According to Guest Essayists for The New York Times, Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix, “These days, we often hear that democracy is on the ballot. And there’s a truth to that: Winning elections is critical, especially as liberal and progressive forces try to fend off radical right-wing movements. But the democratic crisis that our society faces will not be solved by voting alone. We need to do more than defeat Donald Trump and his allies – we need to make cultivating solidarity a national priority. . . Though we rarely speak about it as such, solidarity is a concept as fundamental to democracy as its better-known cousins: equality, freedom and justice.”
These Essayists and the powers-that-be at The New York Times are ignorant of history and human nature. They are also ignorant — as well as the mainstream media, many in academia, and most of the political establishment — about the type of government handed down to us by the founding generation, i.e., we are NOT a Democracy. The United States of America is a Constitutional Republic, where individual rights and private property should be protected from the majority and enthusiastic minorities.
In other words, under the American Republic, a democratic majority of 51% are not allowed to replace individual freedom and private property rights in favor of socialism. Unfortunately, due to government-controlled compulsory schooling, most Americans are ignorant, and do not understand the difference between a democracy and freedom, two diametrically opposed concepts.
In addition, the so-called “liberals” and “progressives” have redefined commonly understood words and terms. For example, Thomas Jefferson was a classical liberal but not one liberal today would identify with Jefferson’s libertarian beliefs. Further, they call themselves “progressives” yet, due to their ignorance of history, they are unknowingly proposing policies going back to the Old World. Such policies — socialism — are regressive and resulted in compulsion, slavery, and poverty throughout the Old World. (Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom, Man’s Struggle Against Authority)
Due to their ignorance, today’s so-called “progressives” are the opposite, they are regressive. Those who know better believe they can make socialism work this time around under their guidance and control.
The Essayists try to deceive their readers by stating that “solidarity is a concept as fundamental to democracy as its better-known cousins: equality, freedom and justice.” Solidarity means that everyone holds the same beliefs and if it is fundamental to democracy, then the Essayists are naively hoping that the “liberals” and “progressives” represent the majority (at least 51%) of the population, having the same belief system, e.g., socialism and are willing to push “for economic, racial, environmental and gender justice” and that the “Social Democrats and Socialists have been right to emphasize the need for redistribution and robust public investment in goods and services.”
Never mind that this redistribution — the taking of property or money from A and giving it to B (Justice Chase, Calder v. Bull 1798) — is unconstitutional and has resulted in a national debt approaching $35 trillion, an insidious and indirect tax on the American people. Not to mention the fact that every Empire that came before the United States of America imploded because of socialist policies and a national or public debt that could not be sustained.
Furthermore, what is the definition of economic justice, racial justice, environmental justice, and gender justice? These abstract terms lead to “legal uncertainty” and, as Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) explained, “It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just; it must be philanthropic,” as the Essayists did indeed propose throughout their Guest Essay, The One Idea That Could Save American Democracy.
“This is the seductive lure of socialism.” The use of the law for philanthropic purposes is “in direct contradiction” to “protecting the rights of everyone.” “We must choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.” Bastiat
The deception continued. By indiscriminately grouping the words solidarity, democracy, equality, freedom, and justice, the Essayists are inferring that they are related and mean nearly the same. Nothing could be further from the truth!
Unlike these naïve Essayists, Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy The God That Failed, wrote:
“After more than a century of compulsory democracy, the predictable results are before our very eyes. The tax load imposed on property owners and producers makes the economic burden even of slaves and serfs seem moderate in comparison. Every detail of private life, property, trade, and contract is regulated by ever higher mountains of paper laws (legislation). In the name of social, public or national security, our caretakers “protect” us from global warming and cooling and the extinction of animals and plants, from husbands and wives, parents and employers, poverty, disease, disaster, ignorance, prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, and countless other public enemies and dangers.”
“However, the only task a government was ever supposed to assume—of protecting our life and property—our caretakers do not perform. To the contrary, the higher the expenditures on social, public, and national security have risen, the more our private property rights have been eroded, the more our property has been expropriated, confiscated, destroyed, and depreciated, and the more we have been deprived of the very foundation of all protection: of personal independence, economic strength, and private wealth. The more paper laws have been produced, the more legal uncertainty and moral hazard has been created, and lawlessness has displaced law and order.”
As explained by Dr. Hoppe, “legal uncertainty” and “lawlessness has displaced law and order.” The most recent example is the Biden Administration and the Democrats weaponization of the legal system against their political rival, former President Donald J. Trump, along with many of his fervent supporters.
Unbeknownst to most current-day Liberals, Progressives and Conservatives, in the organization of society there are only two possible belief systems. The first, derived from the Old World, stems from the conviction that government is the grantor and protector of human rights and therefore, is responsible for protecting and providing for the poor and downtrodden. The consequences of this philosophy resulted in compulsion, slavery, and poverty throughout the Old World.
This Old-World belief system was challenged by the early American colonists and a new belief system emerged. In 1776, the Founders of the United States replaced this Old-World view with the declaration that individuals had pre-existing unalienable rights that superseded government, which could not be legislated away if the government was to remain legitimate. The Founders enshrined this new belief system in The Declaration of Independence, which was subsequently included in the Bill of Rights, the first ten Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America.
