate-bro culture: A critique of debate as a bloodsport," Aug. 2, 2022, https://medium.com/@1nsinq/the-curse-of ... 310946c8ca (accessed Jun. 26, 2026).
12. "Vaush: it is possible for an adult and a child to have a sexual relationship and for it to have positive outcomes on the child as well. That is possible," Dec. 21, 2021, https://www.reddit.com/r/Enough_Vaush_S ... _child_to/ (accessed Jun. 26, 2026).