Our Undemocratic Constitution

On the December 21 episode of his Journal, Bill Moyers interviewed Sanford Levinson, whose most recent book is Our Undemocratic Constitution. We find ourselves decrying the degree to which the United States is undemocratic. It turns out, it was never intended to be a democracy. Rather, our founders of the United States of America deliberately and extensively devised strategies to isolate its government from its people. Would we imagine that the word "democracy" would be found in the Declaration of Independence or in the Constitution? It's not. We talk about spreading democracy around the world, yet our own government is explicitly designed otherwise. For starters, the veto gives the president the power to override congress 95% of the time. The electoral college! And the Senate! Very interesting to grasp the implications of how this most undemocratic of institutions can block anything the House of Representatives does. There is a transcript as well as a video at Bill Moyers's site.