Why Democracy is Bad

Throughout our lives we are thoroughly beaten over the head with the concept of Democracy. We are told that Democracy is the one liberating factor in the world, and the utopian form of government. We fight our wars in order to spread the “greatness of a democratic government”. People demand Democracy. But why? Why Democracy? Fortunately, Democracy is not an ideal form of government; in fact it is not even a good one. Far from demanding pure democracy, people should be damning it. Too many people fail to look in front of their very eyes.

First, I would like to clarify a common misconception. The United States was never a democracy, nor will it ever be a democracy. The United States is a Constitutional Republic, a radically different form of government. The founding fathers of the United States were vehemently opposed to forming a Democratic government. As Benjamin Franklin once famously stated, “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner,” whereas a Constitutional Republic and liberty were “a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” In the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, the word “democracy” does not appear once.

Democracy, in itself, is the most dangerous and the most chaotic political system. The only difference between democracy and dictatorship is the amount of dictators presiding over the ruled. The great Thomas Jefferson shows his contempt of democracy when he says “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” Democracy is no more than a tyranny of the majority, where the majority exercises a despotic rule on the minority. As John Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, said, “Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state — it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage.” In other words, if the majority wants blood, the majority gets blood, be it because of blind rage or blind delusion. In a democracy, if a jury voted for you to forfeit your assets to it, what could you do to stop it? Nothing; it’s a Democracy. If 51% of the population were to vote to send Jews, African-Americans, homosexuals, and other minorities to the Arctic Circle, what could anyone do to stop them? Nothing; it’s a Democracy. People may often state a democracy is fair, when in fact, it is quite the opposite. James Madison clarifies this when he states “A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischief’s of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party.” What if you are part of the 49% that is being oppressed? Is that fair? What if you were the one that had no say? Is that fair?

Alexander Hamilton reminds us of what we really are: “We are a Republican Government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of Democracy” Liberty is a concept that will never, that can never, be applied to a democracy. Liberty is unobtainable with the real tyrants as your neighbors. Hamilton also gives us a little history lesson in that “it has been observed that a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.” Even history shows that democracies, such as Athens, were unfair, tyrannical and oppressive to those demos who were not part of the elite, intellectual, Oligarchy. John Quincy Adams yet again reminds of these precedents in that “The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating, and short-lived.” Modern democracies have shown that terrible things may happen through a runaway, fevered majority. One of the most obvious examples is Adolf Hitler, who was democratically elected by the German peoples. Democracy allows neither fairness, nor a responsible majority. As John Simon puts it, “Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant.” In a democracy the minority suffers with no say, and the majority is blissfully ignorant or apathetic toward their suffering. As Sir Winston Churchill stated in an address “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” As Churchill says majority symbolizes the blind ignorance of the nation, the majority are the ones that are blind to the suffering. I think we may sum all of this up with James Madison’s statement “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 death.” Amen to that.

It would be an understatement to say the founding fathers disliked Democracy. In reality they loathed it. They placed numerous restrictions on the government in order to prevent the runaway majority, to not let it have free and an un-checked reign. For instance the “checks and balances” system ensures that no one branch, no matter how large, would be omnipotent simply because they hold the majority. The First Amendment gives us our inalienable rights that cannot be taken away simply because it suits the majority. The Second Amendment states “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” This ensures that the people will always have the right to resist an oppressive government. In a Democracy it does not matter if the government is ruthlessly oppressive. It was elected. It’s a Democracy remember? But of course Militias are federally controlled and the right to bear arms, explicitly stated in the Constitution, is slowly being taken away before our very eyes. Another check to democracy is the right to be tried by a jury. This right prevents the “runaway democracy.” If one juror so much as thinks that the law was absurd, you were innocent, or that the law was unconstitutional, you would be aquitted or tried again. This is not a democracy because the majority does not have the final say. The Ninth Amendment grants us the power to do things with which the majority may not necessarily agree, perhaps to have an abortion, to home school a child, or to smoke Marijuana. The electoral college also stems the flow of the runaway majority. It ensures that no matter how great the popular demand, there will never be a majority uber alles, a majority above everything, and answering to no one. The founding fathers feared an “elected despotism” that would arise from having a democracy. C.S. Lewis once stated with respect to democracy, that “those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” The homogenous majority may believe itself just and to be acting for the greater good, but it cannot, it can never, empathize with the suffering of the democratic minority.

While it is true that the United States has democratic aspects and applications of government in national, state, and local political systems, the United States is not a democracy. Democracy can be a powerful and dutifully used tool, but pure democracy has never been a good thing and all who state so are blindly ignorant of history. In a democracy the minority is forced to obey the whims of the majority. In a democracy, 49% of the population will be forced to obey the rules and regulations laid by 51% of the population. As Plato writes “Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequaled alike.”

Demos means people and kratos means rule. This does not imply that democracy is some God-given government. It does not imply that it is superior to all other forms of government, nor that it is the end-all, be-all, of political evolution. In stark reality, the concept of democracy is dogma spread by neo-conservative and neo-liberal think tanks in which democracy, though we are not one, is idolized to the point where we evangelize and worship it, like a religion sorts. As E.B White stated “Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have.” We use democracy now as an excuse to wage war and spill the blood of innocents. Democracy is now subtly used to promote political instability and dissention among the population, and precisly because of this has now become the spear-head of our foreign policy. When John Marshall, a former Supreme Court Justice, states “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos,” he is more right than anyone would care to imagine. What the general population worldwide does not realize is that in a democracy one will always suffer, in a democracy there will forever be conflict, in a democracy there will never be peace.

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