Balancing Liberty and Democracy

The problem with most contemporary political partisans is that they never developed an ability to perform the heuristic analysis that would allow them to grasp that liberty and democracy are eternal enemies. Democratic states may profess to venerate liberty and even pass laws making it sacred, but in practice democracies simply cannot tolerate it. In order to preserve the perception of adhering to the governmental process, to prevent the anarchy of free thought and action, the democrat must try to suppress the free expression of opinion by derision and criticism and failing that by law. In part, it seeks that end by mere propaganda or by the naked force of authority. In essence by attempting to make contrary doctrines officially unacceptable, politically incorrect as it were. To this end it then resorts to force, i.e., to law. The main purposes of such laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon free thought and analysis to try and reduce it to impotence.

Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize, to define the contrary opinion as anti-social; actually their aim is to penalize what to the democrat regards as heretical opinions. Unfortunately most Americans believe that such a process is honest or even commendable. It has become practically impossible to convince them that there is anything corrupt or the antithesis of liberty in it. In other words, they simply cannot grasp what the concept of liberty really is.

All to often they condition it with the idea that the state, the transitory majority, has some sort of right over the ideas and acts of individuals, that the state, the democratic majority, is free, whenever it is so inclined, to forbid a man or group of men to say what they honestly believe. Whenever an individual’s notions start becoming "dangerous," i.e., being heard and considered by others, then the state should be free to exercise that prerogative. And then far to many citizens will support the state in it feigned outrage.

This is especially true of the liberal, who pretends and often honestly believes, that they are promoting liberty. Not really, because deep down they know, as doctrinal democrats, that liberty is anathema to, if not fatal to democracy, that a government based upon transitory majorities and shifting and often irrational opinion must be kept within bounds, bounds that only they are allowed to define. To do otherwise would be, to them at least anarchistic. They only believe in and advocate for certain narrow kinds of liberty, liberty for the persons they happen to be in favor of or who they agree with. The rights of others are of no consequence or interest to them. If a law were passed, as with the GM bailout, that takes away the property of a large group of presumably financially well off individuals (bondholders) without compensation and without even justifiable reasons, they would not, could not oppose it; they would promote it as fair and democratic. The liberty to have and hold property is not one they recognize. The only liberty they believe in is the liberty to envy, to covet and to hate and loot those who have it.