Primary PerspectiveBy Thomas E. BrewtonPresidential primary campaigns illustrate politics as manipulation  of, as well as pandering to, public opinion, with no necessary  connection to political wisdom.Gail Collins, editorial page editor of the New York Times, in a  December 8 edition op-ed article, reflects liberals' embrace of  mobocracy at the expense of Constitutional government.She writes:"Romney's message, which boiled down to let's-all-be-religious- together, was certainly different from the John Kennedy version,  which argued that a candidate's religion is irrelevant. But then  Kennedy was speaking to the country, while Romney had his attention  fixed on the approximately 35,000 Iowa religious conservatives who  will tip the balance in the first-in-the-nation Republican caucus."Can I pause here briefly to point out that in New York there are  approximately 35,000 people living on some blocks? If my block got to  decide the first presidential caucus, I guarantee you we would be as  serious about our special role as the folks in Iowa are. And right  now Mitt Romney would be evoking the large number of founding fathers  who were agnostics."First, there was no "large number of founding fathers who were  agnostics."Apart from Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Cornelius  Harnett, who were Deists, all 204 founders declared themselves to be  Christians (see Religious Affiliation of the Founding Fathershttp://www.adherents.com/gov/Founding_Fathers_Religion.html ).Deists, by the way, are not agnostics.  They view all of nature as  God's handiwork.Second, Ms. Collins' comment highlights the frightening potential for  political tyranny implicit in the move to eliminate the electoral  college and to substitute election of the President by popular vote  alone.No presidential candidate would find it profitable to campaign in  Iowa or any other state without a million-plus population city.   Presidential campaigns, both primaries and general elections, would  concentrate upon the sinks of corruption that are the East and Left  Coast urban centers.Those precincts are dominated by atheistic, materialistic liberal- progressive-socialists, who revere, not the Constitution, but the  French Revolution's destruction of the whole of the social structure,  from monarchy and hereditary privilege, to the Catholic Church and  private property rights.The invariable tendency of liberal-progressive-socialism is political  tyranny, as exemplified by the French Revolution's Reign of Terror,  in which more than 70,000 French citizens were murdered.  This French  innovation in public education was followed by the ascendancy of  Napoleon to supreme power and his military subjugation of most of  Western Europe to form the French Empire.In America's liberal-progressive-socialism, the structure of  government is to be shaped by the Marxian class struggle.   The  working class must overcome the capitalists and, in the fiery furnace  of revolution, transform human nature, enabling the earthly salvation  of humanity through the agency of atheistic, materialistic  government.  The mild version is Hillary Clinton's "Village."While Ms. Collins and her New York City confreres, one assumes,  advocate the less violent creeping socialism of the English Fabians,  the aim is the same: social justice, which means to make everyone  equally poor and totally subordinate to Rousseau's conception of the  General Will, as interpreted by intellectual councils.  No doubt Ms.  Collins presumes that the Times editorial board will play a leading  role in those councils.The late Irving Howe, one of New York City's leading socialist  theoreticians of the 1950s - 1980s, called this social democracy, the  process by which the majority, with the connivance of an activist  judiciary, eradicate the protections afforded by the Bill of Rights  for individuals against the encroachments of arbitrary, collectivized  government.James Madison, in Federalist No. 10, warned against this sort of  social democracy, contrasting it with the form of government to be  created by the Constitution:"...it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a  society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and  administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the  mischiefs of faction [i.e., special interest groups]. A common  passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority  of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of  government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to  sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is  that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and  contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security  or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their  lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic  politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have  erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality  in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly  equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and  their passions."A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of  representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises  the cure for which we are seeking...The two great points of  difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the  delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of  citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of  citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be  extended."The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine  and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a  chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true  interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice  will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial  considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the  public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will  be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people  themselves, convened for the purpose..."It must be confessed that in this, as in most other cases, there is  a mean, on both sides of which inconveniences will be found to lie.  By enlarging too much the number of electors, you render the  representatives too little acquainted with all their local  circumstances and lesser interests; as by reducing it too much, you  render him unduly attached to these, and too little fit to comprehend  and pursue great and national objects. The federal Constitution forms  a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate  interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to  the State legislatures."Election of the President by the electoral college is based exactly  upon this conception, the antithesis of mob rule by ill-formed public  opinion.Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc.  The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of  writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776http://www.thomasbrewton.com/Email comments to viewfrom1776@thomasbrewton.com