US Democratic Party has abandoned democracy

The coverup of Joe Biden's cognitive decline, and the subsequent coronation of Kamala Harris without a vote, should make clear that the Democratic Party has no use for actual democracy. 

Photo by Jorge González. Courtesy Flickr, some rights reserved.

Democrats’ Disdain for Democracy | American Compass | Drew Holden:

August 13, 2024 - "The coverup of President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and the resulting coronation, absent a primary vote, of Vice President Kamala Harris should make one thing clear to would-be Democratic voters: the party views you with disdain. 

"For years, Democratic leadership insisted to their voters that ... [Biden] was fit as a fiddle. His memory was fine. Perhaps he was a 'super-ager.' In any case, he was going to be the party’s champion once again.... As the 2024 presidential primary — nominally the apparatus by which a party’s voters select their candidate — approached, party leadership took pains to limit who could be on the ballot. The choice was preordained. Despite questions about Biden’s fitness for another campaign — to say nothing of four more years as the man with the nuclear codes — the party tried to engineer early voting among his delegates to cement his name on the top of the ticket....

"That was until a team of 'super friends' — Democratic royalty, from Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi to Chuck Schumer and Jim Clyburn — was assembled to tell Biden that his time was up. Alongside private entreaties and anonymous quotes, the effort to compel Biden to step aside was accomplished behind closed doors, far from the prying eyes of voters....

"With Biden out of the way, the next logical step would have been a contested primary, where candidates made their case to the American people, and delegates from their states ... would decide on a nominee at the Democratic National Convention. This would have been the democratic choice: giving the party’s voters a say on their nominee.... Instead, party leadership quickly closed ranks around Harris.... No primary votes were cast for her but she was selected by acclamation by Democratic Party power brokers.... The last time Democratic Party voters had the opportunity to choose Harris, they were uniform in the opposite direction. As a candidate in the 2020 primary, Harris couldn’t crack double-digit support in Iowa despite an all-hands-on-deck effort in the state, leading her to suspend her campaign months before the caucus began.

"The move is emblematic of nearly every recent Democratic Party presidential nomination. The last meaningfully open presidential primary was in 2008, before the Obama re-elect, Hillary Clinton’s Harris-like coronation, and 2020’s anti-Bernie putsch. If Harris wins the presidency in 2024, it could be nearly a quarter-century between primaries where everyday Democrats had a say in their presidential nominee....

"What these events make clear is that, for all of its self-reverential talk of 'defending democracy,' the Democratic Party in fact disdains democracy as the method by which leaders are selected. What lies beneath all the flowery prose is a cold condescension, a conviction that party leadership knows better than voters what they want, and, in any case, what voters will have. Perhaps no issue illustrates the point better than immigration....  Americans of all political persuasions want the open borders policies that Biden and Harris embraced thrown out. So ... the Democratic Party ... nominated the member of Biden’s administration most publicly associated with the border crisis, whom the New York Times described in 2021 as 'in charge of the effort to stem migration from Central America': Kamala Harris.... 

"This doubling-down on contentious issues is characteristic of the Biden administration’s approach, but ... such an approach alienates voters, particularly independents, who 'on polarizing policies…are 30 points closer to Republicans [than Democrats]'.... Democrats and the Biden White House have sought to insulate themselves from the criticism by playing it safe, turning inward, and attempting to white-knuckle through the criticism. Biden hid from press engagements. Since being named his successor, Harris has done the same, failing to take live questions from the press for her first two-and-a-half weeks (and counting). While this strategy may work, ... it denies voters any insight into what the candidate stands for or plans to do if elected. Regardless of the electoral outcome, a strategy that relies on denying voters the information they need to form an opinion about a candidate is hardly a resounding embrace of democracy....

"Above all, democracy entails that political parties should aspire to be responsive to the wants and desires of the people. How Democrats and Republicans prioritize those wants and desires is a matter of political discretion. But the Democrats have made clear that they simply aren’t interested in the undertaking at all."

Read more: https://americancompass.org/democrats-disdain-for-democracy/

Democracy on trial along with Lich & Barber

What's at stake in the trial of Tamara Lich and Christ Barber, writes Freedom Convoy organizer Tom Marazzo, are basic principles necessary for democracy to function. 

Trial of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber shows an endangered democracy | True North | Tom Marazzo:

September 6, 2023: "In a country once globally revered for its commitment to freedom and democracy, Canada finds itself entangled in a disturbing transformation—a crisis that stretches beyond public health to encompass failures of governance and the erosion of democratic ideals. Tamara Lich, Chris Barber, and the Coutts 4 serve as the flashpoints. The Coutts 4 have been held in detention for over 560 days without a bail hearing. It’s not merely unusual; it’s a flagrant assault on the very essence of democratic judicial proceedings The trial of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber started this week....

"How did the great nation of Canada veer so far off its democratic course? Why isn’t the Canadian government’s freeze of financial assets without warrant, charges, or conviction on trial? Why isn’t there a public inquiry into the government’s disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic? Why no curiosity into where the Emergency Management Organizations – groups specially designed to manage such crises – were? 

"No, instead it’s Tamara Lich and Chris Barber who are on trial. While many Covid fines and charges are quietly being dismissed nationwide, individuals like Lich and Barber remain in the state’s crosshairs. It’s as if the government is using them as cautionary tales, warning the public: 'Raise your voice, and you’ll face disproportionate consequences.'

