Political roots of western totalitarianism
The struggle against the democracy and popular aspirations for democracy began before the American revolution through pamphlets and writings of its major leaders. Among those who very early opposed democracy and popular aspirations for democracy ther was John Adams who “wanted to make sure that American revolution didn’t goo too far in the direction of democracy “ opposing Paine’s plan for single-chamber reprehensive bodies elected by the people, Adams denounced Paine’s plan as “s democratical without restraint or even an attempt at any equilibrium. Adams also opposed “popular assemblies which needed to be chakec because there were “productive of hasty results and absurd judgments” While proposing a representative bodies elected by the people, Paine, was resolutely opposed to crowd action of lower-class people. Later during the controversy over adopting the Constitution, Paine was partisan of conservative and strong government .
The language of popular control over government, the right of rebellion and revolution indignation at political tyranny , all these words sounded hollow as they merely aimed at uniting colonists and dissatisfied people against England but in reality, a wide range of American people Indians, blacks slaves, women had been excluded from the great manifesto of freedom of the declaration. “We the people of the United states”, a phrase coined by the very rich Governor Morris did not mean slaves Indians or blacks or woman or white servants but struggle for office and power between members of an upper class the new against the established ; the men who engineered the revolt were largely members of the colonial ruling class .
In order to protect the large economic interest of the makers of the United states constitution but also to cope with rebellion by discontented and oppressed people the new ruling class decide in 1787 in Philadelphia Convention to erect strong gand dictatorship legalized by the ratification of the Constitution. The main reason for the ratification of the constitution was an uprising in the summer of 1786 in western Massachusetts known as Shay’s rebellion.
Shays’s rebellion merits attention not because it was the only evidence of social disturbance but because it was the conspicuous uprising that startled the thoughtful men of every state and made wonder what the end of their great war for independence might prove to be; the rebellion by disclosing the danger helped to bring about a reaction, strengthen the hands of the conservatives discredit extreme democratic tendencies and aid the men that were seeking to give vigor to the Union.
The reaction immensely helped the establishment of new institutions and the creation of a government capable if insuring “domestic tranquility”
At the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton suggested a President and senate chosen for life . a constitutional dictatorship needed to not only for constitutional limitations for voting , il lay deeper beyond the constitutional, maintain of class structure and the division of society into rich and poor. For Hamilton the new Union and the new government would be able “to repress domestic faction and insurrection in referring directly to Shays’s Rebellion