All this talk of Democracy got me thinking about what it means. The consensus among the center-right is that it represents mob rule. Fifty-plus-one pick the power brokers who may do whatever they please to everyone at their expense, with (presumably) 49.9 percent being less happy about it than the rest.
Another common conception of modern Democracy is that it is not about the will of the people but the ability to convince a majority of them (50+1) to protect the institutions. To conserve the current regime and reinforce the mechanisms that prop it up.
Put another way, Democrats who can’t shut up about Democracy are working to conserve government dictated and funded from Washington, D.C., at every level. But this is not Democracy; it is an oligarchy, syndicalism, and perhaps even fascism without the ethnic cleansing. They collect resources and power in the hands of a few to control states, counties, and even cities and towns from the halls of the nation’s capital (which means people).
The Democracy Democrats can’t shut up about isn’t Democracy at all.
Democracy will always involve the risk of mob rule, which is why your government was founded as a republic. Democracy occurs in local elections. Towns and counties are free to decide what works best for them. States elect and choose their representatives with as much frequency as can be managed to limit the abuses of mob rule. It is an imperfect system. States with large cities and sparse rural populations invariably become one-party oligarchies that oppress the minority—California, Oregon, Washington State, New York, and so on. They will remain that way to the detriment of the minority, but those people are free to travel elsewhere to escape the injustice of the mob, but the goal is to ensure there is no place to which one might escape.
For all its talk about a fear of nationalism, that is precisely what the political left is after. A Democracy run from DC from which there is no escape. A political Berlin Wall that traps everyone but the ruling and donor class. States and cities struggle like low-income families without the Federal government’s largess. Its rules and dictates are tied to the money used to keep them in check, and what was Democracy is effectively destroyed. You can’ make local decisions becasue your hands are tied.
You can still vote in local elections, but the new voices are still beholden to the bribes taken by the old, a regulatory trap they can’t escape. A scheme that prevents states or their AGs from protecting individual citizens, their natural rights, or the state themselves for fear of losing funding or favor.
This is not a wild theory. We’re already mostly there. The version of democracy the Democrats want destroys democracy at every other level of government. The Obama Administration elevated it, the Biden Administration kept it well fed, and a Harris-Walz administration will do whatever it can to finish the work.
So, when they mention protecting Democracy, ask them why that always looks like taking more decisions away from states, towns, and individuals.