"In the case of Lich and Barber, all the federal government had to do was talk to us – but it refused outright. Why? To fabricate a Canadian January 6th. They didn’t want dialogue; they wanted division.... For the skeptics, the term 'Problem Reaction Solution Paradigm' might echo in your ears. It suggests that governments may intentionally fuel problems, only to offer solutions that conveniently bolster their authority.... But here’s the gut-punch: the individuals paying for these governmental mishaps aren’t high-ranking officials. No, they’re everyday Canadians like Lich and Barber ... because they dared to exercise their democratic right to protest....

"Even if you disagree with Tamara Lich or Chris Barber, their right to protest is your concern, too. If you’re silent today when their rights are being infringed, don’t be surprised if you find your own liberties in jeopardy tomorrow. Whether in Ottawa or Washington, D.C., it’s clear: governments are more committed to maintaining their public image than upholding the democratic processes they’re meant to safeguard....

"We’re staring at the disintegration of the principles that make democracy function. When governments prefer to silence their citizens rather than engage with them, we must ask: What’s next? Who’s next? If you believe that avoiding the front lines of protest shelters you from the corrosion of democratic values, you’ve misunderstood the gravity of the situation. Our democracy is endangered, and it’s high time we acted to restore it before the damage becomes irreversible."

Tom Marazzo is the author of The People’s Emergency Act, available on Amazon September 6th.

Read more: https://tnc.news/2023/09/06/marazzo-lich-barber/

"I was there for my kids": Freedom Convoy organizer speaks out in new book | Andrew Lawton Show, True North | September 9, 2023:

The hidden dangers of the WEF's 'Great Reset'

The World Economic Forum's "Great Reset" may not be the crazy conspiracy that some claim. However, that does not make it any less dangerous.

Why it isn’t mad to oppose the World Economic Forum | The Spectator - Samuel Gregg, Coffee House:

December 11, 2022 - "The World Economic Forum (WEF) and its long-serving founder and Executive Chairman, Professor Klaus Schwab, are the subjects of many insane conspiracy theories.... It isn’t mad, however, to regard the WEF as a dangerous force in global politics. The WEF is a dangerous force in global politics. To adapt Joseph Heller, just because you are paranoid, doesn’t mean the WEF isn’t after you.... 

"For many WEF critics, the vileness of the organisation can be encapsulated in one word: ‘neoliberalism.’ It’s a term that conjures up images of plutocrats and untrammelled markets ravaging the planet and exploiting blue-collar folk in the name of profit. Funnily enough, Chairman Schwab agrees with that assessment of the world’s ills.... In October 2020, Schwab stated that: '[S]hibboleths of our global economic system will need to be re-evaluated with an open mind. Chief among these is the neoliberal ideology. Free-market fundamentalism has eroded worker rights and economic security, triggered a deregulatory race to the bottom and ruinous tax competition'....

"Precisely how and where ‘free-market fundamentalism’ has run amuck remains a mystery. After all, we live in a world in which most governments in developed nations routinely control 40 per cent or more of their nation’s GDP. Nor does the regulatory and welfare state’s relentless growth in, say, the European Union, Britain and America suggest that free market radicals have been in charge.... Ignoring these inconvenient facts, Schwab believes that the world needs a ‘Great Reset.’ Covid, according to the WEF’s website explaining the global reboot awaiting the world, revealed all the ‘inconsistencies, inadequacies and contradictions of multiple systems – from health and financial to energy and education.’ The entire planet needs a new ‘social contract’ to reshape ‘the future state of global relations, the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models, and the management of a global commons’....

"A key concept for Schwab’s vision of a reset world is ‘stakeholder capitalism.’ In his 2021 book Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy that Works for Progress, People and Planet, Schwab defines it as ‘a form of capitalism in which companies do not only optimise short-term profits for shareholders, but seek long-term value creation, by taking into account the needs of all their stakeholders, and society at large’.... So who are the stakeholders who will collaborate to usher in the four Ps? For Schwab, they are ‘governments,’ ‘companies,’ and ‘civil society’ (NGOs, unions, etc.). At this point we arrive at the essence of Schwab’s grand redesign. For all his invocation of the predictable woke pieties, Schwab’s core commitment is to political and economic arrangements which used to be known as corporatism. Schwab is quite explicit about this.... 

"Corporatism is a broad concept. It can run the gamut from the hyper-authoritarian version embraced by Mussolini’s Italy to worker-boss structures of the type described by Schwab in postwar western Europe. All forms of corporatism, however, share some common themes. One is the necessity of limiting market competition in order to preserve social cohesion. Another is mandating cooperation between representative groups of different social and economic sectors – a process overseen and, if necessary, enforced by government officials for the sake of the common good. What, you might ask, could be wrong with this? The answer is: plenty. 

"For a start, corporatism – including its Schwabian expression – isn’t big on freedom. It’s all about forming and then maintaining a consensus on economic and social policies. For this reason, corporatism doesn’t cope well with dissent. Indeed, it discourages any questioning of the consensus, whether the issue is tax-rates or climate change.... Not only does this generate groupthink. It encourages the marginalisation of those who dispute the consensus. Another problem is the collusion and cronyism fostered by corporatism. Corporatist structures facilitate client-patron relations between businesses and governments. That in turn produces insiders and outsiders. Insiders are those companies who sign up to the consensus, play the corporatist game, and consequently do very well out of their cosy relationships with governments. Outsiders are those who lack the resources to grease the wheel.... 

