Was James Buchanan opposed to democracy? Not at all - Georg Vanberg writes for WaPo's Monkey Cage

Buchanan was emphatically committed to democracy if by democracy we understand the right of individuals to choose the political order under which they must live. If democracy is defined as a commitment to unfettered majority rule, then he was certainly not a democrat. But few, if any people are democrats by that definition, since that would imply that majorities should prevail no matter what they decide to do, including trampling on the interests of vulnerable minorities — which is precisely why Buchanan believed that we would unanimously prefer not choose such a constitutional system.

Continue reading here