Election years have the tendency to bring out the worst in political rhetoric. Both major political parties color their opponents as dangers to the foundations of American democracy and even the world in general. I remember seeing on television in 1964 the famous “Daisy” political ad with a small girl holding a flower being vaporized in a huge nuclear mushroom cloud, symbolizing the threat from a win for Barry Goldwater over Lyndon Johnson in that year’s presidential election. Of course, this was just as fictitious as the North Vietnamese attack on American military vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin that was used by LBJ’s administration to justify America’s massive intervention into the war in South Vietnam.
In 1980, according to the Democrats, the danger was the election of an “actor” to the White House. How could someone who “play acted” roles instead of actually being a “professional” politician be trusted with the nuclear button if “cowboy” Ronald Reagan was elected president? (This was in spite of Reagan’s eight years as governor of California.) The age factor was raised as a threat to American democracy in the 1984 presidential campaign due to Reagan being 73 years of age when he ran for a second term. This was put to rest in one of the presidential debates, when Reagan was asked about his age in comparison to his Democrat opponent, Walter Mondale, who was only 56 years old, and he replied, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Even Mondale started to laugh.
The heated rhetoric over the dangers to democracy in 2024
It is not surprising, then, that the political rhetoric has been equally, if not more, inflammatory in this year’s presidential election. From the time that Donald Trump decided to run for the presidency in 2016, the Democrats and the “progressive left” in general have portrayed him as a racist, a fascist, and a would-be dictator whose rise to the highest political office in the land would mean the end of democracy, a return to slavery for American blacks, and impoverishment of the “working class” in the entire country.
Immediately following the attempted assassination of Trump in July, Democrats and the mainstream media pundits expressed their “shock” that such violence should occur in the midst of America’s exercise in democracy, innocently asserting that if there had been any politically inflammatory language, it had never crossed their lips. Whether Joe Biden had one of his moments of incoherent forgetfulness or not, he was not very convincing in an interview that when he earlier said there needed to be a bullseye on Trump, he really did not mean what most of us might take as the meaning, given how so many Democrats and “progressives” have considered Trump to be a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. In spite of their “heartfelt” relief that Trump had survived the bullet that grazed his ear, it is hard not to imagine that some of his opponents must have wished, in the confines of their own minds, that “if only” the bullet had been slightly closer to Trump’s skull, America would have been saved from its fascist future with his reelection.
Then in a further twist of political fate, the three-year cover up of Joe Biden’s deteriorating mental state broke wide open during the presidential debate with Trump in June. Suddenly, those in the Democrat Party political and financial elite who had propped up Biden as the guardian of “democracy” against Hitler’s reincarnation, while hiding him away from the public’s view as best they could, found themselves working to save democracy again by pressuring him to resign after “the people” had chosen him in the Democrat Party primaries. Democracy, of course, was saved once more by anointing Kamala Harris as the new voice of “the people,” though she had not directly run or won even one delegate in the Democrat primaries during the spring of 2024.
In the same way, since 2016 Donald Trump and a growing number of Republicans who have followed in lockstep behind him have portrayed first Hillary Clinton and then Joe Biden and the Democrats as the advanced guard on America’s road to destruction. With rhetorical rudeness and crudeness, Trump first lambasted all his Republican rivals for the presidential nomination in 2016 with slur nicknames and offensive references to their ideas and their anatomical parts. Even before the 2020 election, he insisted that if he was not reelected the only reason would be that the Democrats had stolen the outcome and betrayed American democracy. In childish manner, Trump could not accept “loser” as his new nickname in being defeated by Joe Biden. Whether Trump bore any legal responsibility for the events on January 6, 2021, or not, his temper tantrum calls for his followers to march on the Capital building as an opposition and resistance to the certification of Biden’s Electoral College win carried all the rhetorical effect of wanting his followers to do “something” to save the country from a stolen election.