"Lastly, corporatist-style stakeholder capitalism is decidedly ambivalent about democracy. The emphasis is upon insiders negotiating with each other, and then presenting the populace with a series of faits accomplis about anything ranging from fossil fuels to ESG. There’s not much room for contributions from the wider populace to the decision-making process in Schwab’s stakeholder capitalist model, let alone popular assent to decisions taken.... On an economic level, corporatism discourages innovation, produces inflexible labour markets dominated by unions whose priority is maintaining the status quo, and riddle the marketplace with privileges for well-connected businesses. In political terms, even mild forms of corporatism significantly disenfranchise voters and put an ever-growing number of important decisions in the hands of unaccountable bureaucracies. In many ways, the EU’s [European Union's] governance structures – and the democratic deficit which they personify – exemplify such arrangements.

"Which brings us back to the WEF. It wields no formal political power... Nonetheless, since its founding in 1971, the WEF has become an organisation which embodies supreme confidence in the imperative of a particular type of person running the world from the top-down. In his famous 2004 essay entitled Dead Souls, the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington called this prototype ‘Davos Man’.... Davos Man was Huntington’s short-hand description of ‘academics, international civil servants and executives in global companies, as well as successful high-technology entrepreneurs’ who thought alike and tended to view national loyalties and boundaries ‘as residues from the past.’ Davos Man also looked with undisguised disdain, Huntington suggested, upon those who weren’t getting with the programme – whatever the content of the programme happened to be.

"Therein lies the deepest problem with the WEF. It’s one thing for people to come together in international settings to discuss problems, share insights, and network....It’s another thing for an outfit such as the WEF to decide that the time has come to rearrange the world from the top-down and remake the planet in a corporatist image. The ideal for which Schwab is aiming, judging from his speeches and writings, is something akin to a globalised EU, with its supranational and ingrained bureaucratic ways being transposed to an international level, and the levers of power vested in the hands of reliable Davos men and women....[T]he agenda ... is sufficiently alarming that anyone who believes in preserving things like liberty, sovereignty, and the decentralisation of power should be concerned."

Read more: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-davos-man-cometh/

Forget the Great Reset. Embrace the Great Escape | Reason TV - Zach Weismuller | February 23, 2022: 

Trudeau criticized in European Parliament

Majority of seats empty during Trudeau's speech to European Parliament | Post Millennial - Roberto Wakerell-Cruz:

March 23, 2022 - "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had trouble filling out the seats of European Parliament during his speech [March 23]. Video posted by Global News's David Akin shows the majority of seats in Parliament empty.... 'As [Justin Trudeau] enters the European Parliament, I count about 200 of the 705 MEPs are in their seats. Gallery however is packed,' tweeted Akin with the video. The prime minister addressed the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium during a two-day visit, where he will attend meetings of G7 and NATO leaders concerning the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.... 

"Trudeau also took time to criticize the Freedom Convoy protests that took place in Ottawa throughout February. 'They pretend to have easy solutions that play on people's fears. Even in Canada, where 90 percent of people are vaccinated, and our motto as a country "peace, order, and good government," we saw anti-vaccine and antigovernment protest evolve into illegal occupations of our communities and blockades of our borders,' said Trudeau, who said that the leaders of the convoys were 'effective in turning citizens with real anxieties against the system bet suited to allay those concerns.' Trudeau said that democracy 'isn't a game,' and that there are no easy solutions to the 'big, complex problems we're all facing.'"
Read more: https://thepostmillennial.com/majority-of-seats-empty-during-trudeaus-speech-to-european-parliament

'DICTATORSHIP OF THE WORST KIND': European MPs blast Trudeau for COVID 'rights violation' | Toronto Sun - Eddie Chau: 

March 24, 2022 - "During a plenary session of parliament Wednesday in Brussels, several MEPs called Trudeau out, accusing him of violating human rights over the handling of the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa last month. 

"In one speech that has gone viral online, MEP Mislav Kolakusic of Croatia criticized Canada’s leader, stating, 'There are those among us who trample on those fundamental values'.... 'For many of us are fundamental human rights for which millions of citizens of Europe and the world have laid down their lives,” Kolakusic said in front of Trudeau, who had addressed parliament. 'To defend our rights and the rights of our children, which we have acquired over the centuries, many of us, including myself, are willing to risk, our freedom and our own lives.' 

"Kolakusic said Canada was once a symbol of the modern world but in recent months has become a 'symbol of civil rights violation' under Trudeau’s 'quasi-liberal boot.' 'We watched how you trample women with horses, how you block bank accounts of single parents so they can’t even pay their children’s education and medicine, that they can’t pay utilities, mortgages for their homes,' said Kolakusic.... The Croatian MEP had previously stated vaccination should be a choice for residents of the European Union, comparing vaccine mandates to capital punishment and murder....

"MEP Christine Anderson of Germany said Trudeau shouldn’t be allowed to speak to the European Parliament over the handling of the Freedom Convoy, calling him a 'disgrace for any democracy.' 'A prime minister who openly admires the Chinese basic dictatorship, who tramples on fundamental rights by persecuting and criminalizing his own citizens as terrorists just because they dared to stand up to his perverted concept of democracy should not be allowed to speak in this house at all,' said Anderson. Anderson — whose critics have accused her of being part of a right-wing movement in Europe — has been criticized for refusing to wear a mask in parliament and committee meetings in 2021.

"Another MEP, Cristian Terhes of Romania, refused to attend the meeting because of Trudeau. In a Facebook post, Terhes said Trudeau can’t come and 'teach democracy lessons to Putin from the European Parliament when you trample with horse hooves your own citizens who are demanding their fundamental rights be respected. The difference between democracy and tyranny is not determined by the geographical location of political leaders, but by the values they promote,' said Terhes.

