Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), who was democratically elected into office in 2011, tweeted Thursday that “democracy isn’t the objective” of the United States. In a flailing attempt to debate the finer points of difference between a constitutional republic and a direct democracy, Lee wrote, “Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity [sic] are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.” In an earlier tweet, he wrote, “The word ‘democracy’ appears nowhere in the Constitution, perhaps because our form of government is not a democracy. It’s a constitutional republic. To me it matters.” A spokeswoman for his office pointed The Salt Lake Tribune to one of the Federalist Papers as backup for Lee’s thinking.
