Why Democracy is a Bad Idea

Blasphemy, right? I mean, my title statement here would seem to fly in the face of our American ideals. Not so at all. In point of fact, our Founding Fathers warned us vehemently and repeatedly against democracy. The use of the word itself was shunned until FDR's "Fireside Chats" that used the 30's era Great Depression as the justification for the New Deal and ushered in the welfare state. The Founding Fathers feared - rightly - that America would follow the pattern of ancient Greece and all other free societies that have ever been attempted. Every last one of those societal experiments fell apart after about 200 years of existence.

You don't know why ancient Greece disappeared do you? Most people don't. Doesn't that seem strange? Such a noteworthy civilization...founded upon ideals that we purport to so highly esteem today. Those ideals are taught in schools and universities the world over as the model for an enlightened society to emulate. Yet why did it fail? and why don't we ever hear about why? I think it's because those who teach and perpetuate democratic government don't want people to know that Greece fell prey to those very democratic ideals.

Here's why: pure democracy, in the common usage, roughly means "one person, one vote." And all votes are equal in merit, right? But think about that for a moment. That seems to be the only fair way to do business after a cursory examination of the concept, but in practice, democracy is little more than "Mob Rule." It means deciding what will be the law of the land based upon the popularity of an idea - not it's logical or philosophical merit. Put another way...a democratic decision-making-process is "four wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner!" By democratic ideals, it would be perfectly right to say that the wolves have every justification for eating the sheep, and the sheep would have no legal recourse. It would be the kind of society that political philosopher Thomas Hobbes called "the natural state of man" where life is "brutish and short" and we are all ruled by the strongest bullies.  Machiavelli's "Prince" and Neitchze's "superman", too, were such bullies...but that's another subject entirely.

By contrast, what our Founders had in mind was a new and enlightened concept of society where the sheep has rights. That's why they wrote into our  Constitution the idea that everyone is entitled to "Equal Protection Under the Law." That's one of the foundations of our legal system. It's what led to the jury trial system; the right to legal counsel; the right to be represented in a court of law; the right to be free of the threat of arbitrary imprisonment; in short....the right to be free. "Equal protection under the law" is what protects our God-granted right to every individual freedom that our Constitution enumerates. An illustration of this concept in practice is the Civil Rights Movement. At the time that Martin Luther King and others courageous black men and women were standing up for their Constitutionally-protected rights, most Americans were in favor of segregation. If pure (i.e. "popular") democracy had won the day, blacks in this country would still be relegated to the back of the bus and would not be voting or sharing public water fountains! It was the revolutionary philosophical foundation laid down in our Constitution of "equal protection under the law" that righted those injustices - and thwarted mob rule (a.k.a. "democracy").

Ah! But I digress. What about Greece? Well, I have already said - in a nutshell - that one of the reasons democracy is a bad idea is that it puts popularity ahead of reason. Reasonable people could be called the "wise" among us. By definition, someone who is one of "the wise" is in the minority - otherwise, we would call them one of "the common man." Wise people are also typically the successful among us, and thus, the engines that drive industry, commerce, job production, and all wealth. It is the natural inclination of mankind to envy - and even to resent - such people. Granted, it would be wise for common people to be able to recognize that these "engines of society" are the people inventing the gadgets that lead to industry; and are the people who are turning those inventions into the commerce that makes their hourly jobs possible. Further, the wealthy go above and beyond that and drive charity too! If you doubt this, or if it simply hasn't occurred to you, then consider how much money is given to charity by the poor. But as we said before, wisdom is not commonplace. What is common instead is for the day laborer to give in to his base resentments and to envy. He looks at the hand that feeds him and - instead of feeling thankful for his job or pondering what might be learned from his employer towards his own entrepreneurial endeavors - he says instead "look at him in his nice car and fancy clothes...he's no better than me. Why should he have all that when I don't?"

