Democratic Liberty

"You're walking around blind without a cane, pal."
--Gordon Gekko (Wall Street)

Periodically these pages have discussed the inherent disconnect between democracy and liberty (stream here). The late F.A. Harper writes about the contrast much more elegantly than I.

One particularly insightful passage:

"Strange indeed is this concept of 'democratic liberty,' which has gained such widespread approval! Strange is a concept of 'liberty' which allows you to be forced to pay the costs of promoting acts of which you disapprove or ideas with which you disagree, or which forces you to subsidize that which you consider to be slothful and negligence. Your 'liberty' in the process is that you enjoy the right to be forced to bow to the dictates of others, against your wisdom and conscience."

The word that appears multiple times in the above passage is force. Indeed, democracy can be viewed as a mechanism of force.

So, why do politicians today frequently espouse the merits of democracy in the context of liberty? As Harper observes,

"This illusion, that the democratic process is the same as liberty, is an ideal weapon for those few who may desire to destroy liberty and to replace it with some form of authoritarian society; innocent but ignorant persons are thereby made their dupes."

Engage your brain, and don't be duped by the pied pipers' tune of democracy.