The propensity of a democracy . . .

• “The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty.” –Fisher Ames, speech in the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788

Re: Term Limits

• “Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens.” –George Mason

Democracy will soon degenerate . . .

• “[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the  moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.” –John Adams, An Essay on Man’s Lust for Power, 1763