"German MEP Bernhard Zimniok also blasted Trudeau, stating he valued democracy highly and welcoming Trudeau is 'an invitation to someone who has been trampling on democratic rights.' Zimniok said Trudeau has been 'cracking down on people who protested against disproportionate corona measures, people who were supporting a non-sanctioned movement coming under criticism.... Clearly the values of democracy are being despised by this individual,' he said. 'Let us not give someone like this any speaking time in this house of democracy.'"
Read more: https://torontosun.com/news/world/dictatorship-of-the-worst-kind-european-mps-blast-trudeau-for-covid-rights-violation

Smaller majority wants a new lockdown in Canada

Majority (56%) of Canadians Support Another Lockdown to Stop the Spread of Omicron | Ipsos Reid:

December 17, 2021 – "With the Omicron variant of COVID-19 spreading quickly and stoking worries of a sharp rise in case counts and hospitalizations, a new Ipsos poll conducted on behalf of Global News reveals that a majority (56%) of Canadians agree (20% strongly / 36% somewhat) that we should have another lockdown to help stop the spread of the Omicron variant. Conversely, 44% oppose (18% strongly / 26% somewhat) another round of lockdowns. Support is highest in Quebec (62%), British Columbia (61%), Atlantic Canada (60%) and Saskatchewan and Manitoba (59%) and lower in Ontario (53%) and, especially, Alberta (44%).

"Although a majority still support lockdown measures, support is dropping. [In July 2020, a Nanos poll found 73% favoring another lockdown (50% strongly / 23% somewhat), with 25% opposed (13% strongly / 12% somewhat) - gd] In July of 2021, 69% said they would support more lockdown measures if a fourth wave of the pandemic arose, which dropped to 63% in September, and is now just 56% now that the Omicron wave is upon us.  

"Canadians believe that Omicron will further delay to the return to normal, particularly when it comes to the ability to travel:

• Eight in ten (82%) agree (35% strongly / 47% somewhat) that the Omicron variant will delay things getting back to normal
• Eight in ten (80%) agree (47% strongly / 33% somewhat) that they would cancel their travel plans if COVID-19 gets any worse.
• Nearly four in ten (37%) however take a more stubborn approach to travel, agreeing (11% strongly / 25% somewhat) that they will travel next year, regardless of fluctuating coronavirus cases.

"Reflecting on the performance of key figures over the past year in their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the poll reveals that some public health officials have outperformed their political masters in the eyes of Canadians.... Compared to May of 2021, the Prime Minister’s COVID-specific approval rating is down by 5 points to 49%, while collectively the premiers’ approval rating is down just 2 points. The Premier of Quebec (75%, -1) receives the highest approval ratings among his first minister colleagues, followed by the Premiers of British Columbia (63%, -13), Atlantic Canada (61%, -7), Ontario (52%, +2), Saskatchewan and Manitoba (37%, -7) and Alberta (33%, +2).

"These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between December 10 and 15, 2021, on behalf of Global News.... In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadians aged 18+ been polled." 

Read more: https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/news-polls/majority-support-another-lockdown-stop-omnicron

Sweden shows futility of lockdown experiment

How Sweden swerved Covid disaster | Unherd - Johan Anderberg:

November 8, 2021 - "Until recently, prohibition remained the largest experiment in social engineering a democracy had ever undertaken. And then, in early 2020, a new virus began to spread from China. Faced with this threat, the world’s governments responded by closing schools, banning people from meeting, forcing entrepreneurs to shut their businesses and making ordinary people wear face masks. Like prohibition, this experiment provoked a debate. In all the democracies of the world, freedom was weighed against what was perceived as security; individual rights versus what was considered best for public health.

"Few now remember that for most of 2020, the word 'experiment' had negative connotations. That was what Swedes were accused of conducting when we — unlike the rest of the world — maintained some semblance of normality. The citizens of this country generally didn’t have to wear face masks; young children continued going to school; leisure activities were largely allowed to continue unhindered. This experiment was judged early on as 'a disaster' (Time magazine), 'the world’s cautionary tale' (New York Times), 'deadly folly' (the Guardian).... The hypothesis of the outside world was that ... absence of restrictions, open schools, reliance on recommendations instead of mandates and police enforcement would result in higher deaths than other countries. Meanwhile, the lack of freedom endured by the citizens of other countries would 'save lives'. At this stage, it was not unreasonable to conclude that Sweden would pay a high price for its freedom. Throughout the spring of 2020, Sweden’s death toll per capita was higher than most other countries.

"But the experiment didn’t end there. During the year that followed, the virus continued to ravage the world and, one by one, the death tolls in countries that had locked down began to surpass Sweden’s. Britain, the US, France, Poland, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Spain, Argentina, Belgium — countries that had variously shut down playgrounds, forced their children to wear facemasks, closed schools, fined citizens for hanging out on the beach and guarded parks with drones — have all been hit worse than Sweden. At the time of writing, more than 50 countries have a higher death rate.... If Sweden was a part of the US, its death rate would rank number 43 of the 50 states. 

Graph courtesy CTV News

"This fact is shockingly underreported. Consider the sheer number of articles and TV segments devoted to Sweden’s foolishly liberal attitude to the pandemic last year.... Suddenly, it is as if Sweden doesn’t exist.... 

