Question

Can anyone help explain what these quotes mean?

"A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

“All men of sense will agree in the necessity of an energetic executive … The ingredients which constitute energy in the executive are u

Answer 1

“All men of sense will agree in the necessity of an energetic executive … The ingredients which constitute energy in the executive are unity; duration; an adequate provision for its support; and competent powers.”

Answer 2

These are from the federalist paper
No 10
No 70 .

Answer 3

The first is the observation that if power is rooted in the will of the majority, there is nothing to stop the majority from looting and oppressing any minority. Since there will always be more incompetent and lazy men than brilliant and hard-working men, it follows that sooner or later the majority will simply vote itself "bread and circuses" paid for by the productive minority, and the state will collapse, usually resolving into dictatorship or (in the past) conquest by a better-run nation or group.

You can observe this on a small scale in school by observing what happens in a large "group" project: quite often you find only a minority of people working as hard as they can, and a number being willing to take advantage of the efforts of others in a way they would NOT if their own grade was personally on the line. (Many teachers award individual grades even in group projects for just this reason, to forestall this.) You may also observe that a house shared between adults, and rented, is messier and less well-kept than a house owned by a single adult. Same thing: if people can rely on others to do the hard work, and share the fruits, they often will -- often enough to make any kind of collective ownership a routine disaster for humanity. That's just the way we are.

This problem was well-known in the 18th century, and one reason why democracy and republicanism had kind of a bad reputation. Enlightened men tended to favor absolute monarchy, perhaps limited by a powerful aristocracy and/or parlaiment, because (1) a single ruler was limited in the damage he could do; his appetites no matter how outrageous were far less dangerous than the appetites of millions; and (2) he could represent a consisent bulwark against the fads and impulses of the majority. He would necessarily be sensitive to them, since he probably didn't want to end up with his head on a pike, but he would resist them when they were unusually foolish or strange and probably short-lived.

The solution argued by Madison is that a *large* republic would have so many factions that they could never get together and agree on *which* minority they would exploit, and so there would never really be a consistent long-lived parasite majority that could destroy the country by exploiting some productive minority. It's unclear how right he was about that.

The second is the observation that national security sometimes demands that one man be a leader in urgent situations. You can't ever get consistent and rapid decision-making from a committee, or by voting, so you have to have, from time to time, only one man calling the shots. This would be true in times of war, but more generally in implementing broad goals set by the people (e..g through legislation). You want all the little details of implementation to be logically consistent and decided without much waste of time and energy. That suggests you appoint one man to oversee the process, because he will be consistent and rapid in his decision-makig on all these small matters of implementation. You want him, ideally, to be faithfully executing the broad vision of the people -- you don't want him coming up with his own creative interpreation of what the legislature meant to say -- so you want some kind of check on him, such as a limited term in office, a way to impeach him, a way to oblige him to report regularly on what he's doing. The Founder's provided for all this.

Answer 4

@Carl_Pham Thank you so much! (: I really Appreciate it!!