Tom Feeney: “I would start with the proposition that Lord Churchill pointed out, and that is that democracy is the worst form of…”

“I would start with the proposition that Lord Churchill pointed out, and that is that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. It is an inconvenient form of government even at the best of times, but the gentleman just spoke and suggested that we need to have more debate about how the People's House should have its representatives selected. The truth of the matter is, from the inception of our Republic we have had that great debate and our Founding Fathers have solved that debate for us. They have told us that the People's House need to be elected by the people. Speaking of the inconvenience of democracy, George Mason during that great debate suggested that 'whatever inconvenience may attend the democratic principle, it must actuate one part of government.' By the way, that is us. He continued, 'It is the only security for the rights of the people.' Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to you that doing away temporarily with democracy is something that a lot of aspiring democracies in third world countries have done, and temporary turns out to be a long time and sometimes forever. The worst thing that we can do is to throw out our traditions because we are having a serious crisis.”