"From a human perspective, it is easy to understand the reluctance to face these numbers. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that millions of people have been deprived of their freedom, and millions of children have had their education gravely damaged, for little demonstrable gain. Who wants to admit that they were complicit in this? But what one American judge called the 'laboratories of democracy' have conducted their experiment — and the result is increasingly clear.

"Exactly why it turned out this way is harder to explain, but perhaps the 'noble experiment' of the 1920s in the US can offer some clues. Prohibition didn’t win because the freedom argument prevailed. Nor was it because the substance itself had become any less harmful.... The reason for the eventual demise of the alcohol ban was that it simply didn’t work. No matter what the law said, Americans didn’t stop drinking alcohol.... The mistake the American authorities made was to underestimate the complexity of society. Just because they banned alcohol did not mean that alcohol disappeared. People’s drives, desires and behaviours were impossible to predict or fit into a plan. 

"A hundred years later, a new set of authorities made the same mistake. Closing schools didn’t stop children meeting in other settings; when life was extinguished in cities, many fled them, spreading the infection to new places; the authorities urged their citizens to buy food online, without thinking about who would transport the goods from home to home.

"If the politicians had been honest with themselves, they might have foreseen what would happen. For just as American politicians were constantly caught drinking alcohol during the prohibition, their successors were caught 100 years later breaking precisely the restrictions they had imposed on everyone else. The mayors of New York and Chicago, the British government’s top advisor, the Dutch Minister of Justice, the EU Trade Commissioner, the Governor of California all broke their own rules.

"It isn’t easy to control other people’s lives. It isn’t easy to dictate desirable behaviours in a population via centralised command. These are lessons that many dictators have learned. During the Covid pandemic, many democracies have learned it too. The lesson has perhaps not yet sunk in, but hopefully it will eventually. Then perhaps it will be another 100 years before we make the same mistake again."

Read more: https://unherd.com/2021/11/how-sweden-swerved-covid-disaster/

Covid-19 pandemic is a crisis of democracy

A Crisis of Democracy

by George J. Dance

Image courtesy U.S. Global Leadership Coalition.

It is no exaggeration to call the coronavirus pandemic a crisis. While the virus itself has turned out to be less dangerous than Covid Cultists believe – not one country has experienced the millions of deaths they have been prophesying since March – governments' responses to it throughout the democratic world have spawned numerous other crises, from mass unemployment to civil unrest, that have been progressively tearing away at the social fabric. The very idea of a democratic state, as a viable form of government, is being called into serious question. 

"Democracy" (rule by all the people) has always been not one concept, but a bundle of coexisting ones. Two of those concepts of democracy have always been in conflict. The coronavirus crisis has exposed those hidden conflicts as never before.   

One vision of democracy, which we can call liberal or libertarian democracy, was summed up by economist (and armchair sociologist) Ludwig von Mises this way:

For the sake of domestic peace liberalism aims at democratic government. Democracy is therefore not a revolutionary institution. On the contrary; it is the very means of preventing revolutions and civil wars. It provides a method for the peaceful adjustment of government to the will of the majority. When the men in office and their policies no longer please the majority of the nation, they will – in the next election – be eliminated and replaced by other men espousing different policies. 

Democracy, in other words, served a libertarian end: as a means of eliminating force from politics, it was a major step toward the libertarian ideal of eliminating force from social relations. So it was good in itself. As well, as many libertarian ideas do, it brought other significant benefits. 

One benefit was to instantiate what sociologist Vilfredo Pareto called the "circulation of elites". Every human society of record has been divided into an elite, which lives the good life and calls the shots, and the riffraff underneath; perhaps, given how humans live in groups, that division is a necessary part of society. In precapitalist societies, that division was fixed: if you were born a lord you could expect to be a lord all your life; if you were born a peasant, you could expect to always be a peasant. The rise of capitalism, though, abolished that fixed order, making it possible for individuals to move into and out of the elite; the lowest floor sweeper in a factory could theoretically become a factory owner, and vice versa. Democracy extended the 'circulation' principle into government: in America any native-born child could grow up to be President. 

As a further benefit of adopting the 'circulation' principle, members of the governing elite now had to consider the point of view of the non-elite as well. A Prime Minister might be able to pile high taxes on the private citizens; but now he had to face the real possibility of becoming a private citizen and having to pay those taxes himself. That brought about a common interest, on the part of governors and citizens alike, in limiting what government could do to its citizens. Thus democracy led to the idea of limiting government power constitutionally, through formal checks and balances that restricted how governments could make law – the Rule of Law not men – and through bills of human rights, which limited what governments were allowed to make laws about. 

To libertarians, then, democracy was seen as a good because it was a means to achieving good ends. However, there were other democratic thinkers, to whom "pleas[ing] the majority of the nation" was not a means to an end, but the very end itself. In their view, a democratic government was the expression and will of the people – achieving the will of the people was the supreme political good –and therefore whatever a democratic government did (unless, of course, it were taken over by bad people) was always good. It followed that restrictions on government like bills of rights were bad things, encumbrances that prevented governments from doing as much good as possible.  

This second view can be called the totalitarian view of democracy. The word 'totalitarian' is no stretch; at the limit, it implies that government may do whatever it wants to any individual it wants, so long as a majority wants it to; in short, it contradicts the very idea of human rights. Novelist (and armchair philosopher) Ayn Rand called it:

a social system in which one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose.... 