Democracy’s role in replacing ballot boxes for bullets
Everyone bandies about the word “democracy” as the political totem of all things good and divine. And certainly, ballot boxes are better than bullets as a means of replacing those in high political office. The consequences of political regimes under which open and competitive voting is out-and-out denied or shammed by preventing anyone from running against those currently in governmental power through exile, imprisonment, or assassination often leaves violent insurrection as the last resort of oppressed people to bring down the tyrants under which they live. Its consequences, tragically, too frequently only result in death and destruction, with either the tyrant crushing his opponents or triumphant new political leaders ending up being as power-lusting and plundering as those they replaced.
We need to recall that “democracy” is, fundamentally, an institutional means of peacefully selecting individuals who will hold particular high political offices for a stipulated period of time, and who are open to removal and replacement in the next election cycle by those offering themselves to the electorate as alternatives to them. Unless qualified with any number of restraints and restrictions, democracy, as rule by “the people,” usually on the basis of some form of majoritarian voter outcome, can be as tyrannical as either absolute monarchy (rule by the one over the many) or aristocracy (rule by the few over the many).
Danger of unlimited democracy in ancient Athens
Ancient Athens is usually credited with being the “birthplace” of democracy. It is true that the adult, male free citizens of Athens had the right and obligation to participate in the decision-making over the city’s affairs. But these free citizens were a minority, with the majority of the population made up of slaves who performed all the everyday work and tasks required to ensure the necessities, conveniences, and the luxuries (as understood at the time) of everyday life.
While the free citizens of Athens were equal participants in determining the political affairs of the city, each one of them was also at the mercy of majority rule that, in principle, could reach into the private affairs of anyone’s life. The most famous instance of “the tyranny of the majority” in ancient Athens was, no doubt, the trial of Socrates. Accused of corrupting the young people of the city by asking them to question the rationales behind Athenian beliefs and traditions, he, as a free citizen, participated in the debates over his own fate. But when the vote was taken, out of a 501-person jury, 280 found him guilty and condemned him to death. Accepting the decision of his fellow free citizens of Athens, Socrates drank the hemlock and died.
Two lessons have usually been drawn from the story of Socrates. First, the integrity of the individual, who even in the face of death chose not to compromise his sense of right and the true. But the second lesson is the threat and danger of unrestrained democracy, in which the citizens of Athens claimed the authority over and the power to control the actions and even the thoughts of all those who dared disagree with and dissent from the beliefs and demands of a majority. A mere majority of raised hands could determine life or death.
Centuries of absolute monarchs and aristocratic elites
It is worth keeping in mind that majority rule is a relatively recent occurrence in human history. For most of human history, a tribal chief or king claimed and asserted the right to rule over all the others. This was legitimized in terms of a divine right due to God anointing the chief or king with this authority, or by claiming to be a god himself, above all other mortals. When traced backwards, it usually had its defacto basis in an earlier conquest or a fight within the tribe over power among the stronger of its members, using the divinity rationale as the means to legitimize the right of imposing and using coercive power over others to demand their obedience to the commands of the chief or king.
Aristocratic government usually meant the political rule of a number of empowered families who had acquired lands and all things on them through a prior conquest or who had inherited such properties from earlier generations. Several of the medieval and Renaissance-era cities in Italy, for example, were instances of the rule by the few over the many.
Both of these forms of government have often been praised with some nostalgia, with references, for instance, to “the glory of Rome” and the origin of a “rule of law” or the flourishing of arts, literature, and learning in the urban communities of Renaissance Europe. But whether in the Roman Empire or during the Renaissance, political power was wielded by one or a few over virtually all the others. This understanding should not be limited merely to Europe.
