Is Democracy right for us?
I’ll give a short answer of no and a long answer of yes, but with stipulations.
Yep, I said it. At this point, I do not think that democracy is right for us right now. And to that end I don’t believe in the adage of “it’s not perfect but it’s the best thing out there.” Bullshit. It’s a sad excuse for refusing to acknowledge the truth of the matter. It’s sticking your head in the sand and refusing to acknowledge that we’re sitting in a sad state of affairs and are in some real trouble.
At its best, democracy is a fair representation of the population. At its worst it is 50.1% of the people voting to oppress and terrorize the other 49.9%.
Where are we at right now?
I only ask this because smoking ban proponents in Wisconsin are celebrating a “victory of democracy” in the compromise that has been struck and will be signed by Doyle to impose a near total indoor smoking ban in the state. This got my brain churning over the question of just what this ”victory of democracy” means to us. After all, as one gleeful lover of democracy put it:
Yes! Democracy does work! The legislature followed the will of the majority and banned this filthy and dangerous habit from all workplaces. All you whiner smokers can now sit in your homes, cry about your supposed “right to smoke”, and smoke yourselves (and your families) to death. Wah, wah, wah.
Interesting. Does this leave any question in our minds that this person (and oh-so many people like this guy) think that the role of democracy is to oppress and punish the minority? If this is indeed the will of the majority, then we have some serious problems here.
Ben Franklin once said that “only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Have we become corrupt and vicious? If so, do we really deserve democracy? After all, we throughout all levels of government we’re using the fundamental excuse of democracy to punish and terrorize people from all walks of life. Whenever people decide they don’t like something (smoking, wealth etc etc), they go straight to the government and make use of the democratic process to go after the thing they don’t like… And why doesn’t anybody stop them or question them? Because it’s democracy, stupid. The majority speaks and the rest of the people suffer.
Have we become so cruel in our complacency that we find it perfectly acceptable to harm others in the name of the majority? If so, we sure as hell don’t deserve democracy!
How have we come to lose our sense of decency? When did it ever seem like a good thing to put your neighbor under your thumb because you disagree with them?
I scoffed when I first got involved in Bureaucrash and realized that some of their philosophy revolves around boycotting voting because of the majority oppressing the minority concept; however I have taken a sharp divergence from my original thinking on the topic and I don’t think that they’re at all crazy to say it. Sure, I still vote, but only because I feel it grants me permission to bitch. As a minority in the political world, I know my vote goes straight into the trash, but at least nobody can point at me and claim that I’m all talk.
But I digress, I scoffed at the idea because all we ever hear is how great democracy is, and how the whole world deserves democracy blah blah blah. But shake off all of the rosey feelings and democracy takes an ugly turn. It is a system that needs decent people to function in an appropriate manner. When the system is run by corrupt, cruel, vengeful or overtly selfish or self interested people, democracy becomes a wicked tool for wrongdoing.
Anyway, I’m not saying that democracy is wrong or that it isn’t a useful system; however I am saying that the people are working to actively destroy it and have been inviting tyranical leaders through their own vicious actions and attitudes. If we ever do lose democracy in this country, it wont be because democracy failed us, it will be because the people turned a simple system of fair representation into a tool for majority tyranny to satisfy their own lusts.
Think about it. Is this the path we want to go down?
on May 7, 2009 on 1:28 pm
That is why the founding fathers went for a Constitutional Republic instead of a pure democracy. Where individual rights and property rights were sacred.
John Adams defined a constitutional republic as “a government of laws, and not of men.”[1] Constitutional republics are a deliberate attempt to diminish the perceived threat of majoritarianism, thereby protecting dissenting individuals and minority groups from the “tyranny of the majority” by placing checks on the power of the majority of the population
There is a move towards collectivism at the Kremlin aka Madison.
Here are a couple of quotes on that subject.
“Don’t forget that pure democracy is a form of collectivism — it readily sacrifices individual rights to majority wishes. Since it involves no constitutional bill of rights, or at least, no working and effective one, the majority-of-the-moment can and does vote away the rights of the minority-of-the-moment, even of a single individual. This has been called ‘mob rule,’ the ‘tyranny of the majority’ and many other pejorative names. It is one of the greatest threats to liberty, the reason why America’s founding fathers wrote so much so disparagingly of pure democracy.” — Bert Rand
Statism
“Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group (to “society,” to the tribe, the state, the nation) and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force — and statism has always been the poltical corollary of collectivism.” — Ayn Rand
I did a blog entry on the subject
on May 7, 2009 on 2:49 pm
Jason Lewis said it best on yesterday’s show (end of second hour) when he said that we are now in a place where the winners of an election get to violate every right of the loser.
Frightening. Just frightening.
on May 7, 2009 on 8:35 pm
After the constitutional convention when Ben Franklin was asked what they had given the people he responded ” a Republic if you can keep it.” I think about those words often these days and I am afraid that we can no longer keep it. I found this post very interesting becuase it is a subject that I have beem contemplating writing about. I have thought about writing a post called “Is America too big?” which was to be about whether America has grown too big both physically and population wise to survive as we know it. This is what the founders feared. You may have just inspired me to write that post.
on May 7, 2009 on 11:38 pm
This is not a democracy; it is a republic
IMHO, the current system as it is not that bad. There needs to be some tweaks for sure but the foundation is still sound. I am of the mind that another constitutional convention is overdue. No system is going to be perfect. The goal should be to find a system that works.
