Democracy and Propaganda

"Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?"
--Dr Yen Lo (The Manchurian Candidate)

Ron Paul observes that propaganda has conditioned Americans to believe that democracy is associated with freedom and liberty. It isn't, of course. In fact the opposite is true. Democracy, defined as a process for making political decisions by force based on the desires of the voting majority, compromises the freedom of some for the benefit of others.

A favorite tool of propagandists is to manipulate language to create 'positive substitute symbols.' Take a word that people value in a positive manner (liberty), and gradually connect it to a new word (democracy) initially associated with a concept that people are prone to dislike (democracy = system of decision-making by majority force). With enough repetition, the negative connotation linked to the new word is likely to decline in favor of a positive connotation (democracy is a component of liberty).

Presto, the new word becomes cherished and people are berated for treating it in a negative light.

Perversely, then, if you don't support democracy today, then you are viewed as an enemy of freedom.