Tyranny of the majority
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Hypocrites
[I]t is the “tyranny of the majority” that James Madison, a Founding Father, warned about. His reading of ancient history was that the direct democracy of Athens was erratic and short-lived, whereas republican Rome remained stable for much longer. He even worried about using the word “democracy” at all, lest citizens confuse its representative (i.e., republican) form with its direct one. “Democracy never lasts long,” wrote John Adams, another Founding Father. Asked what government the federal constitution of 1787 had established, Benjamin Franklin responded: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
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“We” and “together” become monstrous when they’re invoked to deprive people of their freedom or submerge their identity into some artificial collective whole. I distinctly remember my own Social Studies teachers feeding us variations on “the majority is always right” — a proposition that, even to my young mind, deemed dubious when I considered the possibility of my classmates voting on anything. I would have preferred to see similar skepticism shared by all of the kids in that college classroom, but maybe their classmates didn’t jam scissors through their hands while trying to open a horse chestnut (true story). And maybe the kids in the majoritarian faction really believe, deep down, that “we” have the right to do terrible things, or the obligation to abide by them, so long as we do them “together.”
As I said, I don’t think the president believes the Borg-ish nonsense in his speech. I think he’s stroking his backers and taunting his opponents with the idea that he represents some collective American identity. But if any of those former NAU students remember the slightly prickly political columnist who showed up in their class one day, I hope they recall that handout when they hear politicians use the words “we” and “together.”
Obama’s Convenient (And Dangerous) Majoritarianism
The tyranny of the majority.
The United States is not a democracy; it is a republic.
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You just can’t make this stuff up.
Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the “problem” and therefore defined as the enemy. I will argue that contemporary American liberalism embodies all of these aspects of fascism.
Marxism has led to Fascism and National-Socialism, because, in all essentials, it is Fascism and National Socialism.
Frederick Augustus Voigt, in Unto Cæsar (1939)
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Tags: 6d-mAb-XzSU, 7X3lQBfNJIs, democracy, filibuster, GsFoiVZDSRs, liberal fascism, LiC09A-_UjM, nuclear option, republic
