Electoral College
Neat article but misses some points.
James Wilson, popular sovereignty, and the Electoral College by Matt Riffe
You cannot attribute the idea of an electorate solely on the arguments of one individual. Early on in what can be described as the genesis for what would become the Constitution of the United States was certainly debated and articulated at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, decades before Thomas Jefferson, John Witherspoon, James Wilson, or John Dickinson penned ideas to paper. Both Jefferson and Franklin met James Wilson while at the University of Edinburgh. They shared lectures and met some of the most brilliant political, economic, and philosophical minds in the world. Specifically the concepts of modern democracy were argued in Poets Close just off the Royal Mile there in Edinburgh. These men including our illustrious Franklyn were exposed to Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, including Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith. Supplemented by treatises from John Locke and Edmund Burke. It was a time when education meant something and it wasn't marked by a piece of paper for mere attendance. These students and teachers argued, shaped, and formed models that became the great republican experiment. The United States became the embodiment and proof that liberty can and should exist. Democracy had been around for a millennia. Our forefathers went from the abstract to the practical in a mere few years.
These men were witness to various experiments and struggles with democracy or the building of a commonwealth. They firmly attributed many or our fine American traditions based on the Iroquois confederacy. Just look at our Great Seal. These men were also Masons. If you've been inducted into the Masonic Lodge, you also understand the adherence to the various freedoms and descriptions of liberty that our Constitution enshrines. The inductive reasoning first penned in our Declaration of Independence, our Preamble, and further into what is our Bill of Rights. The signs and symbols are there. Our Framers constructed an incredible piece of work made from conclusions based on their current knowledge and predictions. What an incredible feat to design a republic.
Americans must know, acknowledge and feel that the traditions, the flag and homely speech have long been conserved to the development of civil and religious liberty on which the great confederation of sovereign republican States has been founded.
