text: I said you were conflating two things. You are assuming the state and community/society are an inseparable thing. They are not. Yes, our conversation is the same thing the founding fathers had. And, in their wisdom, they did not create a democracy in the US. They had grave concerns about that. What democracy-like things we do have (representative...the house primarily) was intended to be but one have of one third of the federal government which was to be constrained by a written document as well as by the individual states (who were not intended to be mere "subdivisions" of the federal, but full blown governments in their own right as a counter-weight to the federal. The FF were concerned about these things and tried to create checks and balances to counteract the tendencies of people to be consumed by the power of the state.