Democracy, The Most Dangerous Religion
10. Chapter 10 – Myths of Democracy
CONTENT
10.1. The People are in Charge
10.2. In a Democracy, the People Choose . . .
10.2. Checks and Balances
10.3. The Legitimacy of Government
10.4. The Myth of Democratic Accountability
10.5. The Public be Damned
10.6. “Democracy” is a Child’s Fairy Tale
BULGARIAN CHINESE ENGLISH ESTONIAN POLSKI ROMANIAN
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10.1. The People are in Charge
Alexander Tytler wrote that all governments are essentially a monarchy, and indeed there is no lack of quotations available from elected officials stating in one form or another the conviction that they were “elected to rule”. Nor is there any lack of evidence that their behavior corresponds well to this hypothesis, it being a common expression that ‘democracies are essentially four-year dictatorships’. Tytler assessed democracies very clearly when he wrote that:
“The people flatter themselves that they have the sovereign power. These are, in fact, words without meaning. It is true they elected governors, but how are these elections brought about? In every instance of election by the mass of a people through the influence of those governors themselves, and by means the most opposite to a free and disinterested choice. But those governors once selected, where is the boasted freedom of the people? They must submit to their rule and control, with the same abandonment of their natural liberty, the freedom of their will, and the command of their actions, as if they were under the rule of a monarch [or a dictator]“.
He is of course recognising that once the people cast their vote, they have in fact elected a sovereign with absolute authority over them. No one can claim the freedom to ignore Congress or the laws, the IRS, the police, or any other institution. “The people”, in fact, have no power at all after an election, neither with the elected governors nor their actions. The people are, in fact and in reality, living in a dictatorship in all senses of the meaning of this word. “Government by the people” is a jingoistic nonsense that is so obviously foolish as to deserve only ridicule.
If you are an American, and you are in charge, why are you giving yourself body cavity searches at airports? If Americans are in charge, why are they spying on themselves, recording every one of their own communications? Why are they financing all that military hardware and training their own police to brutalise them? If the people are in charge, why would they choose to deny themselves a universal health care plan? Is it the 40% of working-age Americans who have no job, who are voting to eliminate their own unemployment benefits? Is it the 35% of Americans living below the poverty line and dependent on food stamps to live, who are voting to eliminate those same food stamps and starve themselves to death?
Why did Americans decide to lose 50% of their net worth in 2008, and donate it to members of Congress, Citibank, Goldman Sachs and the owners of the FED? If Americans are in charge, why did they choose to have tens of millions of their countrymen become homeless, consigning families with children to sleep in the sewers of Las Vegas? Why did ‘the people’ decide to spend $7.7 trillion to bail out the banks instead of bailing out themselves and recovering their homes? If the people are governing, why did they have the police beat them to death during their Occupy Wall Street protests?
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