es of government" (p. 61). Many of the institutions we may see as evidence of the Constitution's flexibility in protecting the rights of the few against the many come under this heading, from the balance of powers among branches to the electoral college system of electing leaders. Congress is divided into two houses to prevent the majority from ruling the legislature. A balance was created between the national government and the state governments to protect different rights and to differentiate certain powers.
Greenberg's view is at odds with the idea that the system was developed to be flexible and to promote the interests of the common man but that this has been subverted and is no longer working in the era of big business. Rather, Greenberg finds that the system is actually operating precisely as intended and that it was always designed to protect the interests of land owners and businessmen. He traces this through the different provisions in the Constitution and shows how these provisions can be seen as promoting the idea of democracy while erecting protections against democracy at the same time. The fear of a tyranny of the majority becomes a fear on the part of the elite that the masses would take away their power or try to control their business agenda.
Greenberg sees the system as developing along these lines from the beginning and as becoming more flexible in terms of the response given to protect itself from dissidents and critics. He writes, for instance, about his own analysis of the issues: "The point of this brief review is to argue that civil liberties in the United States, right from the very moment of its founding as a republic, have been honored more in theory than in practice and that the courts have been, until very recent times, consistent advocates and protectors of the rights of free speech and assembly" (p. 70). Other social institutions are also shown by Greenberg to honor democratic principles...