From: cdhart@laurie.net (Carolyn Hart)
Subject: SNET: [piml] [Fwd: March 21 column - democracy]
Date: 20 Mar 1999 07:14:33 -0500
To: piml@egroups.com


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Vin Suprynowicz wrote:
> 
>     FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
>     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED MARCH 21, 1999
>     THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
>     Why democracy is evil and un-American
> 
>     J.D. writes in from Orange County, California:
> 
>   "Hi Vin -- In arguments with my friends who lean heavily to the left and
> also declare that we live in a democracy (predominantly), with only a few
> necessary socialistic type programs, I've argued that we do not live any
> longer in a democracy but instead are governed by a purely socialist
> autocracy.
> 
>   "Am I correct in asserting this? If not, please describe precisely just
> what kind of government in your opinion we now live under."
> 
>   I replied:
> 
>   Howdy, J.D. -- I can tell you one place you're going wrong: You appear to
> be accepting "democracy" as a definition of the form of government intended
> by our founding fathers, and counterpoising it to socialism as though the
> two are somehow mutually exclusive.
> 
>   If enough children are led into the error of believing socialism is wise
> and good (as is likely to happen, for instance, if you entrust their
> "education" to the tender ministrations of our current government youth
> propaganda camps), then the people almost certainly will, as von Mises
> observed, realize they can "vote themselves a stipend out of someone else's
> pocket."
> 
>   At that point, there will no longer be any distinction between democracy
> and socialism; they become one and the same.
> 
>   The founders guarded against this by erecting many barriers against
> untrammeled democracy, recognizing unlimited democracy as the pernicious
> system which has been appropriately defined as "three wolves and a sheep
> voting on what to have for supper."
> 
>   Yes, the "democratic vote" was the method the people were to use to elect
> their House of Representatives. But this was to be only one component of
> our great experiment in a government of checks and balances, giving the
> common man standing to choose one branch to express his views.
> 
>   The House could only "propose" laws. Those proposals would go nowhere if
> not embraced by the U.S. Senate, which was never envisioned as being
> democratically elected. Instead, the senators were supposed to be the
> oldest and wisest representatives of the states, chosen by the state
> legislatures, never in any popular baby-kissing contest.
> 
>   Their job was precisely to block bad laws (which is to say, most federal
> laws), to make sure the states always remained sovereign, independent
> republics -- Jefferson himself warning us we would know tyranny had arrived
> if the separate states ever degenerated into mere "administrative
> districts" of the central authority, "like the departments of France" --
> should the states, for instance, ever have to bow to some uniform federal
> standard when it came to how they must fund the education of the
> handicapped ... if at all.
> 
>   Next, any proposed law which would alter out traditional liberties -- for
> instance, a tax which weighed more heavily on the man who creates more
> wealth, rather than a "capitation" tax which assesses the same fee against
> each adult, like a bridge toll -- would naturally be vetoed by the
> president, who again was not to be elected "democratically," but rather
> chosen by a college of electors, who were not and (start ital)are not(end
> ital) required to cast their votes according to the popular votes in their
> states. (The first electoral vote cast for a woman was not for Geraldine
> Ferraro in 1984, but for Libertarian Toni Nathan 12 years before. The man
> who cast it was not punished in any way; in fact, elector Roger MacBride
> later became the Libertarian Party's 1976 presidential nominee.)
> 
>   If even the senate and the president violated their oaths and allowed an
> unconstitutional law to pass (for instance, a law which in any way
> "infringed" the right of the individual citizen to keep and bear
> military-style weapons like machine guns, or the right to persist in an
> unenumerated 9th amendment "retained right" like buying and selling
> cocaine), then as few as five members of the Supreme Court (not
> "democratically elected" by anyone) could and were expected to toss out any
> enactment offensive to our rights.
> 
>   Finally, regardless of what any of those turkeys in Washington might say
> or do, no American can be punished for any newly made-up "crime" if merely
> one juror in 12 declares it's no crime and all, and sets him free.
> 
>   So the answer is that -- poisonous constitutional amendments having
> eroded our right to be free of an income tax (with all the government
> oversight and control of our finances that implies), the safeguard of
> senators not being popularly elected having also gone a-glimmering in 1913,
> and current court voir dire procedures having eliminated our right to trial
> by a randomly selected jury -- we do indeed live today in a full-bore
> democracy, which (very much as democratic elections in Weimar Germany
> created the same result in 1933) is now in the process of delivering us
> into the hands of a national-socialist police state -- fascism being
> defined as a form of government under which private title to property and
> industries is still permitted, but where the detailed control of their
> operation is in fact in the hands of government "regulators," taxmen, and
> functionaries.
> 
>   And it doesn't make a damned bit of difference what we call it.
> 
> Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
> Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers" is available at
> $21.95 plus $3 shipping ($6 UPS; $2 each additional copy) through Mountain
> Media, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas, Nev. 89127-4422. The 500-page trade
> paperback may also be ordered via web site
> http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html, or at 1-800-244-2224.
> 
> Vin Suprynowicz,   vin@lvrj.com
> 
> The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. -- John
> Hay, 1872
> 
> The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not
> get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases
> to discriminate between good and evil.  He becomes a slave in body and
> soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don't adjust! Revolt
> against the reality! -- Mordechai Anielewicz, Warsaw, 1943
> 
> * * *

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