By Ed Willing   DEMOCRACY: FREEDOM, OR COLLECTIVE SUICIDE? Almost 198 years ago to the month, April 1814, in a letter to John Taylor, the second President of the United States, John Adams made an astute observation amidst calls for more democratic reform: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” Our nation was merely 25 yrs old at this point, and yet he was terrified of lessons history taught him about the so-called virtues of mass democracy. He worked his entire political life arguing for the true virtue of a Democratic Republic; a system in which the people created their government, but the minority and majority were both protected from the feverish winds of hysterical whim and epidemic-like, collective voices.” GROUND-ZERO Today, I sit in Wisconsin, a marvel of a state that has had [...]