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Tuesday, July 19. 2016

The Problem Is That We Should Not Care About "Democracy", We Should Care About Protection of Individual Rights

Coyote:



 Perhaps this is yet another negative legacy of Woodrow Wilson and his "Making the world safe for democracy" meme.  We talk all the time about allying with and siding with and protecting democracies, but all "democracy" really means in practice (at least today) is that the country has some sort of nominal election process.  Elections are fine, they are less bad than most other ways of selecting government officials, but what we really should care about is that a country protects individuals rights, has free markets, and a rule of law.  If a county has those things, I am not sure I care particularly if they vote or pick leaders by randomly selecting folks from the phone book.


Posted by The News Junkie at 15:12 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0)

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QUOTE:
The Problem Is That We Should Not Care About "Democracy", We Should Care About Protection of Individual Rights


How do you preserve individual rights without caring about "Democracy"?

Yeah. That's rich coming from Coyote.

To protect individual rights you need to be able to elect people that will do just that.

However, the Coyote man wants unlimited immigration. 10s of millions who will vote overwhelming for the welfare state and ever larger bureaucracies, thereby squashing what few rights we have left forever.
#1 feeblemind on 2016-07-19 15:39 (Reply)
His point is that, often enough in history, people will vote against their rights in exchange for freebies.
#1.1 Bird Dog on 2016-07-19 16:44 (Reply)
I agree in principle. A dictator could be benign or even benevolent, but you still have to deal with succession. Who would follow him? What rules would he be bound by?

Our Founders tried to solve this problem with a Constitution that was supposed to protect our rights and our property. It is only binding as long as it is valued.

I think you describe the weakness of self government - we are apt to throw it away.
#1.1.1 mudbug on 2016-07-19 21:56 (Reply)
That's what you get when 51% of people can vote themselves the belongings of the other 49% in exchange for just a little bit more freedom that really won't affect them anyway (will probably only affect the next generation, they're again giving other peoples' things away).

Heinlein in Starship Troopers solved this by allowing only people who had served their country (be it in the military or equivalent functions) to have citizenship and thus be allowed to vote in elections.
A similar system might have only people paying income tax be allowed to vote.
#1.1.1.1 J.T.W. on 2016-07-19 22:15 (Reply)
The Fifth Amendment tried to protect private property, which would make welfare unconstitutional, but greed took over.
#1.1.1.1.1 mudbug on 2016-07-20 08:42 (Reply)
The point about democracy, the important point, is that you can kick the bastards out.
#2 Thon Brocket on 2016-07-20 02:55 (Reply)
He's right--democracy beats tyranny initially, but democracy by itself, without proper protections for individual rights, will take you right back to tyranny. You've got to have both democracy and individual rights for the thing to wear well. I'd even go for something other than democracy if I thought it could ensure individual rights, but I don't know of a system that will, so it's democracy for me.
#3 Texan99 on 2016-07-20 16:54 (Reply)

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