It was no less true in ancient China or under the rule of the Mongols over large parts of Asia and Europe, or in the Americas before Columbus under the Aztecs in Mexico, or the Incas of Peru, or among the tribal kingdoms of Africa before the arrival of the Europeans. They all ruled with iron and brutal hands in imposing their unquestioned authority over those under their control. Sometimes, customs or traditions have acted as limits on monarchical or chieftain power, but nonetheless, the idea of some underlying principles limiting such power was nonexistent or rare. Ruthless governments of these types have been “equal opportunity” institutions, that is, not restricted to one continent, or one racial or ethnic group, or to one culture or people.
Restraining government through the ideal of individual rights
Yet, democracy has had an appeal over the thousands of years since those ancient Greek times due to the underlying sense of the justice of people governing themselves, rather than their fate and fortune being in the hands of one or a few. It has also always been understood that the one or the few who rule through the coercive power of governmental authority are tempted to use the legitimized force to benefit themselves and a selected few around them at the expense of all the rest in society.
The idea, therefore, of restraints on the power of the king is symbolized in the British Magna Carta of 1215, under which the presumed absolute and arbitrary powers of the monarch were limited, with protection of certain rights in the form of trial by jury and limits on searches, seizures, and arrests, and the fact that a favored group of the landed barons had to consent to the collection and taking of taxes for the king’s purposes. While these protections were initially for the landed aristocracy, over the next centuries, it slowly came to be viewed that such protections were or should be the secured “rights” of every Englishman.
The particular rights of an Englishmen were broadened and universalized in 1689 with John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government. In the First Treatise, Locke challenged the presumptions of unlimited monarchical authority. But it was in the Second Treatise that he formulated the now modern understanding of the “natural rights” of each and every individual to his life, liberty, and honestly acquired property. The latter was explained to mean previously unsettled land and resources and the fruits from their use by the first user or those things obtained in free and voluntary exchange from those who, equally, are just owners of resources or the goods produced from them that are given in trade.
These rights precede and take precedence over the powers and authority of government by a moral sense of the justice of each human being’s right to his own life, liberty, and honestly acquired property. Their origin, Locke argued, are gifts from that highest authority, the Maker of all things. But divine origin of natural rights need not be the only pillar upon which they rest, Locke said. Each person can look within himself and ask, does he not think it is “right” that no one may take his life, deny him his liberty, or seize his property without his consent? Which of us as reasoning human beings could reach any but that one answer? But if it is only “natural” that no man wishes his life, or liberty, or property to be taken unjustly, then, reciprocally, each of us must recognize and respect every other person’s equal right to the same.
However, since human beings can sometimes be “unreasonable,” men come together for mutual self-protection in their rights. They form governments with the assigned duties to secure and protect each individual’s rights from predators and plunderers. Indeed, this is the most fundamental reason and rationale for the existence of government in society. It is to assist in protecting each person from aggressors that he may not be able to ward off himself, and to place in other hands questions of defense against an attacker, and the guilt and punishment of an accused, when a victim of such aggression may be guided by passions that distort the truth about the nature and seriousness of the crime, and what a just punishment should be that fits the gravity of the offense.
America’s founding based on individual rights
John Locke’s exposition of the natural rights of man was, of course, fundamental to the founding principles behind the American Revolution of 1776 and the United States Constitution of 1787. When the Declaration of Independence declares the self-evident truths of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, there is no suggestion that these are rights reserved only for those living in the British colonies situated on the North American side of the Atlantic Ocean. These are universal rights declared to be true and valid for all people everywhere and at all times.
In response to the charge of lies and hypocrisy since slavery existed in the colonies and women were usually restricted in their full possession of such rights, it cannot be forgotten that for thousands of years of recorded history, slavery, everywhere, had been considered part of the normal and natural system of human affairs. The eighteen and nineteenth centuries may be considered a momentous transition period, beginning in Europe and North America, from the master-slave relationship to increasing acceptance that no human being should be held in bondage by another person, and that women were as deserving in recognition of similar rights as men. These two notions of human affairs were overlapping during this time, with the idea and ideal of individual rights and liberty slowly triumphing over the ancient system of slavery and subservience.
