The Outstater
The Democratic Illusion
“NO KINGS” RALLIES are gearing up in Indiana for this weekend. It’s a big deal. Forty events are scheduled. Ten Indiana newspapers have signed on with promotional advertisements. It is a good time to review the state of democracy.
It’s in bad shape, obviously. We can’t agree on even whether or not elections should be “fair.” Still, nobody, or very few of us, would dare defend the alternative of monarchy. That’s why the social-justice warriors of No Kings have chosen it as their slogan. They imagine it puts them on the right side of history against tyrants, despots and the like.
Don’t be too sure about that. Democracy has too often proven to be the step stool of the authoritarian — “one man, one vote, once” is the quip describing a process only slightly more humane than the guillotine. But let them have their say. This is from the No Kings website:
“Masked secret police terrorizing our communities. An illegal, catastrophic war putting us in danger and driving up our costs. Attacks on our freedom of speech, our civil rights, our freedom to vote. Costs pushing families to the brink. Trump wants to rule over us as a tyrant. This is America, and power belongs to the people — not to wannabe kings or their billionaire cronies.”
Serious accusations all, but there are two points unaddressed. First, the executive is the branch of government designed to actually assume the irreducible duties of a king, duties the Founders considered critical to the nation’s well-being (such as protecting its borders). It is the responsibility of the other two branches to check the supposed excesses — a responsibility, by the way, that has been abdicated.
Should we focus on that instead of a president, like him or not, who is acting presidential?
Jimmy Carter famously said that Democracy is a “work in progress.” Not really. It isn’t progressing anywhere; democracy is a mathematical formula, and a bad one by which to govern. What Jimmy may have had in mind was a republic governed by constitutional principles that guide the popular will over time through appointed judges and elected representatives.
What about the No Kings claim that “power belongs to the people”? We assume that means a direct democracy, the one form of government certain to produce catastrophe (every once in a while you get a good king). Ask your AI to give you the list of failed democracies. They only work in homogeny, a condition that America left behind long ago.
Rather, what we are witnessing is the chipping away at justice and individual liberty in the name of the people. Please note that both Great Britain and Singapore, heavily mixed cultures, have recently abandoned jury trials as futile because they were over before the testimony began — jurors nullifying justice on racial grounds alone. American courts will not be far behind. And again, the electoral process is faring no better, nor is there agreement on whether laws should be uniformly administered to different groups.
No Kings, though, is correct about one thing. It will be up to us to set things right, but individually, by critical analysis and not by chanting slogans and blocking traffic. Economists use a simple set of three questions to put hard issues in perspective. They are: 1) compared with what; 2) according to whom; and 3) at what cost? Give them a try as you follow this weekend’s news. — tcl
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