Soon the day laborers in a democratic society start to realize that there are more of them than there are of the successful, wealthy people. They also realize that - since all votes are equal - his vote counts as much as Donald Trump's in the political process. Then politicians and labor unions come along who fan the flames of that envy and declare class warfare on the wealthy. Through the democratic process, the politicians offer to "right the wrongs" of social injustice and make the rich "pay their fair share!" To the day laborer, this sounds like the answer to his perception of inequality, and he votes the class warrior politician into office. In return, he expects that politician to make good on his promises by using the law-making power of his position to "redistribute income" (all this sounds familiar, doesn't it?) That is, the politician promises to use tax dollars collected from the engines of society to fund entitlement programs that benefit the "common man." Thus you get welfare programs, food stamps, social security, storm relief, local spending on pet projects (called "pork barrel" spending) and the like. Soon enough, the only way for a politician to get elected or reelected is to keep promising more and more government-funded programs that benefit "the regular guy." The politician has to appeal to the regular guy more than to the successful people because there are more of them and he needs a majority of the available votes to get into office.

Before long, such a system will cannibalize itself and run itself into bankruptcy. That is precisely what happened to Greece. In short, the common man came to realize that his greater numbers in the "popular vote" system allowed him to vote himself money from the treasury, and that bankrupted the system. The money for entitlement programs has to come from somewhere, and the people producing that money are the successful among us. When a people start to use the words "democratic" and "free" interchangeably - as we are doing now - true freedom will soon face the threat of extinction.

This is one of my favorite quotes, from Alexander Tyler. No, he wasn't writing about the United States. This quote is well over one hundred years old, and he was writing about the fall of the Athenian Republic.


"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."
 

Does that sound extreme? If so, then consider the former Soviet Union, communist China, and dozens of other nations that have tried socialism and its big brother "communism." The authors of such systems take class warfare to new and literal levels. They promise the common man that - not only will they redistribute income - they will make the idea of income itself obsolete. Communists try to tell the common man that the acquisition of money is greedy, selfish, and base, and that it can only be acquired through the exploitation of other folks who just want to put in an "honest day's work."

What they fail to point out, however, and what the masses fail to realize on their own, is that money is nothing more than society's way of compensating you for your contributions to it. Those who contribute more, like doctors, inventors, entrepreneurs, and captains of industry, make more money - as well they should. Such people make the rest of the wage-earning system possible. They are the ones who invent the products that create the commerce that lead to jobs for the common man.

Is it unequal? Yes. Of course it is...and that's okay because different people contribute to different degrees. There are those who - through extra talent and / or extra hard work - sow more into the fabric of society. And so they should reap in equal measure to what they sow. If a governmental system removes the financial compensation an entrepreneur enjoys for producing that which society needs, the only recourse government has to "inspire" such people to produce is force. And that is exactly what happens in a communist or socialist system. That's why such systems have always been repressive and brutal regimes that have to resort to strong-arm tactics and labor camps in order to produce what their "liberated common man" needs to survive and function. That's why I say that democratic ideals lead to class envy, and class envy leads to oppression.

Furthermore, man naturally draws inspiration in a climate where his labor and his creativity are positively reinforced...that is, when he and his family can enjoy the benefits of that labor. When that person is instead forced to produce, that inspiration all but withers on the vine. That's why communist/socialist societies fall behind free capitalist nations in terms of technological advancement and are relegated to (at best) second world status.

Winston Churchill once said that "At its worst, capitalism could be said to be the 'unequal sharing of society's blessings'....but that communism could be called the 'equal sharing of society's misery'."

I would add to what Sir Winston had to say by pointing out that true freedom means that one is free to fail as well as to succeed. Entitlement programs are disparaging in that they assume a person is incapable of providing for himself or his family, and that he needs help and a safety net from an entity more powerful than himself. It is dangerous to give away that power - and democratic principles take the power from the individual and give it away to the government. Governments will inevitably use that power to take more power - and thus more freedom and more rights - from the individual.

If America wants to survive another 200 plus years, it needs to return to its roots of free enterprise and individual property rights; and it needs to remember the historical pattern of class warfare. Popular democracy fuels class warfare by paving the way for mob rule and oppression.