Many anti-democratic features of the American constitutional setup hide in plain sight, assumed to be part of a natural political order because they've always been there. The founders put them there to prevent real democracy. They had classical educations and were horrified by Athens' direct democracy. They preferred the indirect representative systems and senatorial patrician oligarchy of the Roman Republic, which lasted centuries more before succumbing to Casesarism.

The liberty to direct affairs of state that they envisioned was to be confined to white, property-owning men like themselves.