If we discard morality and substitute for it the Collectivist doctrine of unlimited majority rule [Rand also wrote], if we accept the idea that a majority may do anything it pleases, and that anything done by a majority is right because it’s done by a majority (this being the only standard of right and wrong) – how are men to apply this in practice to their actual lives? Who is the majority? In relation to each particular man, all other men are potential members of that majority which may destroy him at its pleasure at any moment. Then each man and all men become enemies; each has to fear and suspect all; each must try to rob and murder first, before he is robbed and murdered.

Those two visions of democracy have always co-existed in precarious balance in democratic states; but the Covid pandemic has utterly destroyed that balance. 

Democratic governments' interventions in the pandemic have been paradigm examples of totalitarian democracy. Contrary to what some may believe, lockdowns (and their component  measures) are enormously popular. The Covid Cult that swept the world convinced millions that they were going to die of this new plague, and that only governments could save them. Since then, massive majorities throughout the world have been demanding that their governments save them, rewarding those who acted quickly to close down society, and punishing those who held back. It is wrong for libertarians to call the result 'tyranny,' for it is the very opposite: it is the government carrying out the popular will.

Meanwhile, the rights of the people are being trampled. People have seen their livelihoods taken away. They are routinely arrested, and even roughed up, by the police, just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They are being arrested for their social media posts. They are being shot for breaking curfew. Life under lockdown is becoming a human rights nightmare. 

Even the Rule of Law has vanished; for this Covid totalitarianism has been happening, for the most part without any opposition, as if the constitution and the normal laws do not exist. Those have not been amended but are simply ignored, with the executive branch of government dictating whatever it wants done by executive order. Opposition parties, with their eyes on the same polls the government is reading, simply play along. A few courts have stood up for the Rule of Law by striking down some government actions; but those too have been demonized by the Covid Cult as "endanger[ing] thousands of lives," and in some cases their decisions have been ignored and the laws they struck down have still been enforced.  

In short, totalitarian democracy has become the official program of most democratic nations, while libertarian democracy has been discarded. This is an example of 'spontaneous order': No one planned for their country to become totalitarian; democratic governments have simply stumbled into totalitarianism, or been pushed into it by their citizens.

The silver lining to that cloud is that, while democratic majorities still support Covid totalitarianism, they have never approved of totalitarian democracy. As they gain experience of life in a totalitarian state, they cannot be counted on to support its continuance. Its tenets are being challenged by a growing number of scientists, philosophers, thinkers and even politicians. Official protests against Covid totalitarianism, though small and sporadic, are each week growing in number; while noncompliance (euphemistically referred to by governments as 'pandemic fatigue') is soaring, as the soaring case rates of Covid in America and Europe make clear. The liberal or libertarian ideal of people running their own lives, including assessing their own risks, may be down but it is certainly not out.  

I believe that in a straightforward conflict between totalitarian democracy versus liberal or libertarian democracy, the latter would win. However, that can and will happen only if enough people understand the nature of the underlying conflict.   

Majority of Canadians would like another lockdown

Most Canadians support second lockdown if COVID-19 caseloads spike | Tri-City News -Stéfan Labbe:

August 5, 2020 - "Most Canadians support a second round of shuttering businesses and self-isolating at home should the country see a spike in COVID-19 cases. That’s according to a poll conducted by Nanos Research on behalf of the Globe and Mail between July 26 and 30.

"Of the 1,094 people surveyed across the country, 73% said they would either support a second lockdown (50%) or somewhat support such measures (23%) amid a COVID-19 resurgence. Another quarter either oppose such actions (13%) or somewhat oppose them (12%). Those living in Atlantic Canada (84%), Ontario (83%) and British Columbia (78%) either supported or somewhat supported a renewed closure of businesses, whereas those in Quebec (56%) and the Prairies (67%) were less supportive.

"An earlier July poll conducted by the Angus Reid Institute found half of Canadians expected a second wave lockdown, with British Columbians among the most likely to predict another round of self-isolation and closures.

"The survey also probed respondents on their views around wearing masks in public, on the return to school in the fall and anxiety over reopening plans. A strong majority told the pollster they would support (72%) or somewhat support (15%) mandatory mask wearing policies in indoor public places. Only a combined 12% said they would oppose or somewhat oppose such a measure.

"Close to 80% said provinces should find a way to send kids back to school in the fall, though at 65%, British Columbians were least likely to say it was either important or somewhat important. B.C. residents were also most likely to express anxiety over contracting COVID-19 as jurisdictions across the country relax social distancing rules and reopen public life.

Read more: https://www.tricitynews.com/news/most-canadians-support-second-lockdown-if-covid-19-caseloads-spike-1.24180869

Hong Kong protesters driven by desperation

Hong Kong Protests: Inside the Chaos - The Atlantic - Zeynep Tufecki:

November 12, 2019 - "For months now, I’ve been told that Hong Kong’s protests would end soon. They’ll end when school starts, I heard during the summer.... Next, the mask ban of early October was supposed to slow protesters down, but the very first day after that ban, I watched streams of protesters in masks and helmets.... The government shut down many of the subway lines that day, a practice that has become a de facto curfew, because Hong Kong’s über-efficient subway system is the way most people get around. No matter; the protesters ended up walking....

"One of the most popular chants in Hong Kong is 'Five demands, not one less.' These include the full withdrawal of the anti-extradition bill, which originally sparked the protests in June; an independent commission to investigate police misconduct; retracting the riot charges against protesters; amnesty for arrested protesters; and, crucially, universal suffrage.