First, the 17th amendment needs to be repealed. The senate was not supposed to be accountable to the general public. It was supposed to be accountable to the states. It is little wonder that Washington is so willing to trample on state’s rights when the states are not represented.
There needs to be term limits. These career politicians need to be sent to the pasture. Over time, they lose sight of why they are in Washington; to represent their constituents. On a similar vein, there needs to be a way to limit the influence of special interests on politics. That is a tricky one because anything effective would probably be unconstitutional.
Finally, the power of the duopoly needs to be broken. As it stands, the system is stacked against third parties from becoming viable. The fault here lies in the fact that the media does not give any exposure to third parties and a number of states make it difficult for third parties to even exist.
The problem with democracies (and republics) is that eventually, people and corporations figure out how to rig the system to get what they want. When this happens, it become more likely that the government is going to fail. That is the biggest problem with the status quo and both parties are guilty.
on May 8, 2009 on 7:47 am
Oh, I agree. Our system is fundamentally good. I don’t think that there’s any doubt about that. But the system is fragile and sadly relies heavily on people having good moral fortitude. It is a system that is easy to abuse as evidenced by the fact that it has turned into a system where the majority feels that their victory empowers them to crush out the rights of the minority.
It is an unforunate but predictable side effect of representative democracy. We rely on our elected representatives to be the ones to keep the system in moral check and prevent the tyranny of the majority (or sometimes the tyranny of the minority) from inflicting harm via the political system. However, our elected officials are further corrupt than the electtoral base that puts them in, which I suspect is partially due to the fact that the people elect people who they know will be willing to do things that suit their own agendas. The elected representative is supposed to take the will of the people and weigh it against the rights of the whole and then strike a balance to the mix. Bowing to lobbysits, special interests and loudmouth constituancy bases (not to mention their own personal agendas) without considering the population as a whole is what has gotten us into many of these headaches that we’re currently dealing with.
As a side note, you are very right about us being a republic and not a pure democracy. With that in mind, do you ever wonder why people – including our own presidents – continue to refer to our system as democracy and claim that we must spread democracy across the globe? It always makes me wonder if they truly don’t know the difference or if they just use the wrong terminology becuase they’re too lazy to ensure that the people they’re speaking to know the difference.
on May 8, 2009 on 6:45 pm
I’ve always assumed that people don’t realize that there is a difference. Just because they are elected, does not mean they know how the government is supposed to work. I would not be surprised if a large portion of the members of Congress could not pass a civics test. Also, there are people that just think of them as being synonyms.
There has always been a tyranny of the majority in the country. Heck, it was one of the major reasons for the failure of the Articles of Confederation. The civil war can be attributed by the tyranny of the majority. The north had more votes and was infringing on the rights of the southern states (sound familiar?). As a matter of fact, Lincoln did not receive any votes in the southern states because he was not on their ballots. Then we have the tyranny of the majority with the 18th amendment; that ended well. What I am wondering is what makes the events of today any different from the past?
on May 9, 2009 on 11:26 pm
It is all too true that a pure representative democracy with parties is the tyranny of the victorious party, especially when there is no effective balance of powers in the government. Washington warned about that in his farewell address. And I agree on the problem with the 17th amendment. I think the TEA parties are a movement about liberty that might do something good about the issues you care about. I also think we have given up a LOT of the ancient rights Americans once treasured. I’m not sure if or when we will seize those rights back from the meddling nannies who want to keep us in diapers for our whole lives.
on May 12, 2009 on 1:00 pm
Ryan
That is the whole problem, I did a response to Comrade Jesse and came across this interview with Ayn Rand in 1959 predicting exactly what is going on now!
on May 12, 2009 on 1:17 pm
Yeah, I saw that. It’s awesome! I actually took those videos and made a page for them. People need to sit down and watch these and not only listen, but realize that the interview was in 1959 and the things she talks about are actually happening now, just as she had predicted they would if we didn’t change course.
on May 12, 2009 on 10:16 am
Terrant, you ask the right question. What makes the events of today different than from the past? To be honest with you, I fear the the biggest difference is the quality of people we are dealing with. Yes, we have faced down some pretty serious shake-ups over the years (and yes, the civil war was a massive nightmare for federalism and state’s rights), but we have had a certain number of decent people to temper the corruption. I don’t know if we can say the same thing these days. I look at today’s youth and shudder. I fear we have reached a tipping point here. There seem to be more people with their hand out than people willing to work hard. There are more people who feel that it is their right to force their opionions on others (smoking bans, trans fat bans?). There are too many people who view the government as a tool to exact vengance on people that they disagree with for any reason. To this end, while we once faced the trouble of the tyranny of the majority, we now face that and the tyranny of the minority due to the fact that even small causes can influence government thanks to large cash flows or pop culture affiliation.
It is becoming harder and harder to just live a good life in peace, and this concerns me to no end. There is a growing culture of interference via things like oppressive tax structures, environmentalism run amok, government-sponsored social engineering, overbearing health causes etc. For those of us who just want to live our lives and bve left alone, our current situation is starting to create some massive anger and frustration. After all, you can only put so much pressure on the quiet people before they crack. I moved out to the sticks to get away from this sort of thing and live my life in peace, but things are starting to spread out here too. I can’t speak for other areas, but I can assure you that the people I live with out here have chosen not to live in Madison or Milwaukee for a reason; and now our lives are being impacted by the people who do live there because they feel that we should live like them… And there’s not a damned thing we can do about it because we’re poor. We’re rural. We don’t have a lobby. We have no influence or power.
This, my friend, is why I am concerned about the state of things.