THE HYPOCRISY OF DEMOCRACY
by Gordon Phillips
In a democracy, voters live under the illusion of self-rule. But how can one
rule himself when he is continually voting away his rights and property to
others? Or when others are continuously stripping away his own rights and
property?
Freedom is impossible without private property, yet most Americans have been
brainwashed by government-credentialed institutions to believe (not think) that
mass acceptance of democracy equals freedom, resulting in the majority selling
its birthright of liberty (rights and property) for a bowl of porridge (Social
Security, Medicare, food stamps, free cheese).
We have devolved from eagles into lemmings in just eleven generations.
Democracy shares many characteristics with its more outwardly totalitarian
equivalents, including ´public education´ (translate: government mind-
conditioning) of those children who survive abortion. Yet Socialism is no less
tyrannical when viewed as government benevolence by numbed, compliant minds.
Simple equality before the written law has been replaced with mandated equality
of outcome in every area of life, proving to the global elite that it is
possible to homogenize and re-educate (condition) an entire nation to think in
terms of forced sameness (democracy) as freedom.
The following is reproduced from a chapter titled ´Republic vs. Democracy´ from
my book, ´Losing Your Illusions´:
Most adult Americans living today started out each school day as young children
by pledging allegiance to the flag ´... and to the Republic for which it
stands.´ Can you imagine pledging ´.. and to the Democracy for which it stands?´
Yet President Clinton and most of our elected politicians keep referring to
America as a ´Democracy.´ No doubt this is because they weren´t taught the
difference under government-funded, outcome-based public ´education.´ And their
parents and teachers probably weren´t taught the difference either. The
Founders knew the difference, however.
James Madison warned: ´Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and
contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the
rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they
have been violent in their deaths.´
Alexander F. Tyler stated: ´A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of
government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote
themselves largess out of the treasury with the result that democracies always
collapse over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship.´
Fisher Ames stated: ´Liberty has never lasted long in a democracy, nor has it
ever ended in anything better than despotism.´
Samuel Adams stated: ´Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes itself,
exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not
commit suicide.´
As Benjamin Franklin emerged from Independence Hall in Philadelphia, he was
asked by an onlooker what form of government he and his countrymen had created
during the first and to date, only constitutional convention. His answer: ´A
Republic, if you can keep it.´
The Founders understood that there is a spectrum of Liberty that spans a
gradient from anarchy, which is 0% government and 100% Liberty, to
totalitarianism, which is 100% government and 0% Liberty. On this scale,
Democracy is past the center and heading towards increasing government and
Socialism. A little further past Socialism and you reach Fascism and then true
totalitarianism -- 100% government and zero individual Liberty.
Bear in mind that not all republics have a written constitution. Remember the
USSR -- the United Soviet Socialist Republic? A constitutionally limited
republic, with restrictions that properly limit government, provides for the
protection of life and property yet still preserves individual liberty.
Many in America today already view our present government as Democratic
Socialism, just a step away from the pure Socialism practiced in countries such
as Sweden. Many of today´s alert students of recent history see numerous,
uncanny parallels between Germany in the 1930´s and America in the 1990´s.
Good government is based on the collective right of self-defense where each
Citizen is in the law enforcement business and stands as an armed shield
against government tyranny.
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote: ´Experience should teach us to be
most on our guard to protect liberty when the government´s purposes are
beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their
liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in
insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.´
Our Founders designed America as a constitutional Republic under the rule of
written Law, not a Democracy under the rule of opinion or public policy
guidelines. A vast ocean of difference separates the two forms of government.
As students of history, the Founders knew that democracies always degenerate
into favoritism, special interest groups, mob rule, and, ultimately, tyranny
due to a majority of the uninformed public consistently and predictably voting
to reelect those politicians who would guarantee them the redistribution of
public wealth.
They knew that a Republic protects minority individuals against a malicious and
willful majority. A perfect, if somewhat cynical, definition of a Democracy is
two ravenous wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for breakfast.
Explaining the disaster that a Democracy can become, Karl Marx, known as
the ´Father of Communism´ and himself a student of political science,
stated: ´Democracy is a form of government that cannot long survive, for as
soon as the people learn that they have a voice in the fiscal policies of the
government, they will move to vote for themselves all the money in the treasury
and bankrupt the nation.´
Even our military command knows the difference. The United States Army training
manual number 2000-25, dated November 20, 1928 states in defining a Democracy:
´A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meetings or any
other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude towards
property is communistic; negative property rights. Attitude toward law is that
the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation
of the governed by passion, prejudice and impulse with-out restraint; or regard
to consequences. It results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent,
anarchy.´
This same 1928 Army training manual had the following to say about a Re-
public: ´Authority is derived through the election by the people of public
officials best fitted to represent them. Attitude toward property is respect
for laws and individual rights and economic procedure. Attitude toward law is
the administration of justice in accord with fixed principles and established
evidence, with a strict regard to consequences. Avoids the dangerous extreme of
tyranny or mobocracy. Results in statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice,
contentment and progress. It is the ?standard form? of government.´
So apparently, our military does understand the advantages of a representative,
republican form of government over raw democracy. A constitutional Republic,
vigilantly guarded by an informed and enlightened electorate and represented
not by politicians, but by statesmen who would tirelessly defend Liberty and
Property, stands a fighting chance of not deteriorating into a Democracy.
Remember this the next time a TV newsreader extols the virtue of the recent
imposition of Democracy in some emerging nation, or a public figure wants to
pick your pocket to make the world ´safe for Democracy.´ Under a Democracy, one
can appear to be free but can never truly be at Liberty as under a Republic.
Always keep in mind that the perfect slave is one who believes he is free.
Under a Democracy, we apparently need bureaucratic swarms of self-annointed
responsibility consultants to decide what is in the public´s best interest to
read, view, inhale, ingest, inject, etc.
Under a condition of true Liberty, however, a medical practitioner could hang a
sign on his door exclaiming: ´Quack! Come On In And I´ll Remove Your Appendix!´
Since the public would be expected to be responsible for their own actions,
there would be no need for bureaucrats, agencies, regulations and licensing to
protect them; since they could choose not to patronize the quack simply by
voting with their feet.
Let´s INFORM AMERICA together! Tell a friend...
As one of our founding fathers once said:
"[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy
that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man´s
life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every
one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination
of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers
of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the
capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few."
-- John Adams (An Essay on Man´s Lust for Power, 29 August 1763)
Reference: Original Intent, Barton (338); original The Papers of John Adams, Taylor, ed., vol. 1 (83)
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