Democracy’s Bludgeoning of the People, by the People, for the People

Under democracy, you are merely allowed to share in this power to bludgeon one’s fellows either through voting or courting votes. There is no legal guarantee, not even a whiff of the idea, that one may go through life unmolested by partisans.

by Joey Clark

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Some would say American Democracy is the freest political system on earth. Fair enough. Maybe so.

Yet, I am not satisfied. My thirst for liberty is unquenched. I remain peckish.

Don’t you understand Lady Liberty?

“Insatiable’s my name when it comes to you.”

Thus, being so insatiable and properly warped, over the last quarter of a century I have graced God’s good earth, I have come to agree with Oscar Wilde that, “Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.”

And though may deny it, I now believe most partisans in the good old USA, Republicans and Democrats alike, also agree with Mr. Wilde assessment of democracy. Or, at least, they agree as far as the fact of the bludgeoning is concerned. Where they disagree is in the estimation of this fact.

It’s not that bludgeoning is, in and of itself, wrong — says the partisan. One’s own bludgeoning of another is just fine in fact. No, when it comes to partisans, bludgeoning is only wrong when performed by those on the other side of the aisle.

And here you have the essence of the problem: democracy is very much a deal with the devil, the devil of political power and control.

Politics in all its forms is first and foremost about winning then wielding power, but this is especially true in a democracy such as ours where “the people” rule — however passive, collective, and unclear their “self-rule” may be.

Under democracy, you must secure your “freedom” by accepting a system that only recognizes the right of the majority to wield power. Under democracy, you are merely allowed to share in this power to bludgeon one’s fellows either through voting or courting votes. There is no legal guarantee, not even a whiff of the idea, that one may go through life unmolested by partisans.

This is not even guaranteed in the United States of America, despite the fact that the Bill of Rights says as much. The democratic fervor, the mob mentality, often trumps the ideals found in the Bill of Rights. Words scratched centuries ago can do little to stop living and breathing mobs. Most of the country’s history is the story of living mobs smashing these ideals of liberty while claiming to uphold them. Partisan hypocrisy at its very best.

For instance, allow me to highlight a quote by H.L. Mencken I first discovered in Murray Rothbard’s expansive essay on Mencken called “The Joyous Libertarian”:

…the Bill of Rights as originally ‘adopted by the Fathers of the Republic…was gross, crude, idealistic, a bit fanciful and transcendental. It specified the rights of a citizen, but it said nothing whatever about his duties. Since then, by the orderly processes of legislative science and by the even more subtle and beautiful devices of juridic art, it has been kneaded and mellowed into a far greater pliability and reasonableness. On the one hand, the citizen still retains the great privilege of membership in the most superb free nation ever witnessed on this earth. On the other hand, as a result of countless shrewd enactments and sagacious decisions, his natural lusts and appetites are held in laudable check, and he is thus kept in order and decorum…. Once a policeman, he is protected by the legislative and judicial arms in the peculiar rights and prerogatives that go with his high office, including especially the right to jug the laity at his will, to sweat and mug them, to subject them to the third degree, and to subdue their resistance by beating out their brains. Those who are unaware of this are simply ignorant of the basic principles of American jurisprudence, as they have been exposed times without number by the courts of first instance and ratified in lofty terms by the Supreme Court of the United States’

And so, this legal tradition continues, and our democratic contests for political power only aid in the beating out of our brains, so to speak, for this noble progressive goal or that pragmatic conservative responsibility or whatever other buncombe some mob of idiots thinks up in a fit a righteous indignation.

It was true in Mencken’s time and remains true today.

The situation is so bad that “civil society” barely exists any longer. All is fair in politics these days. The personal has become the political to such an extent that the two parties have come to represent two fairly distinct cultures akin to two feuding brothers. As much as they hold their love of power in common, they hate the other for it. Their feuds are so cartoonish they could be pre-scripted, especially when concerning the so-called culture wars.

But this is the reality of our democracy, the right with its deference to authority to keep us safe from “others” and the left with its deference to authority to keep us safe from the “destructive” and “exploitative” market.

They make for a strange, nasty brew where true liberty, as suggested by the Bill of Rights, never has a chance at the ballot box. The “democrats” of our country — on the left and the right in almost equal proportion —will not accept their “right” to bludgeon others being questioned by folks with a fetish for full freedom.

So in light of the election this November 2016, I must say I have had it with the pretense that the democracy practiced by both parties has anything to do with liberty.

I scoff at the notion that liberty is rising through the ballot box.

So I’ll leave you today with a word from the late great George Carlin in regard to those who say if you don’t vote you can’t complain:

“I don’t vote because I believe if you vote you have no right to complain. People like to twist that around and say if you don’t you have no right to complain but where’s the logic in that? If you vote and you elect dishonest incompetent people and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You caused the problem. You voted them in. You have no right to complain. I, on the other hand–who did not vote, who did not vote, who in fact did not even leave the house on election day–am in no way responsible for what these people have done and have every right to complain as loud as I want about the mess you created that I had nothing to do with.”

Well said, George, well said.