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Limit Democracy Now
In fact, democracy, by itself, is a badly flawed model for the organization of human affairs, and it should not be the tip of our philosophical spear. In place of democracy, we should be championing individual liberty and the protection of individual rights. Before examining democracy’s flaws, let’s make note of the reason Bush has embraced democracy for foreign governments. It is because countries that incorporate “democratic” mechanisms for decision making tend to be less prone to attacking other countries, while dictatorships - history has demonstrated - routinely utilize warfare as a strategy for maintaining power and, when possible, plundering their neighbors. While dictators can send their subjects off to fight in wars with horrendous casualty rates solely to increase the dictator’s power or wealth, voters in a democracy are much less likely to see the advantages of such folly. Unless attacked and forced to fight, countries in which citizens have a voice in public policy typically see the wisdom of building wealth and avoiding unnecessary death and destruction. As noted in a previous article in this series (“The United Nations – United for What?”, The Valley Patriot, Dec. 2004), the statistics are amazingly consistent: of 353 wars fought between 1816 and 1991, at most one was fought between two democracies. That is as close to a perfect record as you will find in the social sciences. So then, what is wrong with democracy as a model form of government? The problem is that the will of the majority should only rule within a limited sphere; it should only be used to make those decisions that do not interfere with individual rights. Whether restricted by a constitution or otherwise, democratic processes can swing their fists, but they must stop short of my nose. Over two hundred years ago, our forefathers made protection of individual liberties their first priority, not democracy. Democracy wasn’t the goal, it was only a mechanism used for limited decision making; establishing individual liberty and ensuring its pre-servation was their number one priority. The result was a constitutional republic with expli-citly defined and limited government powers and with democratic mechanisms relegated to important but strictly limited roles. Those who wrote our Constitution started with a simple premise: The federal government has NO powers except those the founders would specifically and explicitly grant to it in the Constitution. The Constitution wasn’t designed to outline our rights; it was intended to enumerate specific and limited powers to be granted to the government. All other powers and rights were left to the states and to the people, respectively. When the Constitution was released for public debate and ratification, many were insistent that a Bill of Rights be added. Today, few people understand why this initiated a great debate. It is natural to ask: Why would anyone resist incorporating a Bill of Rights? The answer is simple: Adding a Bill of Rights might water down the original premise of the Constitution. Opponents of adding a Bill of Rights argued that, since the Constitution never granted the government the power to violate these rights, of course it could not violate them. In fact, if you list a certain set of rights that can’t be violated, doesn’t that imply that we don’t have other rights or, if we do, that they are less protected? The Founders’ vision was that if the Constitution doesn’t specifically say the government could do something, it could not. There should be no ambiguity. When the forces (including Jefferson) supporting a Bill of Rights won the day, the concern that enumerated rights would undercut other rights was addressed explicitly in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. These amendments might seem out of place if this concern and its basis are not clearly understood. The Ninth Amendment states: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The Tenth Amendment states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” Could the intent of our Founding Fathers be any clearer? But we should never underestimate the willingness of those who would destroy our liberties to declare white as black and black as white. Over two hundred years of legislative and judicial mischief has turned our Constitution on its head. Now the government is presumed to have the power to do anything it wants unless the Constitution specifically prohibits it. And our rights are limited to those enumerated in the Bill of Rights, the exact opposite of the framers’ intent. Today, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments are routinely (and conveniently) ignored by the courts. Even enumerated rights (such as those specified in the First and Second Amendments) are slowly being eroded. With the addition of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, authorizing the government unlimited power to tax incomes, our liberties became fully exposed to the whims of the majority. We no longer have property rights; we only have the privilege of using our property until the majority decides the government “needs” it. There is no constitutional limit on the government’s power to expropriate our income and property. We are at the mercy of the majority (just witness the constant assaults on your property by the Congress, the various state Legislatures, and even by local communities … such as the ubiquitous Proposition 2 ½ tax overrides in Massachusetts). Ayn Rand wrote, “Individual rights are not subject to a public vote. A majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority. The political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities, and the smallest minority on earth is the individual.” That was also the belief of our Founding Fathers and why they restricted democracy to a subservient role of selecting representatives to exercise the government’s powers as enumerated … and no others. Democracy
doesn’t protect our rights … in fact, it
prescribes a method for destroying individual rights:
Assemble a majority and do what you want.
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The Bush administration has
glorified democracy and made it the centerpiece of our
foreign policy. If you stand way back, blur your vision,
and suspend any attempt at conceptual precision, it may
appear to be a good policy … or, at least, a
politically correct vision for the U.S. government to
champion abroad.