“Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.” – Hans Herman Hoppe
I felt obligated to write this after watching the news coverage on this Election Day, 2016. Everywhere I turn, I hear the word democracy. The word democracy is something thrown around in the culture today as if it were the true ideal for any society. It’s supposed to be something that is virtuous and synonymous with freedom. In the United States, school children are mistakenly taught that America is a democracy. In fact, the founders of the United States understood democracy to be something to be avoided. Most of them detested the word. Why? Because they understood that democracy is tyranny of the majority. The majority rule ethic of democracy allows certain people to have their rights and property taken from them because a majority of the people decided so. Jefferson, Madison and others understood that the true ideal is individual liberty and that a majority can and will easily violate the rights of the minority if allowed to do so. Instead, they attempted to establish a Constitutional Republic—one in which representatives are elected into a government, but are restrained by limitations on their powers as well as term limits. Other Amendments to the Constitution were written to ensure that individual and state rights were not trampled upon by the legislators who assumed power. The State was supposed to have its power “shackled” by the Constitution. Our founders failed us.
Unfortunately, America has come to a point where the majority of the citizens are now on some assistance from the State, meaning that the majority of the people have succeeded in plundering the rest as a way to survive. This plunder is done in the name of democracy through taxation, bonds, fees and inflation of the money supply. You may know these programs as “entitlements, Social Security, fair share taxation and monetary easing”. Regardless of the name they go by, they all have one thing in common: certain groups are being plundered so that others may prosper. The law is being used to aggress against others and take from them—not protect them as laws are supposed to do. Yet, we are told to believe that because most of the people want it, it must be ethical. We are told by politicians that they have a mandate from the people. Obviously this logic, if followed through to its conclusion, has scary implications for groups who disagree with the majority. I believe Leo Tolstoy summed it up best, “Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”
Democracy was never the ideal in America until very recently. In fact, Liberty was the ideal. Liberty runs counter to democracy because it favors private property rights and non-aggression—which basically says that one cannot initiate violence against you, your party or your property even through legislative means. Let me suggest to you that we return to the ideal of liberty rather than entitlement. Self-reliance rather than plunder. Hard work rather than state assistance. Some will read this and no doubt say that I am cold-hearted. The opposite is true. The larger the State becomes, the less free its citizens are, even if a majority has elected the government. Without freedom, we cannot fulfill our potential as humans. Without liberty, we are stripped of our humanity. It’s democracy that is cold-hearted. It’s democracy that strips away individual rights. It’s the leviathan of the state that we must be wary of. So on Election Day, ask yourself, “What have I done to make myself and my family more free?” If your reply is that you participated in this great democracy, you have chosen to use force against your fellow citizen. Choose liberty over force. Choose individual rights over the majority rule.
In Liberty,
Sean
Liberty & Pain 