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“Democracy”
Apparently, the sustained attacks claiming that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy have some persistent traction in the polls. “Democracy” (sometimes called “our democracy”) is a strange ideological chimera. Most people probably assume that the Democrats are referring to the January 6th fiasco, which they call an “insurrection,” aided by Trump’s alleged endorsement of the riot. But there is a broader and deeper weirdness at work. “Democracy” turns out to be quite malleable.
First off, an election is not “democracy” when the wrong guy wins (e.g., Trump, Viktor Orbán, Benjamin Netanyahu). When voters pass referendums by voting in what is normally considered a democratic act, their will does not count if not consistent with “democracy” (i.e., spending caps, no race quotas, no aid to illegals, and no homosexual marriage are all barred by “democracy”).
The fundamental organizational problem in America is that conservatives recognize that democracy requires widely shared cultural, moral, and social elements to survive, whereas liberals believe that even acknowledging those concerns ushers in authoritarian rule. Conservatives are beginning to realize that winning elections does not create the means to restore moral and cultural health, because even under supposed conservative rule, liberals continue to undermine the prerequisites of actual democracy through every captured institution. I don’t see a happy ending. Weimar degeneracy led to democracy dissolving into a death struggle between Nazis and Communists, each of whom sought to create a “democracy.”
A guy who wants to wear dresses and change his name to Louise presents an illustrative issue. The authoritarian approach would be to tell him his behavior is absurd and repellent and to knock it off. The “democracy” position is that all of us must pretend he actually is a woman under penalty of law. A modest democratic solution might be to let “Louise” do his thing up to but not past the point at which the rest of us are required to buy into and actively accommodate his delusion. However, under “democracy,” that last approach is forbidden because it tacitly honors the kinds of beliefs and values that an authoritarian would have. Sharing the same family values as Generalissimo Franco or Mitt Romney is an implicit rejection of “democracy.” This is why such notions must be actively suppressed and excluded.
The “right” of indigents to camp and crap on city streets, the “rights” of shoplifters, and the “rights” of border violators all make sense if “democracy” is an ideological assault on every distinction, limitation, and value that makes ordered liberty possible, to be replaced with complete global equality.
Actual democracy cannot be permitted to inhibit what “democracy” demands. In much the same way that the pigs in Orwell’s Animal Farm claimed to support equality while also claiming that some (the pigs) are more equal than others, the American “elite” no longer pretends that “democracy” is about majority rule under a constitutional system of law. It is only democracy when they get their way. You would think that voters in a democracy would notice and overwhelmingly reject that arrogance.
Published in Election 2024
And V. Lenin by Inauguration Day.
Carville and Carville as played by Andy Serkis. (I love Andy’s work.)
They mean “Democratcy”. Public schools these days.
There is way too much discussion of “democracy” on this thread. Our founders (and Plato) understood that a democratically ruled state is doomed, therefore they created a Republic.
Thus, democrats want to abolish the Electoral College, pack, or otherwise neuter the SCOTUS, champion governance by the Administrative State, and loathe SCOTUS decisions like overturning Chevron.
We all need to understand why “mixed government” (a Republic) was what our founders gave us, and we were challenged to keep by Franklin.
A large majority of “we the people” need to understand that the Democrats are a threat to “The Republic for which we stand”. Political philosophers since Plato have mostly understood that a democracy cannot stand!
We need to shore up the leaking hull of our Republic!
It is hard to leave a cult, because all the members enforce compliance with the threat of ostracization, which is very power mind control. We can hope that some famous people escaping wakes others up, but the human need for community acceptance is tough to overcome.
There are certainly some crazy extremists among the Democrats. But I’ve lived in a lot of places, and some of those were in the midwest and south — Kansas City, Memphis, Cleveland, Kansas and Missouri. I’ve known a lot of sensible, conservative, essentially apolitical people who were lifelong Democrats because their parents were lifelong Democrats.
I think the majority of Democrats are Democrats because that’s how they grew up. They’re not terribly interested in politics, believe the line that the GOP is the party of the rich that doesn’t care about people, and think they’re voting for the good guys when they pull the lever for (D).
I think we should try to communicate that the people currently representing the Democratic Party don’t represent the historical values of Democrats.
If they just go in and check a box because they’re always checked the box, they deserve what they get. The left’s machine controls all the levers of power. I don’t care how many votes come from lefties and how many come from tuned out nitwits. The truth is out there already. You can’t “communicate” because they don’t want to talk about politics. If they aren’t curious about why everything costs more, then they can’t be helped.
Making it even a little more difficult to vote, such as by eliminating all the extraneous mail-in/”absentee” voting, might help the most, since those people would be the most likely to not put any effort into it.
Strictly speaking, our founders didn’t create a republic any more than they created a democracy, even though they were friendlier toward the word republic than democracy in those days. Tastes gradually changed over the next 50 years. But they created a system with constitutional limits on powers designed to foil the fatal faults of both democracies and republics.
Franklin was one of those who wasn’t afraid of the word democracy, though he famously said “republic” as well.
What I have never figured out is why some people insist on a strict, very literal definition of democracy, and then use a very expansive, loose definition of republic that assumes all sorts of emanations and penumbras that you would never imagine were built into the term.
All my life I’ve been hearing people do that (including some people who were and are very near and dear to me) and all my life I’ve been trying to figure out where they get that.
Our democracy, too. Do both.
I can understand the sentiment, but I guess I’m more interested in winning important races than watching poorly informed people get what they deserve.
My point is that, if we want to persuade normal people who happen to be Democrats to vote for our candidate, the best way to do that is NOT to tell them they’re members of a cult, that they’re evil, that they’re fools, etc.
The better way to do that is to try to help them understand that their party has left them, and that the party that’s actually looking out for the working class and upholding their values is, more often than not, the Republican Party, and so the Republican candidate deserves their support.
That makes me think about making it easier for the unthinking Democrat to vote. There was such a thing as the poll tax.
I would be content to simply limit voting to one day, make absentee voting difficult, end the abomination of ballot harvesting, disallow same-day registration, and require an ID of every voter.
Oh, is that all! 😂
You know, like, how it actually was not that long ago.