Surrendering to Popularity
Leonard Pitts has once again picked up where E.J. Donne routinely leaves off: “Democracy is under attack.” To those with an irrational confidence and unfounded faith in a numerical majority, everything should be “majority rule.” However, Majority Rule routinely if not inevitably devolves into Mob Rule. So long as 50%+1 agree upon something, then those, who enjoy the support of the majority, feel compelled and justified, if not morally obligated, to run roughshod over a minority — any minority, even one of almost equal size and power.
It does not matter that such a majority is cobbled together by incompatible parties, ineffective programs, or inconsistent policies. It does not matter if the objectives of the majority are entirely self-serving and that its “successes,” such as they are, might be fueled by abuse, oppression, and ultimately tyranny against “others.” It does not matter that nothing about the make-up of a majority assures, much less guarantees, that the efforts of the majority are in the best interests of that majority or the collective as a whole, and almost certainly not for the disfavored minority.
Pitts bemoans:
“[W]hen the will of the majority repeatedly has so little impact on the actions of THEIR government, it’s fair to wonder if it really is THEIR government, if their country can still be called a DEMOCRACY.” [Emphasis mine.]
This nation, which is the United States of America, is NOT a Democracy. It never was, and it was never intended to be. Democracy is overrated. The architect of the Constitution, James Madison, spoke unflatteringly of democracies:
“[Democracy] can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such 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.”
The Constitution was never intended to provide a blueprint for an industrially-efficient state. The framers of the constitution understood the immutable relationship between power and corruption: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Therefore, the Constitution outlines a federal government of limited and enumerated powers, which were further restricted by the Bill of Rights (including the oft ignored 9th and 10th Amendments that reserved additional rights unto the people and the various states). The primary function of any legitimate government is to advance individual liberties and to protect personal freedoms.
Politicians — our “Representatives” in government — swear allegiance to the CONSTITUTION not to the GOVERNMENT and not to any party, faction, or even an electoral majority. The Constitution is deliberately and intentionally antimajoritarian.
In his first inaugural address, Lincoln stated:
“If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view justify revolution; certainly would if such right were a vital one. But such is not our case. All the vital rights of minorities and of individuals are so plainly assured to them by affirmations and negations, guaranties and prohibitions, in the Constitution that controversies never arise concerning them. … This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.”
Pitts speaks of a “stealth coup.” I would agree that the winds of revolution in fact are stirring; however, they do not originate from the source that Pitts implies. Leftist revolutionaries seek to use the cover of “democracy” to dispense with the limitations and protections afforded by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They see the Constitution as an impediment to imposing the self-serving will of the Collective. They see Constitutional niceties as limiting their power and their ability to use the state to do their bidding.
Pitts decries “Minority Rule,” but each individual should be sovereign as to his or her own life. What reasonable and just alternative could there possibly be?
Individuals do not owe their lives and the fruits of their labors to the collective. Efforts by the state, even if at the behest of an electoral majority, to impose compelled charity and coerced altruism (for the benefit of said majority) represent acts of institutional theft and involuntary servitude. Individual sins cannot be made less damnable through collective actions, and individuals cannot enjoy the absolution, which might be offered by even a host of accomplices and coconspirators.
We — the People — or simply as individuals — need not capitulate and surrender to tyranny. It matters not whether said tyranny comes at the hands of a single deranged despot or at the behest of a self-serving electoral majority.