"Nothing animates the Hong Kongers I’ve been talking with as much as that final demand. Yesterday, the police shot one protester in the stomach at point-blank range, and another police officer drove into the protesters with his motorcycle.... Later in the day, Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam ... called the protesters the 'enemy of the people.' She was voted into office by 777 people from the 1,200-person 'Election Committee,' many of whose members are businesspeople with close ties to mainland China..... Polls in October showed her popularity around 22 percent, with just over one in 10 Hong Kongers saying that they would vote for her voluntarily. No wonder the protesters want the right to elect their own leaders....

"Some surveys suggest that more than 80 percent of the people of Hong Kong may have been exposed to tear gas.... Some neighborhoods close to protest sites have been so repeatedly drowned in the noxious clouds that the protesters held a rally on behalf of their pets.... Almost every protest results in videos of protesters being beaten by the police. Many are live-streamed, to horrified viewers.... Fearful accounts are coming out of the police stations, alleging torture, sexual assault, and rape....

"Many protesters believe that people were killed by the police on the night of August 31 in Prince Edward station, when the police shut down the subway station with protesters trapped inside. Videos emerged of young people cowering on the floor, as they were pepper-sprayed from a close distance and beaten. Medics weren’t allowed in.... Almost every night now, protesters show up at the entrance of the subway at Prince Edward, right next to the Mong Kok police station.... They shout slogans and obscenities at the police. Often they get tear gas and rubber bullets in return....

"Hong Kong’s government, backed by mainland China, ... seems to have decided that the best way to reestablish control is to crack down even more. Meanwhile, about half of Hong Kongers say that, on a scale of zero to 10, they would rate their trust in the police at zero....

"Last week ...I chatted with two young women, of the many thousands of people who had shown up, right before the police teargassed the [Victoria] park.... This is our last chance, they said very matter-of-factly. If we stand down, nothing will stand between us and mainland China, they said. They talked about Xinjiang, and what China had done to the Uighur minority. I’ve heard about the fate of the Uighurs from so many protesters over the months. China may have wanted to make an example out of the region, but the lesson Hong Kongers took was in the other direction — resist with all your might, because if you lose once, there will be a catastrophe for your people, and the world will ignore it.

"The two women weren’t sure whether they would win.... 'But we cannot give up,' one insisted, 'because if we do, there will be no future for us anyway. We might as well go down fighting.'”

Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/11/escalating-violence-hong-kong-protests/601804/
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Silly arguments against self-ownership

by George J. Dance:

May 10, 2017 - Libertarians often talk about "self-ownership." What is it? To quote an encyclopedia definition: "Self-ownership (or sovereignty of the individual, individual sovereignty or individual autonomy) is the concept of property in one's own person, expressed as the moral or natural right of a person to have bodily integrity, and be the exclusive controller of her or his own body and life."

I am no fan of the term. "Ownership" over one's own body and life is different, in crucial ways, from "ownership" of external things, like a car, and using the same term for both blurs those differences. One has to act to acquire a car; while one has "self-ownership" simply by existing. One can sell a car to another person, meaning that the other person now owns it; but I cannot imagine how anyone could rightfully come to own another person. Finally, ownership, and possession and control, of oneself are indistinguishable – some libertarians even ground self-ownership on the metaphysical fact that people do possess and control their own bodies – while it is perfectly sensible to imagine a car being owned by one person, but possessed and controlled by someone else.

So I would prefer to use a different term, like the ones the encyclopedia offers: individual sovereignty or individual autonomy. However, I have no trouble with the concept as properly understood. Anti-propertarians, on the other hand, do seem to have trouble with the concept; perhaps because of the problems with the term noted above. In any case, on the web one often encounters people arguing against the very idea of self-ownership.

One popular argument that I often run into is "Three Refutations of Self-Ownership," published on an anarchist discussion forum years ago. It consists of three arguments meant to show that self-ownership is  (i) an oxymoron, (ii) immoral and unjust, and (iii) metaphysically impossible; posted with the invitation to "Please critique freely". Being a sucker for logical arguments, I had to respond to the invitation.

A Refutation of Self-Ownership #1 (With No Consideration of Cartesian Dualism)

1. Ownership requires a thing A that owns and a thing B that is owned.
2. Self-ownership requires that one A owns one’s body B.
3. If A and B were the same – i.e. if one and one’s body were one and the same thing – then A and B would both own and be owned.
4. Ownership implies an ability to control, direct, dominate, dispose of, defend, manage, and rent a thing.
5. If A and B were the same, then A would be controlling B, and B would be controlling A, and so forth, ad absurdum, so that true ownership would not really exist.
6. Therefore, if A and B are the same, then self-ownership is an oxymoron.

The false premise here is 5. If A and B were two different people, then it would be absurd for A to control B and for B to control A at the same time (precisely what makes the democratic idea of the citizens controlling a government that controls them absurd). What would happen if A and B disagreed? A would have to give in to B, and B would have to give in to A; in what sense, then, would either of them be in control?

However, the assumption is that A and B are the same person. So let us make that identity clear, by using just the one symbol, and rewriting premise 5 as:
5. If A and A were the same thing, then A would be controlling A, and A would be controlling A, and so forth, ad absurdum, so that true ownership would not really exist.
No absurdity there. Since premise 5 is false, the argument is unsound.

A Refutation of Self-Ownership #2 (With Consideration of Cartesian Dualism)

1. Ownership requires a thing A that owns and a thing B that is owned.
2. Self-ownership requires that one A owns one’s body B.
3. If A and B were not the same – i.e. if one’s mind/will and one’s body were not one and the same thing – then A would be a mind/will and B would be a living human body.
4. It is immoral and unjust to claim ownership of a living human body.
5. Therefore, self-ownership is immoral and unjust.

