I have heard for years, and again recently, that we should not be talking about America having a democracy, but instead that the Founding Fathers created a republic. This view seems to have its origin in Federalist No. Ten, written by James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, in which he distinguishes between a direct democracy, which he says is a society consisting of a small number of people who come together to administer the government in person, and a republic, where he says, “by which