But the essay is crystal clear that our form of government is a republic, not a democracy. I have asked many people over the years about this Madisonian statement and they immediately reject it. They say, often angrily, that we are a democracy. People get fighting mad about it. Just the other day I was called a “half-wit,” for bringing it up.

In 1959, I took a course on the Constitution taught by one of the professors from my university’s law school. At that time I was 20 years old and had swallowed the story of American history hook, line, and sinker. On the first day of class, the professor said that the Constitution would be our text and the Federalist essays would be supplemental readings. He told us to read, and be prepared to discuss, Federalist 10. I went to the library and read it.

At the next class someone asked about Madison’s claim in Federalist 10 that America is not a democracy. Others murmured support. The professor was ready. He said that Madison was arguing that an Athenian style democracy could not be implemented in a nation that had a population numbering in the millions. He said that Madison had done the next best thing. He designed a representative democracy and the scheme of representation made it possible for our representatives to listen to the folks at home and fight for their interests in Washington. Problem solved. Case closed. My universe was restored.

But slowly but surely I began to doubt, and then I realized that our professor had no answer. He, too, had swallowed the story of American democracy hook, line, and sinker. But he knew he had to answer questions from students so he was the one who did the inventing. He invented a story to explain how it was possible that Madison’s essay was indeed consistent with the common belief that America is a democracy. I’ll bet that the professors who teach the Constitution everywhere in America still find a way to duck the obvious conflict between the Father of the Constitution, and some source somewhere that started this error. And this error is important. Madison saw a serious flaw in the governments of the states at the time the Constitution was written. Washington wrote about the “imperfections” in the Constitution when the Constitution was being sent to the states for ratification, then he brought it up again in his Farewell Address. His warning was dramatic and crystal clear. John Adams wrote a letter in 1780 about the Massachusetts Constitution in which he identified the flaw in that document. Then in 1796 he wrote another letter to Thomas Jefferson again pointing out the flaw in the Constitution. He, like all the others who recognized the flaw, had no solution. Washington said it first, “we can’t fix it—future generations will have to fix it—and if they don’t our nation will be destroyed.”

Benjamin Franklin, assuming the anecdote is true, pointed to the flaw when he told a woman at the end of the convention that our form of government is “a republic, if you can keep it.” He didn’t say “democracy.” He said “republic.” Was he lying? Was he, along with Washington one of the two smartest men in America, mistaken? I will stick with Ben and George.

So, my problem with our education system is how can such gross errors be made, and once made, how can they continue to be taught? Is it like the world of Charles Darwin and will take centuries to sorta, kinda, correct?

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, in the last couple of days, made big news when she shed light on the institutional corruption in our system of government. She did an excellent job of identifying the problem, but she did not solve it. I suspect that she will not be able to. No one has. But the problem she identified is the one that all of those Framers and great men identified, it is a flaw in our Constitution.

Not so long ago, some very smart men wrote a book called “How Democracies Die.” When I saw the title I knew I had to get it. It would be reasonable that a book that proposes to teach us how democracies die would include at least one real democracy as proof of its thesis, but there are no democracies mentioned in this book. They are all republics. I searched the text to see if I could find a reference to any democracy. I found none. I did find a mention of “Athens.” It was in an endnote and it was part of a mailing address: “Athens, OH.”

The corruption that we all are aware of is destroying our nation and the world. And the cause of that corruption is built into our republican Constitution. The cure is to implement a real democracy, but when I say this I again am deluged with outrageous assertions, all incorrect, about how democracies work. The democracies that Madison described in Federalist 10, have never existed, not anywhere, not at any time.

I have descendants. They are in danger and I can do nothing about it.

I have written several historians about this question and I have received no answer, nada, nichts, zip.