If the most urgent questions raised by this election season have been “What kind of democracy do we live in?” and “What kind of democracy do we want to live in?,” then Senator Mike Lee, of Utah, has an answer. Just hours before the F.B.I. revealed a plot by members of a white-supremacist militia to kidnap the governor of Michigan, the Republican senator let loose a volley of tweets that could be interpreted as a shorthand version of the gospel of many on the right. “Democracy isn’t the objective: liberty, peace, and prospefity [sic] are,” Lee wrote. “We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.” Earlier, he had written, “We’re not a democracy.”

As shocking as this sounds, especially from a sitting member of Congress, it is a point of view that comes from a hidebound reading of the Constitution and stems from a selective interpretation of the Framers’ intent, articulated most directly by James Madison in the Federalist Papers. “We may define a republic to be, or […]