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There are ultimately two sources of legitimate political power: up from the governed, or down from God. The latter is of course preferable in theory, but long experience has taught us not to trust earthly interpreters of God's will with secular power. So we settle for the former.
If we can't trust an unrepresentative elite that explicitly seeks to divine the will of God, even less so can we trust one that takes the same approach but leaves out God, substituting "fundamental human rights" or "fairness" or "justice" or "equality." All fine things, but...
...once we accept that legitimate power is flowing up from the governed, not down from God, we must also ultimately trust the governed with deciding what is a fundamental right, what is fair or equal or just. Restraints on the majority aim not to deny that power but to guide it.
The Founding Fathers believed in the necessity of elite leadership, elite draftsmanship. But they ultimately submitted their work to be ratified by the governed. The institutions they built have speed bumps & sobriety checkpoints, but the people still have the wheel.
It is true, as the Framers warned us, that a democracy cannot long survive a corrupted and unvirtuous people. But no other system can, either. A corrupt people produces bad kings, bad priests, bad judges, bad philosophers, and bad soldiers.
If classical liberalism is doomed, it is doomed because all things human are doomed. The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
