Suggest to an average American that democracy has many terrible disadvantages compared to monarchy, and the immediate response is "but under monarchy there is no safeguard against a corrupt or tyrannical king!"

What they miss is that in democratic republics the people *are* the king -- democracy is really just an inverted monarchy. In both systems those courtiers seeking power flatter the sovereign: on one hand the king, on the other the mass of the "people".

So, in a democratic republic the same problem arises: what safeguard is there against a corrupt or tyrannical *people*?

There is only the Constitution -- a piece of paper.

As Stalin might have asked: "How many divisions does this 'Constitution' have?"

Already Polybius's cycle is well underway, with calls for destroying the Senate, removing the Electoral College, carving D.C. into dozens of new states, etc.

In Aristotelian terms, "form" must be suited to "matter".

Consider a hammer, for example. The shape of the hammer is its Aristotelian "form"; the wood and steel are the "matter".

If the matter isn't suited to the form -- e.g., a hammer made of glass -- then the hammer is a chimera, a failure.

In the same way, if the form of government is no longer suited to the "matter" -- the people -- then the system fails.

Are the American people still suitable "matter" for the "form" created by the Founders? Or are we now as unsuited to the requirements of that democratic Republic - civic virtue, belief in a transcendent basis for natural law, etc. - as glass is for a hammer?