The Senate May Be America’s Most Democratic Institution

Over the last year, the United States has seen an unprecedented rise in socialist candidates winning elections and being embraced by the Democrat Party. This movement is nothing new. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), most famously, has held public office for decades. But we should remember how differently the Democrat establishment treated him just 10 years ago. During his presidential campaigns, Sanders faced enormous resistance from party leaders and was treated as an outsider challenging the party’s direction.

Today, the opposite is happening. Socialist candidates are increasingly becoming central figures within the Democrat coalition, while those who openly challenge the socialist wing risk alienating a growing part of the party’s base.

The party of Democrat Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (NY-8) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is quickly becoming the party of Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

What makes this development concerning is not simply the word socialist. It is the fundamentally different view of government and political power that increasingly accompanies the Democratic Socialists of America movement.

The American system begins with a fundamental distrust of concentrated power. That principle separates constitutional government from governments that merely promise rights on paper.

Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution formally guarantees citizens freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, procession, and demonstration. Yet those promises obviously do not guarantee the freedoms Americans associate with the First Amendment, because written rights mean little when political institutions provide no meaningful check on a government determined to violate them.

That is what makes the American system different. Our freedoms do not depend solely on politicians promising to respect them. They are reinforced by checks and balances, separated powers, federalism, courts, and institutions deliberately designed to make sweeping political change difficult.

The Senate is one of the clearest examples.

Conservative writer Andrew Schofield described its purpose well, arguing that a country as large and diverse as the United States needs a chamber capable of resisting passionate and potentially radical short-term majorities. He invoked James Madison’s warning that pure democracies historically became “spectacles of turbulence and contention” and were often “as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

It is easy to understand why institutions like the Senate and Electoral College frustrate liberals. We are constantly told that democracy simply means one person, one vote, followed by majority rule. But the United States was never designed to operate as a national direct democracy. The Founders deliberately constructed a constitutional republic in which democratic participation exists alongside institutions protecting states, regions, and individuals from concentrated political power.

Even the origins of democracy reveal that this debate is far older than America.

The Greek word demos referred not simply to an undifferentiated national majority, but to the people organized within political communities. Ancient political thinkers themselves wrestled with the danger of allowing popular passion to become unchecked political power. Greek historian Herodotus famously described a debate among Persian leaders over the best form of government. Otanes, who argued for rule by the people, defended political equality, while Megabyzus, who favored rule by a smaller elite, warned that the masses could govern through impulse rather than judgment.

The balance between majority rule and restraints on majority power remains at the center of American government. Democratic participation matters, but so do the institutions that prevent a temporary majority from doing whatever it wants simply because it has the votes.

Destroying those barriers in the name of making government “more democratic” can therefore produce the opposite result. A system with fewer checks on political majorities does not necessarily give citizens more freedom. It can simply give whoever controls that majority more power.

That danger becomes even more serious when politics increasingly operates through emotion rather than reasoned debate. The modern left has become remarkably effective at framing complicated policy disagreements in moral and emotional terms, making disagreement itself appear cruel or illegitimate.

Immigration enforcement provides an obvious example. Rather than debating only the proper scope of immigration law, enforcement priorities, or border policy, political arguments are frequently centered around individual deportation stories designed to make enforcement itself appear morally unacceptable. The same tactic appears in debates over race, where simply labeling an argument or policy “racist” can carry so much moral weight that the accusation itself replaces any serious debate over the issue.

Political systems cannot assume that voters will always act calmly, rationally, or responsibly. Strong institutions must be capable of withstanding the moments when public judgment fails.

The growing socialist wing of the Democrat Party increasingly treats many of the institutions limiting majority power as defects rather than safeguards. But removing those safeguards would not strengthen American democracy. It would weaken the constitutional structure that prevents any political movement — left or right — from gaining unchecked authority.

Megabyzus warned thousands of years ago about a government driven by blind impulse. America’s Founders confronted the same problem when constructing the Constitution. Voting remains one of the most important responsibilities Americans possess, but respecting the institutions that protect those who lose an election is just as essential.

Democracy is not simply the majority getting whatever it wants. American self-government survives because even the majority is told no.

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