Premise 4 looks like the false one here. It might indeed always be "immoral or unjust to claim ownership of a living human body;" but why think it is? Perhaps the author was thinking about slavery, and reasoning implicity:
4a) Claiming ownership of a living human body is slavery.
4b) Slavery is immoral and unjust.
4c) Therefore, claiming ownership of a living human body is immoral and unjust.
But the definition of slavery in 4a) is misstated. Slavery is claimed ownership of someone else's living body. So all that this argument, if sound, would prove is that claiming ownership of someone else's living body is immoral and unjust; and of course claiming self-ownership is not claiming that. Since premise 4 is false, the argument is again unsound.

A Refutation of Self-Ownership #3 (With Consideration of Cartesian Dualism)

1. Ownership requires a thing A that owns and a thing B that is owned.
2. Self-ownership requires that one A owns one’s body B.
3. If A and B were not the same – i.e. if one’s mind/will and one’s body were not one and the same thing – then A would be a mind/will and B would be a living human body.
4. If the mind exists outside of the living human body – i.e. if the mind is a separate, non-physical entity – then the mind is intangible, whereas the human body is tangible.
5. It is not possible for a thing without physical tangibility to act upon a thing with physical
tangibility.
6. Therefore, self-ownership is metaphysically impossible.

In this case, the premises are all true, but the conclusion is a non-sequitur. Premise 4 contains
an assumption – "If the mind exists outside of the living body" etc. – that is not discharged in the conclusion. So to be valid the conclusion would have to be stated as:
6'. "Therefore, if the mind exists outside of the living body – i.e. if the mind is a separate, non-physical entity – then self-ownership is metaphysically impossible."
 –  Which would refute any libertarians who do argue that their minds are non-physical things that exist outside their bodies. But what libertarians do that? Since the conclusion does not follow from the premises, the argument is invalid.

Also read: An argument for self-ownership

Twisting libertarianism

Twisting Libertarianism | National Review Online: - Kevin D. Williamson:

Michael Lind either misunderstands it or is intellectually dishonest.

May 15, 2014 - "If you would like to see everything that is wrong, shallow, and dishonest about our contemporary political discourse in one neat package, read Michael Lind’s recent drive-by defamation of Bryan Caplan, 'Libertarians’ scary new star'....

"Mr. Lind’s piece contains no analysis.... [I]t is mostly a half-organized swarm of insults out of which emerges the occasional tendentious misstatement of Professor Caplan’s views and those of the libertarian thinkers with whom he is sometimes associated. Mr. Lind begins by bemoaning our alleged national descent into plutocracy and writes: 'Some on the libertarian right have responded to this research by welcoming our new plutocratic overlords. Among these is Bryan Caplan.'

"Professor Caplan, author of The Myth of the Rational Voter, is a trenchant critic of electoral decision-making. Voters, he argues, suffer from specific, predictable biases — anti-market bias, anti-foreign bias, make-work bias, and pessimistic bias — that cause them to hold, and act on, untrue beliefs about the way the world works.... He characterizes the typical American voter as a moderate national socialist who strongly supports state intervention in many areas, and remarks, 'Given public opinion, the policies of First World democracies are surprisingly libertarian.'

"There is a great deal of agreement among the poor, the middle class, and the rich on most political issues, but the rich are significantly more libertarian ... not only on economic issues but also on social issues. The poor are 'much more anti-gay,' Professor Caplan writes. 'They’re much less opposed to restricting free speech to fight terrorism.' On the relatively few issues on which there is strong disagreement between the poor and the rich, the preferences of the rich have tended to prevail, and that pleases Professor Caplan, because that means that more libertarian policies are put into place than public opinion would suggest. 'To avoid misinterpretation,' he writes, 'this does not mean that American democracy has a strong tendency to supply the policies that most materially benefit the rich. It doesn’t.'

"But there is no avoiding misinterpretation when the opposite side is committed to misinterpreting you. Professor Caplan celebrates the advance of gay rights, pushback against the surveillance state, and, regrettably ... abortion rights, among other items on the progressive social agenda. Mr. Lind sees only a champion of plutocracy — because that is all he is inclined to see."

Read more: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/378004/twisting-libertarianism-kevin-d-williamson
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Ron Paul’s strategy is authentic republicanism

Ron Paul’s caucus strategy is authentic republicanism | Washington Times Communities - Thomas Mullen:

March 19, 2012 - "Give yourself a test....  fill in the blank in the following sentence: The U.S. Constitution guarantees to every state in the union a _____form of government. If you are like ninety percent of the American electorate, you answered 'democratic' and you were wrong. The answer is 'a republican form of government.' There is a drastic difference between the two....

"In a democracy, the will of the majority is the law. Fifty-one percent of the vote empowers the winners to exercise any power they wish. Not so in a republic. The reason that the founders constructed a constitutional republic was to protect Americans from democracy....

"Ron Paul’s presidential campaign strategy is rooted in republicanism. He has deliberately focused his efforts on the states that hold caucuses instead of primaries because caucuses do not let the majority rule unchecked. Instead of merely pulling a few levers behind a curtain, caucus participants must complete a multi-tiered process that occurs for months after the popular vote before being chosen for the national convention. Who can doubt that these delegates are more informed than the typical primary voter? The essence of republicanism is for reason to triumph over the transient passion of the majority."

Read more: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/reawakening-liberty/2012/mar/19/ron-pauls-caucus-strategy-authentic-republicanism/
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