"Democracy" is a package-deal

Reader comment on: Our Unimperiled Democracy

Submitted by Harry Binswanger (United States), Sep 22, 2017 20:00

Before we fear for the loss of democracy, we should determine what democracy is.

The term is used today as an intellectual package-deal, to use Ayn Rand's phrase. It packages together as if they were equivalent two radically opposed systems: a constitutionally limited republic (e.g., the U.S.) and unlimited majority rule (e.g., ancient Athens).

There is voting in both systems, but the difference is life and death--as Socrates found out.

In a republic, voting is over who should be the government officials. And the officials' law-making power is entirely limited by the rights of the individual. In a republic, a majority cannot vote away the property and then the lives of the minority (as the Nazis did to the Jews, originally by vote). And the Supreme Court will overturn any legislative enactment that violates individual rights.

But under unlimited majority rule, your life, liberty, and property is not your by right but by the (temporary and revocable) permission of the mob.

The problem with both Trump and the Left is that they want democracy in the pure Athenian sense: unlimited majority rule.

Well, ultimately the Left wants rule by the elite, but it's the same thing whether the tyrants are few or many.

Government as protector of individual rights--the original U.S. conception--is unknown to both the Trump people and the Sanders-Warren people.

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