Liberalism became the name of the political philosophy and set of principles meant to demarcate the individual rights of each and every human being from the power and authority of government. Outside of the general responsibility for protecting the rights of every human being from the encroachments of others, government was considered to have few other duties within the arena of human affairs. All other matters were or should be in the arena of civil society, that is, the relationships and associations that people formed among themselves for economic, social, and cultural purposes.
Liberal democracy meant to limit the power of majorities
Liberal democracy, therefore, defined the role of government in a free society. The delineation between unlimited, majoritarian democracy and liberal limited democracy was partly captured in the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution. In the first amendment, it is stated categorically that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances.”
Even if every person in the country except one thought one way on religious beliefs held, or if their views and values about virtually any aspect of political, social and economic life ran counter to that single person, that supermajority may not have their elected representatives pass laws abridging or silencing the liberty of even one individual to think, speak, write, and worship differently from the rest.
Perhaps, another way to approach this is to distinguish between two meanings of “self-government.” Political self-government refers to the individuals in a community or country having the right to participate and vote in the selection of those who will hold political office for a specified period of time, based on elections in which competing candidates may offer themselves to the electorate for consideration. Liberal self-government refers to the right of individuals to peacefully direct and guide their own lives as they see fit in free and voluntary association with any and all others based on mutual agreement and consent.
Economic liberty and the threat of increasing government power
For most of the original nineteenth-century liberals, self-government included and was inseparable from economic liberty. Buying and selling, producing and consuming through the free and open relationships and associations of the marketplace were essential for individuals so they could choose, express, and attempt to fulfill the pursuit of their own lives for their own happiness. This also gave each individual “space” for living, producing, and earning a living outside and independent of the power and control of government. The free marketplace is an arena where you can peacefully and honestly say and do as you want within a wide latitude of liberty, without fear of government oppression or suppression.
The more government — regardless of whether it is an absolute monarchy, a ruling aristocracy, or a majoritarian democracy — the less freedom the individual has. As the classical-liberal economist Ludwig von Mises expressed it:
Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
Government cannot do anything for us without doing things to us
Whenever it is said by “progressives” and others on “the left” that what they mean by “democracy” is an elected government doing more for “the people,” what they fail to mention is that no government can do things for the people without having the power of doing things to the people. If government is to provide schooling, health care, retirement, housing, employment, wages, gender reassignments, then that same government will determine what type and content of education you shall receive, what type and extent of medical treatment and care you will have, how much you will have to live on when you stop working, what type of place you may be able to live in, and what salary the government bureaucracies determine to be your “living wage” and work conditions.
The implicit assumption is that you are not able and cannot be trusted to make these decisions for yourself. You are presumed to be wise enough to vote on who will hold political office, who then appoint the administrative bureaucrats who man the vast network of government agencies, bureaus, and departments that manage and control your life. But you are not to be trusted to pick you own breakfast cereal, your own retirement plan, you own medical insurance, or your own chosen place of work and the income to be earned.
And now, increasingly, the individual freedoms expressed in the first amendment of the Constitution are being eroded and chipped away based on the alleged threats of “harmful words,” “hateful words,” “misinformation” and “fake news,” and “religious extremists.” But who defines and determines the content of these ideas? And with what coercive powers of silencing the offenders are those in the government to be empowered with to enforce that which they or their ideological brethren believe to be politically correct communications and associations?
When discussing these and related issues with my students in class, I sometimes ask them to think in their own minds of the politician they hate the most and trust the least, without them answering out loud. Now imagine that person and others like him are elected to high political office with these powers of “doing things for us.” Are they the ones you would like to have the power and authority to “do things to us?”
America’s major political parties are both threats to liberty
Both major political parties in the America believe that they are standing for “democracy.” Both say that with their win in this and other elections, the democratic “will of the people” will be truly represented, while electoral victory for the opposing party means the “end to democracy.” Just listen to the rhetoric that the Republicans and the Democrats use when referring to the other party in this year’s election.
