What did Benjamin Franklin mean when he said democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.?

Answer 1

The quote is an analogy that means that Democracy alone is simply Majority Rule (whatever the most people decide, is what the government does); which is basically unfair to any minorities. True freedom comes from the ability of a minority to protect itself from the "wolves" of Democratic government and the majority. For example, American slavery until the Civil War was Democracy in action, because the majority of Americans supported slavery.

The quote often attributed to Ben Franklin (a Founding Father of the US) goes "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch; Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." It has been an anecdote for many years before the internet. There are so many attributes to Franklin for this quote, that I am inclined to think it came from him, or a later student of his writings. However, I believe the advent of the Internet & the course of time have changed the words from the original quote. Having read a lot of Franklin's writings, I would expect at one time he PROBABLY said something like this: "Liberty should be like two wolves and a well-armed sheep voting on what to have for dinner." Many of his contemporaries probably understood as he did the inherent problems of pure democracy, so there was probably no need for that half of the analogy. He would have known that lambs are baby sheep (not old enough to vote?), and "lunch" was not a term in use during Franklin's time. This quote would have worked well with the situation of British majority rule over colonial America and the minority of independents who wanted self-government and freedom.

Answer 2

Democracy is the majority (2/3) forcing it's will on the minorities violently.