The ongoing “struggle against authority” in pursuit of freedom or rightful liberty in the United States continued until President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation was vindicated by the Supreme Court in the Spring of 1937 when the progressive movement took over. “Progressives believed in the power of science and economics, employed by government, to lift up the economic and social position of the general population.”[1]
To accomplish their goals, the progressives needed to turn back the clock, back to the time when government was the grantor of rights and provided for the poor and downtrodden, by forcibly taking property from the productive classes and distributing it to the less fortunate among us, after the political elites first enriched themselves.
In the Old World, superstition, and religion (Devine Right of Kings) were used to control society, e.g., only the clergy were allowed to read and interpret the bible. To control society today, the progressives have replaced superstition and religion with the promise of democracy and compulsory schooling. With the advent of government-controlled compulsory schooling, resulting in propaganda and increased specialization, unalienable rights have either been ignored or discredited, leading most Americans to regard democracy to be the greater good, i.e. more important than individual freedom and private property rights.
In addition, because of this increased specialization, like the relationship between the clergy and bible in the Old World, only government-approved licensed attorneys and academics are allowed to interpret the Constitution.
Individual freedom and the protection of private property, not democracy, was the original intent of the American constitutional order. Unfortunately, most Americans now believe that a “majoritarian democracy is . . . the core of [the] entire system [of the United States government].”[2] This belief represents incorrect propaganda developed by government-controlled compulsory schooling.
Furthermore, the word “democracy” is not used in the Constitution, and the Founders/Framers were so determined to avoid the problems associated with democracies that they specifically guaranteed within the Constitution (Article IV, §4), “a Republican Form of Government” “to every State.” James Madison, the architect of our Constitution, expressed his fear and concern as follows, “. . . democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contentions; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and . . . have been violent in their death.”
The Founders clearly understood the dangers inherent in a democracy and Edmund Randolph of Virginia probably best describes their efforts at the Constitutional Convention: “The general object was to produce a cure for the evils under which the United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origins, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.”
Aristotle described democracy as tyranny by the many; and the Founders believed that a democracy meant centralized power, controlled by majority opinion, which would become completely arbitrary, resulting in the continued age-old concept of “the rule of man.” Whereas, by establishing a Republic, which was decentralized and representative in nature with the government’s sole purpose limited to protecting liberty and private property rights, the United States would enter the enlightened age of “the rule of law.”
Because of their fear of democracy, based upon history and what was currently going on within the State governments, the Founders/Framers gave us a constitutional republic with written guarantees to protect individual freedom and private property rights. The government created in 1787 is best described by Thomas Jefferson, “. . . a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circles of our felicities.”
Our government-controlled compulsory schooling system has led most Americans to believe they live in a Democracy, not a Constitutional Republic with written guarantees protecting unalienable rights. As a result of this erroneous belief, it becomes much easier for politicians to erode and circumvent our rights using majority rule as justification.
Today, we Americans have chosen democracy over freedom, because, from the time when we first enrolled in school, we have been told that democracy and freedom are one and the same, i.e., because we live in a democracy, we are free. According to Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973):
“[The experiment in individual freedom started by our Founders] is impractical because most people are still too unenlightened to grasp its meaning. There was a psychological error in the reasoning of the old [classical liberals, e.g., Thomas Jefferson]. They over-rated both the intellectual capacity of the average man and the ability of the elite to convert their less judicious fellow citizens to sound ideas.”
Probably the best illustration of a democracy is two wolves and one lamb deciding what to have for dinner, while freedom is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.[3]
As John Lennon sang, they “keep you doped with religion and sex and TV. And you think you’re so clever and classless and free. But you’re still peasants as far as I can see. A working-class hero is something to be.”
Maybe it’s time to realize our predicament before it’s too late and make every effort to restore our Constitutional Republic. The first step is to elect Donald J. Trump as President on November 5, 2024. We must also take back our schools and make those around us aware of the fraud perpetrated on the public by the mainstream media, academia, Congress, the President, and the Judiciary.
Unless our Constitutional Republic is restored, we are all working class heroes or peasants, and far too many of our fellow Americans will continue to “think [they are] so clever and classless and free,” until we implode like all past empires that came before us.
Our Founders concluded the Declaration with the following pledge: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
Let’s get the word out before it is too late, and we are forced to take up arms to protect our lives and fortunes!
Please forward this Blog to everyone you know and request that they do the same.
Dum Spiro Spero—While I breathe, I hope.
Slainte mhath,
Robert (Mike) G. Beard Jr., C.P.A., C.G.M.A., J.D., LL.M.
PS: The World has gone mad and much of it has to do with “the turbulence and follies of democracy” and “the evils associated with democracy” as understood by the American Founders.
[1] Richard A. Epstein, How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution, p. 3, Cato Institute (2006).
[2] John Hart Ely, Democracy and Distrust, p. 7, The Classics of Liberty Library (2004).
[3] This statement has been attributed to Dr. Ben Franklin and parts of it was used by Richard Maybury, Whatever Happened to Justice, p. 125 (1993).