Both are dangers to liberal democracy because both parties have supported and continue to promise more encroachments on the personal, social, and economic liberty of the American citizenry. What they promise to the voters is about what corners of life they wish to
extend government control to through regulations, restrictions, or prohibitions, while using tax revenues and borrowed money to benefit various special interest groups and “causes” they will support. But the underlying premise is the same: dictating the direction and content of social and economic life for all through the power of government.
Liberal democracy, as historically understood, has had as its goal a political system with the duty and authority to secure all the citizens of the country with their rights to life, liberty, and property, while leaving all other affairs to the free choices and associations of the people themselves. Liberal democracy not only leaves individuals at liberty to guide and direct their own lives but also offers a superior form of democracy than our increasingly unlimited majoritarian type.
Political majoritarianism versus free-market pluralism
In the political arena, to get “democratic” government to follow the policies you desire, you must successfully persuade a majority of those others who actually vote on election day to support the candidates who would implement the policies you want. If you fail to do so, your preferences are set aside until the next election cycle, when, again, the task is to get enough people to vote your way. And whichever side wins in the democratic political contest, all in the society must conform to a single uniform set of policies that the winning majority has voted for.
In the marketplace, there is a form of pluralistic democracy. Each individual “votes” with his dollars for the combination of goods and services that he prefers over others. As long as a sufficient number of buyers are able to offer prices that create enough incentive for some producers and sellers to satisfy their particular preferred demands, they get served in the marketplace, and in principle, people can change their mind about what they want and get every day. To use a much misused and abused set of terms, marketplace liberalism enables diversity and inclusiveness.
Many different demands are provided for all simultaneously. The lovers of classical music hear what they prefer along with the fans of heavy metal. The readers of “serious” literature have their demands satisfied as much as those who enjoy romance novels. There are dozens if not hundreds of niche demands met 24 hours a day with movie streaming services. The same applies to food, clothing, entertainment, travel, and living preferences. How many of us would like our options over these things and many more determined and dictated for us by the majority of others whose tastes, preferences, and desires may be noticeably far from our own?
The danger to liberal democracy in our society today is due to the fact that the classical liberalism of individual freedom of choice and decision-making in the competitive, free marketplace has been increasingly narrowed as unrestrained majoritarian democracy makes us captives of the personal and ideological demands of others.
Unlimited democracy feeds special-interest politicking
It has become notoriously clear that politics and politicians are heavily influenced by special-interest groups. But once government becomes a huge cookie jar filled with goodies that represents a redistribution of income and wealth from some to others in society, those who see a way to get what they want that they cannot earn the honest way in the free and voluntary exchanges of the marketplace will do all in their power to acquire it through the taxing and spending authority possessed by those in political power. And in the process, we all become less prosperous and less free than we could have been if liberalism had not been weakened and removed as an idea and ideal confining democratic government within the limited and narrow confines of protecting people’s liberty to be left peacefully and honestly alone to live their own lives as they chose in that voluntary association with others.
As the French nineteenth-century economist Frédéric Bastiat once said, government becomes the great fiction through which everyone tries to live at everyone else’s expense. The presidential candidates of both major political parties are reflections of this fiction. Both want government to do more and therefore control more of our lives. They merely differ about the commands and controls, regulations and redistributions they wish to impose on all of us.
Democracy is merely a useful institutional instrument that replaces violence with votes to bring about change in the upper echelons of governmental power. Only liberalism offers a political philosophy and social ideal about what government should and not do with its assigned powers. Classical liberalism, in particular, sets the narrow limits of democratic government so that it secures people’s freedom rather than undermines and takes it away.
Based on a talk given as part of a panel discussion, “Is Liberal Democracy in Danger,” sponsored by the Program for Public Discourse at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on October 1, 2024.