Do What You know is Right

I never know what South Carolina thinks of a measure. I never consult her. I act to the best of my judgment, and according to my conscience. If she approves, well and good. If she does not, or wishes any one to take my place, I am ready to vacate. We are even.
JOHN C. CALHOUN, Representative and Senator.
Governance encompasses the many and ever changing sets of relationships between the people who make up the government and the interest of citizens, who interact with public institutions both as individuals and as participants with mutual interests. Governance therefore is about processes of making social choices. Over the course of history, societies have employed a variety of mechanisms for making social choices. We have settled on a democratic republic.
Our constitutional fathers, familiar with the strength and weakness of both autocracy and democracy, with fixed principles definitely in mind, defined a representative republican form of government. They 'made a very marked distinction between a republic and a democracy and said repeatedly and emphatically that they had founded a republic.
We refer to ourselves as a Democracy, but we are actually a Republic. These two forms of government are not only dissimilar but antithetical, reflecting the sharp contrast between (a) The Majority Unlimited, in a Democracy, lacking any legal safeguard of the rights of The Individual and The Minority, and (b) The Majority Limited, in a Republic under a written Constitution safeguarding the rights of The Individual and The Minority.
The American philosophy and system of government thus bar equally the "snob-rule" of a governing Elite and the "mob-rule" of an Omnipotent Majority. This is designed, above all else, to preclude the existence in America of any governmental power capable of being misused so as to violate The Individual’s rights--to endanger the people’s liberties.
Council members need to realize there is a fine line between listening to the public and evaluating the information and just letting them make the decision. Calhoun’s words clearly reflect the constitutional fathers’ expectations. Lately we’ve allowed our government to forget its calmer republican roots.
Council members need to be like Socrates and dare tell the public the truth about the issues based on your judgment rather then conceding to the “will of the stronger.” But in this present mood, the aroused mob would first make you drink the hemlock.