For most of us, at least those of us who grew up in the western world, we have been taught since we were children, that democracy means freedom. We have been told that democracy is so precious, that one is even justified in killing another person in order to preserve it. We have been led to believe that as democracy increases, justice and liberty will follow. All of these beliefs are false.
Democracy is inherently immoral. Morality prevents one person from using force against another, unless the force is either used to defend oneself against aggression, or in the defense of another who is the victim of unwarranted aggression. Therefore, as individuals, none of us has the right to order another person about against their will. Yet, when I am handed the “right” to vote, I am granted the power to tell someone else what they must do. And if a majority of voters, not a majority of the people, but just a majority of the voters, are permitted to dictate how everyone will live, then this nothing less than immoral coercion. If anyone refuses to go along with the government policy that the majority of voters established, then the coercive power of the state may be unleashed against the rebel. Therefore, democracy is simply mob rule. And no one has ever explained why a majority of voters magically has a right that no single individual voter possesses; namely, the authority to dictate to others how they shall live their lives.
Democracy is presently used as the justification for the expansion of the government into our private lives. People believe that if the majority voted for the government intrusion, then personal liberty be damned. This is simply the method by which the slaves form their own chains about their necks.
Is there anyone who can morally justify this mob rule by a majority of voters? I have never seen any rational justification yet.
I think they realized they were gonna have a mob rule thing and so they added in all these checks and balances and stuff to sorta prevent one faction from really taking over another. The kind of basic, rudimentary democracy you’re talking about isn’t how we roll in America.
What checks and balances? You mean the Constitution? Who enforces it? The government that it is intended to limit? Like that plan was not doomed for failure from the start. Those checks and balances are subject to the majority whims, so I fail to see how anything changes. Moreover, to the extent the majority rule is allowed, how is it moral?
In practice, democracy really doesn’t look much like mob rule, precisely because it works alongside a system of individual rights and protections (as Smears points out) - so that’s probably why most people don’t bother with the type of justifications you are looking for.
In any case, not only have you failed to present any alternative to democracy (as has been pointed out as well), but you’ve also totally neglected to show how morality “prevents” (by which i presume you mean “prohibits”) use of force except in defense. That’s an arguable proposition in itself. If you can’t make that case, your contention that democracy is inherently immoral is only so much rhetoric.
No, not the constitution, but the checks and balances that it establishes to avoid mob rule, to slow the process of change to a sustainable pace and to attempt to resolve the problem of faction.
Who enforces what? Who limits what? What plan was doomed to failure from the start? Why was it? How are checks and balances subject to majority whims? What do you mean whim? Change has to happen, I guess a whim has to do with the speed and frequency at which is does. Could we set some parameters here?
How is it moral you ask? If that’s not bait, then I’ve never seen any. How is anything moral? According to which morals? And to what interpretation of them? And then under what outside circumstances what contribute to the outcomes but aren’t controllable by the agent in question?
What individual “rights”? If the majority says you can have sex, provided you don’t pay for it, then what rights are being protected? Take any issue in politics, and tell me how the losing side is not having their rights violated?
And, let me see if I understand you, unless I point out an alternative to democracy, then somehow it becomes moral? And when I do come up with an alternative, which is easy to do by the way, then it will become immoral? How does that work?
And if you think that force can be used outside of self-defense of a person, then what is your moral rule that tells us when force may be used?
Lincoln placed editors of newspapers in jail, for years, without any charges, without any trial. Now, what protection did those people have? What about the slaves? What about the Japanese who were placed in camps, simply because they were Japanese? What about black men being sent to prison for marrying white women? What are these so-called rights that the majority cannot trample on? Given enough votes, there is not a section of the US Constitution that cannot be amended.
He’s just developing his ideas Smears, most people get to that stage where they are dissatisfied with the status quo, especially modern western politics and their obvious hypocrisy.
Then they realize when they grow up that status quo is just a descriptor of a state of affairs in the world that doesn’t really have to have much to do with the way you feel about things. And you might notice, at some point that these aren’t just the problems of the west, or of some social phenomenon, but a part of human nature that just pervades every instance of it. Hypocrisy, like an unproven axiom, like the contradictions inherent in the structure of our perception, is at the base of everything. Using the term as a pejorative is like getting pissed at just one part of the sky because it’s blue.
Well, the right to participate in the democracy, for one. Or the right to whine and cry about it when you realize it’s not perfect, for another. Then of course there are the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and all the various rights, privelages and protections they enshrine.
OK, gay marriage: The losing side being the anti-gay marriage folks. Since they never had the right to tell other people who they can and can’t marry in the first place, they are not having their rights violated when a gay couple gets married.
i said nothing like that. At all.
And if it is so easy, then please present the alternative to democracy that you would like to see. One that is moral by your own standards.
i don’t personally have one, but they are easy enough to come up with - if you like, i’ll argue that force is acceptable whenever it does more good than harm.
If force is acceptable whenever it does more good than harm, then you are saying I can torture a child in order to make his terrorist parent tell me where a bomb is? Or, if two sadists happen to be in the same room with a third person, they can then be allowed to torture the third? Or, I can chop up one person standing on a street corner, and distribute her body parts to four other people to keep them alive? This is your claim? Perhaps you did not realize that you were just begging the question. Your argument that pleasing the majority s what is moral is actually the very thing in dispute, is it not?
I am not sure I understand your comment, but since you referenced me being a coward and a quitter, you appear to be engaging in a personal insult against me, as opposed to attacking my argument. I will accept this statement from you as an admission that you have no counter to my argument. However, you are emotionally unwilling to follow where reason should take you, so rather than accept the rational conclusion that democracy is immoral, you lash out with a personal insult. And my goal is for society to move forward, with greater freedom, and abandon the lies that we live by today. Lies that are not just immoral, but incredibly harmful as well. The western democracies are crumbling around us, in case you have failed to notice.
